It’s harvest time. God, it seems to have arrived quickly. Only a few weeks ago the fields were scruffy expanses of clumps of red earth, weeds and dead vegetation. Then the tractors passed, first turning the soil, then harrowing it into a fine tilth. They passed again, sowing seeds, and within days the first greenish flush arrived, turning in the blink of an eye to foot high daggers. In no time at all the oil seed rape had flowered, faded and withered; the wheat had turned from green to golden, as had the lush grass which has now been transformed into fields of cow cocoons. Of the rape seed only the stalks remain, still defiantly erect. The grains of wheat are on their way by trailer to the local co-operative mills, and their stalks lie in ragged trails on the ground, waiting to be baled into straw.
Combine harvesters, as big as hotels, snort through the countryside slicing, chewing, churning, spitting out and funnelling, while the shoulder-high maize and first sunflowers watch complacently. Poor things have no idea that quite soon they too will meet their brutal end.
A neighbour was describing the traditional harvest, once a communal activity, before the advent of mechanisation. Then it was a time of hard, happy work, neighbour helping neighbour; al fresco meals, aching bones but light hearts and the satisfaction of seeing the result of their work. I nodded, and said what a pity it was that the combines had replaced the horse and oxen in the fields. They nodded. We all agreed that there is little romance left in farming.
Mind you, they pointed out, those horses and oxen lived a hard life. How many kilometers did they have to walk each day, as they dragged heavy ploughs up and down fields? Heh, eight hours a day, in all weathers. It wasn’t easy – especially if you were the one walking behind them.
Strangely, this is something I had never previously considered. And I suppose that if you had spent long hours either swallowing dust, or trudging along in boots caked with mud, with nothing but animals’ bottoms to look at, farming didn’t seem any more romantic than it does today.
