Opinion: In praise of slipping into ‘the zone’

A good combine/tractor driver has many skills, most of which I have failed to pick up in my 30 seasons on this farm.

Can I fill a grease gun quickly and cleanly? No. Mine needs steam-cleaning twice a month. Can I consistently estimate parallel lines across a field? Not a chance. My birthday present to myself was an in-cab GPS system (this has the added bonus of filling the cab with more lights and buttons – even more attractive to teenagers at harvest). Can I change the oil successfully (and it doesn’t get simpler than that, surely)? Well, at the last DIY service about four litres of new oil had mysteriously vanished into the engine before I realised I hadn’t put the drain plug back in…

There is one skill which I am proud to say I have finally developed. It’s one that has crept up on me, and I only noticed I was using it for the first time this harvest: I can enter the zone.

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Now, when top sportsmen talk of entering “the zone”, they mean a strange state of mind that slows time down, giving them more time to hit that clay pigeon or smash that cricket ball. When I scored my one and only century, at Adlestrop (ah, I remember Adlestrop), I’m not sure if I was in the sportsmen’s zone, or the bowling was particularly crap. Or it may have been our oppo’s generosity in the pub.

Anyway, the farmer’s zone is quite different. It speeds time up. It eases the task of spending 10 hours sitting still, doing next-to-nothing. It’s almost a trance-like state. It doesn’t affect your ability to do the job – the combine seems to have been used properly while it polished off the acres, and the early drilling this year has come up with the tramlines in all the right places. Which is lucky, because at the time of writing, that early drilling looks like it’ll be the only drilling.

“I can tell when I’m not in the zone: I’ll check the time on my phone, and then realise that it has been all of two minutes since I last checked the time on my phone.”

I can tell when I’m not in the zone: I’ll check the time on my phone, and then realise that it has been all of two minutes since I last checked the time on my phone. And every time I slide the phone in and out of my shirt pocket, it leaves another little scratch on my reading glasses, which are also stored there. I’ll try sending an amusing text to one of my children – difficult with scratched glasses, and unwise, as it guarantees a wobbly bit of drilling.

I’ll turn the radio on, realise that Radio DullFM is playing the same dull track (by some whiny autotuned nobody who might have won some dreadful, contrived television “talent” show some months ago) that it was playing last time I turned the blasted radio off. Or try Radio BlandFM, which will be playing the same bland song.

Radio 4 will be doing an in-depth feature on “Why right-wingers should undergo sterilisation” presented by Polly Toynbee and the alleged comedian Marcus Brigstocke, so that’s not an option.

Thank goodness for the zone. Settle down in the seat, check the switches and settings, maybe give the windscreen a polish while engines warm up, engage the best gear, and away you go.

Away you go… into the zone. It’s a place of contentment, a state of meditation. Leave the radio off, leave the phone in your pocket, and quietly consider the intricacies of life, farming, and everything. Another 30 years, and I’ll have meditated my way to a clean grease gun.

Charlie Flindt is a tenant of the National Trust, farming 380ha at Hinton Ampner, in Hampshire.

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