XIV 8th September 1999
A Millennium is around the corner, with the year 2000; is it just a date or is it more than that A sign of the New The farm, in its sixth year is coming to a watershed, coinciding with the Millennium, not least because the repaying of the loan to the Agency will give it a new financial freedom. Early plans of an Artisan Centre have been overtaken by events: we are all involved in the challenge of building the farm in all its aspects which is making our responsibilities different, closer to nature, to the art of agriculture, and more satisfying. J - and D - find their work in creating or improving success of the enterprise, and I revel in the simpler challenge. We completed the Gate house intended for J - and his family, which contains a drawing room and two bedrooms and will give him an independent home, close to work and to the fields. Earlier in the year we also constructed new silos No 7 and 8 with expectations for future harvests.
The harvest this year was a new experience because of rapeseed. It is the first crop to mature, ready to be cut at beginning of July, after flowering a brilliant yellow in May - a plant tall and strong, producing black seed, less than pepper corn in size - which has to be collected dry, below 10 % moisture and treated gently. The produce is contracted with government central purchasing agency and taken to the depot, straight from the field, where long queues of farmersʼ trailers wait for hours to be weighed and unloaded. It is a seed we would not dare to put in silos, because it heats up, dangerously and very fast. Being without sufficient number of trailers, to take it to the depot ten kilometres away we emptied it on concrete in the barn, but within hours it begun to turn with heat, so we moved it from one place to another to air it - some was lost, boiled up and turning white and slushy. We worked throughout the night and saved most. Experience of queuing to sell oneʼs crop, moving slowly forward, one trailer at a time, is something which fortunately we do not experience with wheat or barley, which go straight into silos, and our sympathy goes out to farmers for whom it is an inimical part of their harvest. The rest of the harvest was much improved on previous year, averaging over-all 4 tons per hectare.
The harvesting clashes with the work needed to be done at the same time for the next year. To deal with new conditions we bought second hand a Czech three blade reversible plough, which cuts 95 centimetre width, less than our straight four, and therefore is wasteful on oil, but helps by changing the nature of ploughing. Man has been ploughing for nearly 10,000 years, since the first farming started in Sumeria in the valleys of Tigris and Euphrates. The reliable fixed blade he used, turned the soil - to one side when going forward in a field - whilst laying it in opposite direction when coming back; he had to work from two sides of the field to meet in the middle, with a furrow, or an overlay, depending how he started. The inconvenience of either features for later sowing is increased by the wasteful walk-back every time, between each course which was part of ploughing for thousands of years. Large fields had to be divided into ʻlaysʼ to reduce the walk-back, with more numerous furrow-overlays; the work was especially difficult in hilly regions, when one turn laid the cut down and the other up the hill-side.
The reversible plough is the modern solution, it lays one way on going, and same way on return, by reversing the blades, which become symmetrical in work. This enables the farmer to plough across the field starting from the side of his choice, without the walk-backs and eliminating furrows and overlays, He takes his age old skill and adventures it on a fresh path: it needs a mental effort to adjust a cultural view of his ancient art to a new hydraulic weapon - perhaps like changing from a short to a Crecy long bow. The new ploughing, changing farmerʼs ten-thousand year skill, was a breakthrough for us, guided by a coincident technical revolution, with the Czech hydraulics and a Belarus tractor (there are others, of course!), we ploughed the fields this way: slow, but more convenient and with a new vision.
One thought: “a need for security or identity is the explanation of minority groups forming within a society, they are often ostracised or vice-versa, act aggressively; if a society has a strong centre these divisions become ʻcultural pridesʼ as they should be, but - when centre of cohesion is lacking, the groups become violent - you will not cure it, by stamping on them, only by making a healthier society: forget limiting tickets to football hooligans”.
Or another: “it is sad to think that the inherent British error of always being late politically may have saved Europe, as she came in too late to destroy it”.
Or another: “it is amazing how quite ordinary people, like Doreen and Neville Lawrence, become great personalities with power to communicate, and inner resources which would never have been realized but for ʻthat happeningʼ - it shows what people are capable of: and what a society should offer to create an environment where people can realize themselves to the full - without recourse to tragedy”.
Or another: “the Americans have developed a taste for killing Europeans - the apology for Kosovo will be delayed by some 15 years: perhaps the time has come for Europeans to have their own Monroe Doctrine, from the Urals to Cape St Vincent”.
Or another: “one of the ways to revolutionise Britain is to put the professionals in charge as they are on the Conti- nent. This can be done by giving statutory responsibilities - as only a doctor can prescribe medicines - so an architect, an engineer, or a teacher, or geographer, or other professionals should be given appropriate responsibilities. This would take away power from politicians or ʻspeculator businessmenʼ who failed the country so badly”.
Or another: “when you look at the charming sophisticated people, I saw yesterday on station ʻXʼ while returning from Bletchley, you are stupefied to think: how can they be so wrong and short-sighted (or timid), not to correct the downward trend in UK”.
Or another:” Husseinʼs death reveals the hold he had on his people. Is it given to such a man to expand himself as a person because of the involvement with him of the people?”
