It's the season for pulling wild oats: tall grassy weeds which grow amongst the crops and, if left, become mixed in with the harvested corn. A farmer's nightmare. And probably the worst job in the farming calendar. It's incredibly boring, standing in a 20+ acre field, laboriously pulling out weeds which have grown to about 4 feet in height. Some of them are tough cookies to heave and take a considerable amount of weight to pull free. The Farmer walks up and down the fields, huffin' and puffin', filling his reusable seed bags and getting tickled alive by harvest flies which get absolutely everywhere. And I mean everywhere. They can even get underneath a computer screen and I have had one or two crawling about my blog. One can't go outside at this time of year without being bombarded by at least a million of them. If you wear white, you don't stand a chance.
The barley and wheat fields are looking positively healthy, all glad of the thunder storms we have recently had. Although we will need some dry and airy weather in the next few weeks to ensure combining will go ahead. Last years harvest was very touch and go. Fortunately, the Farmer got all his corn in and managed to get the land ready for being re-sown before the floods last October hit Northumberland. He struggled on but we're keeping fingers crossed that his hard work will pay off in a few months time. It's his first harvest with the new tractor and I dare say he's somewhat excited about driving it up and down the fields. I always remember my late-fil during the harvest; when he finally threw the towel in and decided he could no longer help, he would take the quad bike to the corner of the field in which the Farmer was working, and he would stay for hours, watching the header bar of the combine whirr around, cutting and gathering barley. Then he would wait until the Farmer had emptied the corn into the trailer before giving his lecture about it taking too long, or "it wasn't done like that in my day". I used to vision a shire horse and think, "hmmm".
hard work and all that aside, you make farm living sound idyllic!
ReplyDeleteThat's graft.
ReplyDeleteI had one of those bad boys trapped in my lap top screen yesterday, well strange.
I don't think I'd care too much about having to fight all the flies! Poor Farmer!
ReplyDeleteHappy day sweetie!hughugs
you make hard work sound wonderful. happy harvest to you.
ReplyDeleteNothing like a good sweaty, sticky bug bitten day! Not looking forward to the day I can't do what I do, or Dirt either. I'm sure it will be hard like it was for your FIL. I would miss the work and the doing and the grunting and sweating and the mosquitoes biting where you can't slap. I too would be jealous of those who could still work, wishing like anything that my body hadn't finally betrayed me. But for now I am still capable and I already tell my girls irritating things like " a fifty year old woman is working cirlcles around you." But they still kiss me good night.
ReplyDeleteHi, CJ. I will no longer whine about the amount of weed pulling to be done in my garden. At least I can do it without the pestering of invasive flies!
ReplyDeleteHope the harvest is very fruitful:-)
Rhonda
The bugs don't sound like fun, but farm life sounds kind of nice. I've always wanted to do a job that brought me outside, around animals and nature. I'm thinking I'd have to wear a hat, though. Those flies would stand out in my red hair!
ReplyDeleteThat is what they call, "good, honest work". Either that or "hard labor". ;)
ReplyDeleteThank you for painting such a wonderful picture for us. :)
I remember getting special dispensation from school to visit the farming exhibition. No tractor rides though. It's a pity the Shire Horse centre has closed in Devon as I'd have liked to take the children there last visit.....so if you trade in the tractor for shire horse just let me know.
ReplyDeleteNow I need to upload the latest episode of the Archers.
Cheers
Your farmer works hard and I'm sure he does more than an adequate job at farming the land, even if his father did not think so, the old bully. I wish you both lots of luck with reaping the harvest and pulling the wild oats, which seems like a terrible job. What do we city folks know, right? We just eat the bread.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it was your fil way of giving a pep talk. My own fil walked 10 miles to school. Uphill. In both directions. Hah. They always believe they had it hardest, and in some ways, maybe they did.
ReplyDeleteI can remember those harvest mites. Make you want to itch.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot of hard work involved with farming every one knows....... but much of it is not known about as I have learnt today!
We plough the fields and scatter! Yes tis that time of year! I can tell by the activity in the village!
ReplyDeleteDxxx
I love the idea of living on a working farm, but I couldn't cope with the hard work. Wishing you a great harvest.
ReplyDeleteYou paint a beautiful picture, notwithstanding the hard work that farming is- and I've only ever watched it.
ReplyDeleteYou're very a productive team, people and animals!
Hmm! I've heard of sowing wild oats but not pulling wild oats! Sounds very hard work ~ Eddie x
ReplyDeleteYour wild oats sound like what we call Johnson grass here. Very hard stuff to get rid of. You can keep those flies!
ReplyDeleteI love the description of your late FIL.
We do so little like we did "back in the day" anymore. I remember when I lived in Germany as a young boy we had a field that was behind our house and he plowed with a horse team back in the 70's. It seemed so old school back then lol. Good luck with the weather as it does control how well the farms produce. Thanks for sharing and know that I wish you and yours all the best.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the visit and comments. I look forward to the pics and yes I am sure I would love it there on the farm. I have never done much crop work but have worked on small cattle farms in my past. I am like you in the sense of I love country life. Thanks again and as always take great care.
ReplyDeleteIt all sounds utterly exhausting, and to think I complain about sitting at a desk all day.
ReplyDeleteWe call the little, thread-like horrors "thunder bugs" in Kent. You are right, they get EVERYWHERE.
ReplyDeleteTimes have changed but not necessarily for the better.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the combine harvester makes it a whole lot easier than in bygone days!
ReplyDeleteA wonderfully rich and vivid post - so enjoyed reading it, CJ!
xx
What a lovely informative post about farming life.
ReplyDeletePulling wild oats obviously isn't as much fun as sowing them.
Iota - Nice one!
ReplyDeleteCJ xx
Pulling the wild oats among all the flies doesn't sound fun.
ReplyDeleteI think farming with a Shire horse seems charming. I'd love having the horse, but maybe not how much longer it would take to get the job done without modern machinery.
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ReplyDelete