TALKING POINT
TALKING POINT
August is a wicked
month…and a most
unsuitable one for
harvesting, according
to Charlie Flindt
Lets face it, August is a terrible month for harvest. How often do we combine right through? There is usually a fine bit at the start of the month, a fine bit at the end, but the rest is, as young people say nowadays, pants. Every year, the early drillers can be heard having Hagberg panics as the wet weather clobbers their ripe wheat. Early Oct-sown wheat tends to survive – but thats another story.
So what else is on for August? Theres hedge trimming, ploughing, bale cart, and for those of us who have sold off the combine, its time for the annual lorry battle.
With todays technology, getting corn out of the bins and down to the docks/mill/maltsters should be the easiest job in the world. All we want is three telephone calls. First, the long-distance warning: "Well be coming for the barley, week beginning the 24th."
Second, the short-range warning: "The lorries will start after lunch on Tuesday."
Third, the call from the driver: "Ive just joined the A272; where exactly is the store?"
This would avoid several nasty scenarios. Theres the lorry out of the blue, for instance, when you realise that theres a 44t chrome-clad behemoth throbbing outside the farm entrance. "Oh, didnt they say I was coming?" asks cheery driver through a mouthful of Yorkie bar. Do "they" really believe that we have someone employed to sit at the grain store all day, just waiting for lorries?
Theres the vanishing lorry, when the eight oclock booking doesnt show up. Im not sure about anyone else, but I reckon that if I havent heard anything by 10, I can go and do something more constructive elsewhere with a clear conscience.
Theres the two-at-once problem. That happened last spring, when I was bucketing peas out of the store. There were tears and tantrums as driver number two failed to pull rank, and realised that he was stuck there for at least 2hr. It actually took longer, as I was having a Muppet day with the loader, crashing into walls and pillars; the Jolly Flowerpots had beckoned the previous evening. If both drivers hadnt been sulking, they could have sped things up by getting out and sweeping back between bucket loads. I had to do it myself, so it was a very long time before the second one got away.
Theres the lost lorry. Turn left in Hinton Ampner, and youre in Young Towers. Go straight on and youll end up sharing a lawn with a furious Belgian Shepherd, a pathetic Collie, a dozen traumatised chickens and my pet rabbit. A simple call for directions ("right, left, straight on, yard on the right") makes life far easier.
And they dont get any smaller, do they? I wish someone could explain how to grow corn in multiples of 27t. If I make the mistake of growing five and a half loads of malting barley, the penalty on the half load can all but eat up the premium on the other five. Most of our corn is sold through an agricultural trading society based in the southern counties, which has just rebranded itself, no doubt at considerable expense. Investment in a 15t tidy-up lorry would have been far more useful.
So, how best to spend a wet August day? I could finish last years accounts (dull). I could settle down to watch England give the Aussies a good hiding (unlikely). I could renew my attempts to get Massey to lend me a demo tractor (pure fantasy). Looks like the worst job of all, then: an oil and filter change on the Deutz.