Farming Foresight

Yesterday evening

 Bucolic idyll, sun drenched hay bales soaking up the last rays of the setting sun; the sound of children playing on the bales; the smell of freshly cut hay.

This afternoon

Storm clouds and a very heavy downpour; positively brooding clouds in a variety of colours that can only be described as 'bruise'.

As you can see from the empty field the farmer has evidently been listening to the weather forecast, as he spent several hours this morning dashing back and forth from the field with a tractor and trailer full of hay bales.

I love how quickly the British weather turns from 'where did I store my shorts?' and 'do we have any sun lotion?' to 'for heaven's sake put a rain coat on' and 'well at least we won't have to water the pots tonight'.

Sitting here with a cup of herbal tea and the scent of wet earth and rain wafting in through the French windows - lovely.

Jean-Luc has splashed his way to the local pub to watch England's final attempt to regain some dignity in the World Cup; I reckon it all went wrong when we swapped compulsory archery practice for football.  I guess the England team can gain some comfort in the fact so many of their team mates from the league seem to be having a much better time of it with their national teams.

Or not.

Making Hay

We're very lucky.  We live in a real farming community.  There are loads of people who don't earn their living on the land, like Jean-Luc and myself; but there are lots who do.

One of the farmers farms the field behind our house for hay and once that has been cut and gathered and the fresh grass has grown again, for young cattle.  The hay will be used to feed his livestock over winter.

The farmer cut his hay about 3 weeks ago, last week he turned it so it would dry out evenly.

 Turning the hay.

Today it's hot and the sun is out and it's haymaking weather.

This machine gathers the hay up into heaped up rows.

This one is the baler, it gathers up the hay and turns it into nice, neat, easier to handle bales.

They drop out the back all neatly parceled up.

It's hot, dusty and noisy work with big machines.  But it's the reality of farming - the job that puts food on all our tables and so here's a big Thank You from a very small and very grateful corner of the blogiverse.