XI 12th August 1998
The owning of our own combine gave us first opportunity to entirely control our harvest, which is an enormous satisfation for everyone and gives a new spirit to our work. We started cutting - on the first of the month, under the stewardship, of an old PGR state-farm driver Kazmierz (Kaz). Using sophisticated equipment needs preparation which in the morning takes two hours to get the machine ready, checking belts, oiling, filling up, cleaning, setting the parameters for selected crop, treatment of grain, and connecting or separating the shredder. It is an impressive machine, two stories high, with a three meter-fifty cutting-saw, behind which turns a large drum moving the crop back onto an internal thresher and blowing straw out clean of grain; one hopes that none is lost before storing it into a two ton container, with a warning lamp, known as cock, which lights when full and sends us running to collect it.
The cutting does not start till the dew has lifted to reduce moisture content, which requires checking after a first 50 meter trial-run with a hygrometer, which also shows its temperature. Our driver Kaz is sprightly, although in late sixties, with a reputation of being a machine enthusiast, so one needs to watch that the time spent on maintenance is not more than on harvesting. Sitting in the glazed cabin beside him the experience is stupendous; it is a ship sailing into the gentle waves of wheat. We are cutting the largest field Eve where the length of a drive is 600 meters, seeing from vantage point above the changing quality of the crop, from bad where overgrown with weed to rich swaying wave of pure wheat. In first days we could not cut all the time because the weather was against us, sometimes having to wait until afternoon for the field to dry. There is tension in the work because it is a new machine and something can go wrong, and one day a belt broke which took several hours to repair, a lost time, when every minute is precious to exploit the good weather. Kaz cuts the field by making straight runs and reversing at each end, but because the time is so important I asked him not to reverse but to circle round the field without stopping. This leaves uncut triangle at every corner which can be returned to finish later. He was disgusted but admitted that it was the method often used on the state farms, which I did not know, and we argued doing a bit of both methods.
Again, the harvest was not as good as expected, but some fields are reaching a good standard of 5 tons; whilst the overall is pulled down to a lower average, yet it shows that we can reach this level now.
Mid-week, on Wednesday afternoon, whilst waiting on weather to restart cutting, we heard shouting that Dilpreet was on fire - glancing towards the field I could see smoke at the far end. Despair at destruction of a ready harvest, whether by hailstone or by fire, is the utmost fear of any farmer; one heard of German and Russian soldiers in 1914, all from farming stock, stopping fighting when facing each other across a ripe field of rye, ready for the scythe. We were frozen by the sight of smoke and fire strips rising with convective currents in the distance. Suddenly there was a great noise in the road and looking at what it signified we saw the villagers from far and near, friends and adversaries, all running towards the field. A young man took off his jacket to throw it on the creeping edge of fire, having to go home later bare-chested, one or two small tractors appeared dragging raking grids or rollers, some people ran with buckets of water and others drove a car trailer with a large barrel, and even young girls and children ran with branches to smother the flames no one was afraid and everyone was fierce. The field fire was halted at their hands, only two hectares out of fifteen being lost, the earth looking black and charred. I will never forget this joint rescue for which no one expected a reward, the reward being the satisfaction that the ready crop was saved. I went around and thanked people, many of whom I did not know. Whatever was the cause, whether this one, like the other, was a match or a petard, the village people showed their soul, their union with natureʼs gift of plenty, nothing for me to thank them for, since they shared awareness and love at a better level.
We made a major change in our work by introducing rapeseed into our planting schedule - a new plant, another lesson to learn. It has to be planted early, by 20th of August, which often collides with the harvest, with shallow ploughing (podorywka) and the clearing of the straw. However, we have now accepted that a more radical rotation is necessary to produce better yields. This results in three year cycle of 50 % wheat, half of which is planted after rape - the best base for it, and half after barley, still using two different seeds. For barley we sow Rodos as before, and for rape we selected a Polish brand of Lisek. This new arrangement means that the geometry of planting has to change and our largest field of 25 hectares, has to be subdivided into Eve-1 of 15 hectares and Eve-2 of 10, which is inconvenient, but divides into four equal areas of approximately 18 hectares each as dictated by the new schedule.
Travelling through France one senses that it is a country in which the composition and order of her society is comprehensible, even if not always accepted, to every citizen. Maybe it is the legacy of the Revolution. The attitudes which attach to food, sex, education, intelligence, wealth, religion or to TGV are broadly similar at every level of society; a good oyster is a good oyster, to a street sweeper or to a marquise. The annoyingly slow queues in a local post office are permitted with an understanding that the functionary has a right to exchange tittle-tattle - to assert her right to enjoy her work; whilst the distress caused by one strike or another is accepted and not held against the worker. It must be the view of: ʻvivre et laisser vivreʼ asserting itself.
At the other extreme the current tensions in the Balkans are events which involve us in asserting a view of what is right and what is wrong every day. Lenin or Ghandi of course would have had an opinion. We know that not all societies are magnanimous, but we also observe that with every generation, there is new idealism with the young which can be seen on social level as a return to natural life and a kind of humanism and ethic based on human nobility. If we feel the need of describing such a coming of a resolved, positive and new step in evolution, when homo sapiens can achieve real civilization we could perhaps name it: Penkwa, (Sanskrit word combining: “to do and - basic form”) aiming to discover wherever it begins to surface on Earth. A Penkwa-Step is nearer here and further away there: in France it begins to have great deal of sweetness and we can learn from her; but what are we to do in the Balkans? Heavy fighting has resumed in Serbiaʼs south- ern province of Kosovo in villages close to the border with Albania, with many refugees.
