Political Forum Chat Thread.

https://twitter.com/farmingwifelife/status/1272072382694469632

...a few short videos of today's steam-powered threshing.

 

Steam-powered threshing today.
9 hrs in the hot sun pitching 20lb bunches of straw. Around 6 tons, at 120 bunches per ton that's over 700 repetitions.
I'd complain about being too old for this **** if it wasn't for the fact that, at 55, I was the youngest person working today.

Not ''Monty'' the 1931 Marshall as promised, instead we got ''Sir Gordon'' a 1905 Burrell built in Thetford Norfolk (about 40 miles from the farm).
Sir Gordon was abandoned in 1940 by Sussex council who had used it for haulage. Later on, it was hit by a Luftwaffe bomb which destroyed the front half.
After languishing for about 60 years it was restored in the early 2000s.




Here you see the engine with a belt from its large pulley wheel driving the drum. Just to the right of the drum is the buncher which is belt driven from a pulley wheel on the far side of the drum.


Here you see the full rig including the trailers the finished straw is stacked onto.

The unprocessed wheat is on the far side of the drum in a stack that has been there since last summer.
2 or 3 men stand on top of the stack pitching the sheaths up to the top of the drum where it is fed in by another guy. Once inside the corn is knocked off the straw and falls though a shaking screen which stops any chaff or broken straw and then falls out of the front into sacks. A fan blows the chaff and small broken pieces of straw out of separate outlets in the side.
The good straw is jiggled towards the back of the drum then drops out into the buncher which ties it into bunches which are pushed up a couple of poles onto the first half-loaded trailer where I pitch them onto the second trailer where another man stacks them until it is about 8' above my head.

 

That is just too cool!

 

Honestly, I've understood very little of the explanation but Sir Gordon is beautiful - and how fantastic to be able to get something like that working for you!

 

Honestly, I don't really understand how the drum works. It's very Heath Robinson with all sorts of belts and pullies driving all the different components. Mechanical magic without a single piece of electronics.

The steam engine and its crew only cost us the price of the coal (about £60 in the end) they were happy just to have the opportunity to put it to work and didn't even want transport costs (it came about 60 miles on a low loader). Apparently it cost £165,000 fully restored.

 

Yeah, I'm lucky to have the opportunity to get involved.
I'm not a farmer, I'm a chef but I live on a friend's farm and he's one of the last few thatching straw producers.
Normally, wheat is just harvested with a combine harvester but because we don't want the straw mangled we have to do it the old fashioned way.
We've threshed about 10 times this year plus a couple of days on a neighbouring farm. One man with a combine could probably do a similar acreage of wheat in a day. That's what makes thatching straw worth £550 a ton, all the labour costs. The wheat is actually the by-product only worth about £125 a ton.

 

We have to grow old varieties of long straw wheat to get the length required by the thatchers. This year, with a very dry spring, we might not get the length needed and will lose the straw crop in some of the fields.
The old varieties make low-quality flour and have about a third of the yield of modern wheats. One ton of grain per acre rather than three.
Coupled with the loss of income from the six camps and festivals we normally have, 2020 is not going to be a good year for the farm.

 

Suicide and mental health issues in the farming and rural communities are an ongoing shame. Bravo Emma for her promotion of Yana.
The videos were great.
After throwing straw around during the thrashing, you will be fit.

 

It’s been a bad year in many places. Farming is a chancey business.

 

Yeah, farmers understand how tied to the weather their fortunes are. The Bat Death will hit some food producers hard though. Anyone producing food for the hospitality industry will have to find new markets and those who rely on immigrant labour to harvest their crops may have to watch it rot in the fields.

We'll find out if the straw is long enough in about 6 weeks when the wheat is ready to be cut.

 

I have a small hobby farm and I never make a profit. But I guess that's why it's a hobby. When I lived in Indiana I used to love the county fair where they would show off the old equipment. I really loved the sounds of that stuff. But I doubt we had any farm equipment bombed in the Blitz.

 

Paul only has 100 acres and a lot of his farmer mates call him a hobby farmer. Many of the fields surrounding the farm are bigger than it.
They are horrid mono-crop wildlife deserts in comparison though.
The fields here haven't changed since Saxon times so many of the hedgerows are a thousand years old.
The farm manages to support two households though. No great riches financially but a beautiful place to live and a nice lifestyle.

 

Paul has the radio from an American bomber which crashed about a mile or so from the farm. One of its engines sat in a ditch for decades. We're surrounded by WWII airfields here and all the old farmers have stories about crashed planes and bombs being dumped before they landed.
American bases were segregated, the nearest in Flixton housed the black airmen in tents all year round while the white servicemen lived in buildings. The local pubs had white days and black days for the Americans. The locals mixed with both.

 

I have a lot less ground than that and most of it is rock.

 

My father in law used to transport German prisoners and they had more rights here in Alabama than black folks.

 

I was just going to ask “Bat Death?” Der!

 

Me too.

 

It's the modern version of The Black Death...

 

You mean COVID?

 

Yup, The Bat Death.

 

The farm is all the small fields surrounded by hedgerows. The large field on the left is probably 2/3rds the size of the whole farm.
Not a rock or even a hill in sight. About 8 inches of soil on top of clay, only 30-40 yards above sea level.

 

Topsoil is a blessing.

 

I hadn't heard of YANA before today, I'll have to ask her about it.

The thrashing will either get me fit or break me. I suffered in the heat today. I'm a fair skinned Celtic type and I've got red arms tonight. I was grateful for my wide-brimmed Aussie hat keeping my neck and face from getting sunburnt.

Stacking shooks of wheat is the next hard labour. My back is aching just thinking about it.

 

My husband used to work on harvesting hay, in his youth. Very hard work. You have to love hay or be in dire need of work. Blisters on your hands, aching back and abdominal muscles, itchy skin and grass seeds everywhere!
On the other hand you eat like a horse and sleep like the dead.
Ps. forgot the sunburn.

 

A blessing that must be preserved. To accept a certain amount of topsoil loss each year is nonsense. My rock had some really nice melons last year.... finally, and tomatoes look good this year. I used last year's melons for barter. I am experimenting raising fish on rock also. I am trying to get a one pound Lepomus Machrochirus in a year. This could make the bluegill a food fish like Tilapia.