By Chris Ruttle
(October 2006)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? ... 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....