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Moan of the month: Armchair Farmers
By Chris Ruttle
What is it with farming
that everybody seems to know how to do our job better than we do? I suppose
it’s because we are permanently under observation by large numbers of people
whatever we do, not like being in a small private nondescript office somewhere.
But if there’s one job that really gets the Armchair Farmers out of their
armchairs to give us advice and comments, it’s harvest time and combining.
Is it, as I have commented before, that they are really frustrated would-be
farmers? Or have they some deep Neanderthal urge to make a stockpile of
food before the onset of winter? My personal view is that they heard the
rumour that the price of a loaf of bread was going to rise by 3-4 pence
and are out there making sure we don’t miss a single grain, to keep their
weekly shopping in budget!Whatever it is, there was a large surfeit of them this year, with even our local MP getting in on the act at the Conservative Garden party.
She waited until the right moment before selecting an ear of wheat from the adjoining field, and then when she had a large attentive audience, proceeded to thresh the ear on one of the tables. After carefully examining the threshed grains, it was declared ready (it looked to me about two weeks away) accompanied by loud ‘ooh’s and ‘aah’s from her dedicated followers. Following this revelation I was then bombarded with such comments as “should you really be here Chris?” or “hadn’t you better go and get the combine out?”. Perhaps it’s a good job that her party are not in power, otherwise I could see another Government Directive coming our way that, “You will go combining wheat on this date”. Thankfully, heavy rain five minutes later made nonsense of it all, as I don’t think the HSE would have been too impressed if I was caught operating heavy machinery whilst under the influence.
Here are a few more anecdotes from harvest time.
First combines
The first combines are spotted – this is perhaps my favourite and happens
every year around the middle of July and goes something like this: “I was
driving past Amersham today and saw that they are combining there, shouldn’t
you be combining as well?” to which my reply is “well what are they combining?”
and the answer comes back “I don’t know, but there’s a combine going up
and down a field”. Now although Amersham is not far away, they tend to be
about a week earlier starting than us due to lighter soil and bigger, more
open fields. The harvesting calendar in a normal year for us would be: last
week of July = winter barley; end of July = winter oil seed rape; second
and third weeks of August = wheat; then spring barley followed by spring
break crops. As we haven’t grown winter barley for the last few years we
wouldn’t expect to be combining until the last week of July. In fact there
used to be an old farmer’s saying that – when your winter barley looks ready,
go on holiday for a week and when you come back, it will be!Out for a walk
The out-for-a-walk inspectors – this usually starts with: “I was walking past your fields of wheat today and they look ready to combine to me”. Now this was an easy mistake to make this year, because the hot sun bleached and dried out the top of the crop making it look riper than it really was. But we have an unobtrusive little device called a ‘moisture meter’ which tells us much more precisely whether the crop is ready or not. With the price of fuel four times what it was a few years ago, there’s no point cutting too early and end up drying the grain with all the extra work and costs for this operation. The grain will dry faster in the field with the right weather, often dropping by 3-5% moisture content in a day.
Sympathetic souls
The sympathetic souls! – combines always break down on the hottest driest days when the grain is dry and we can just tip it up in the shed, never on dull humid days when it all needs drying. There we are with the combine in about 50 pieces, covered in grease, sweat and dust, looking a bit fed up, when these happy souls make the comment: “Oh dear, have you broken down, that’s a pity, but your neighbours are getting on really well”. Of course this was just after we received the news that the part we needed would take 24 hours to be flown in from Germany, and the forecast is for heavy rain the day after tomorrow.
Uncombined bits left in fields
This seems to have raised much speculation this year such as “why have you left that, did you get lost in the dark” or “you must get bored going up and down the same field”. Actually it’s neither of these. This year, again, due to the hot sun earlier, the areas in the shade of hedges and woods were much greener and needed to be left for a bit longer to ripen, or as was the case in some fields, we were caught out by heavy showers and had to leave the fields unfinished.
There are many other instances I could quote, but space precludes them. What I would like to say is, if you recognise yourself here, please don’t be offended and please don’t stop making the comments and giving us advice, it sometimes helps to brighten up our day and may help to explain the wry looks you sometimes get. We in return, promise to try not to laugh – UNTIL YOU’RE OUT OF SIGHT!