Out with the combines

by REX NEEDLE

A wheat crop being harvested at Dyke, near Bourne

Saturday 28th August 1999

Our home here in Bourne is on the very edge of the fen and I use the back upstairs bedroom as a study where I spend much of my time. My desk is positioned so that I can see out of the large window which overlooks meadow and farmland to the distant horizon and out there somewhere are the salt marshes of South Lincolnshire and beyond that the North Sea. My daily panoramic view of the countryside takes in several fields edged with trees, a tributary of the old Car Dyke dating back to Roman times, several churches, a few cottages and a windmill in Dyke village, but most rewarding of all, I am a constant observer of the farming year in its entirety. 

I sit here most days writing something, watching the plough and the harrow in the autumn, preparing to plant new crops of wheat and barley, sugar beet and oilseed rape, and then comes the frost and the snow which turn the landscape into a winter wonderland overnight, followed by the delights of spring when the green shoots push through the earth and as the weeks pass they grow taller and soon those mellow mid-summer days are here and the combines are cutting a swathe through the golden corn and when the harvest is in, the year begins again. And so the changing seasons act as a marker for our life span and constantly remind us that the years are passing and we must enjoy each day to the full. 

In recent days, the hum of the combines has filled the air around Bourne as farmers bring in their main corn crop, working late by powerful headlights before being overtaken by the weather. One of the fields out there that I have watched throughout the year is owned by Dyke farmer William Ash and when he heard that I wanted to photograph the wheat being cut, he invited me on to his land for a grandstand view. 

The harvest has been running a few days late because of the recent wet weather. Not a minute of fine weather must be wasted and so once the combines start up at mid-morning, they continue operating until late into the evening and often until 10 p m with powerful headlights showing the way. These machines are mighty and costly pieces of equipment, 450 horse power and a price tag of £165,000, but with a blade sweep of 22 feet, they devour the crop at the rate of five acres an hour, a phenomenal achievement compared to the methods of past times when the pattern of the harvest was dictated by the need to preserve the grain in the ear until threshing time and so harvesting was reckoned in weeks instead of hours. 

The modern, self-propelled combine harvester incorporates a threshing drum to separate the grain from the chaff and so cuts and threshes in one operation, throwing the chaff out at the rear and making periodic stops to offload its yield into a waiting trailer, hauled into a convenient position by tractor. I was invited for a spell in the operator's cab by Andrew Seymour who was at the controls and he pointed out the latest developments in technology, a computer panel to control the machine's operations and radio phone communications to keep in touch with his tractor driver and even the farmer back at base. 

Four views from the operator's cab

Sitting up at the front in an elevated position like a pilot in a helicopter provided a commanding view of the crop about to be cut, safe from the dust and debris thrown up by the powerful engine, and as the wheat stalks were scooped into the machine like a continuous carpet, I remembered the farm workers of past times, cutting the corn with a sickle, binding it into sheaves, manhandling the sheaves into stooks and then threshing by hand using a flail, all back breaking work which kept them occupied for several weeks. 

The combine is farm mechanisation at its most efficient but these modern practices have changed our countryside customs. Harvest was once the climax of the year, an occasion when half the village was recruited and rewarded with a supper at the farmer's expense, but it has now become a job for two men, a combine, a tractor and a trailer and within hours the land will again be under the plough. One farming year has ended and another is about to begin. 

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