I always feel bad for the American band Green Day because of their song Wake Me Up When September Ends because if they’ve been asleep for the entire month they’ve missed out on the bonniest time of year.
Along with springtime it’s my favourite time of year and after a wet, turbulent and very humid August, September has brought us some drier, hazy and much needed harvest days.
I write this article smugly listening to the rain hitting the windows, comforted by the fact that both cereal harvest and second cut silage are all safely gathered in.
It also appears that the “tattie boys” (and girls) are making good progress – as any commuter on the Coupar Angus to Forfar road will tell you!
However being slowed up by a tractor and bogie for five minutes is a small price to pay for a year’s supply of spuds on your plate, and I hope the public realise this.
Yesterday I was following a tractor/trailer with tattie boxes on, and since it was wet the farmer had tied a tarpaulin cover on the boxes but the string had undone at the back and the wind was making the cover flap about which made the trailer look as if it had a cape on – a bit like the one batman wears.
I was going to film it with my phone and put a tweet out saying: “This fermer’s a real hero – even his bogie wears a cape!”
But I decided against it on two counts, one being it was a local farmer and I wouldn’t want to display his number plate for the world to see and the other reason being that the local constabulary would soon have figured out I was using my phone whilst driving. It did look funny though.
Observing this year’s tattie hairst from afar, I see that self-propelled harvesters have certainly become the latest fashion accessory, a far cry from the single-row Ransome faun digger that we used to have.
I can’t help marvelling at how impressive they are. For a start the driver won’t go home with a sore neck at night, and having the bulker on them means that the trailer can shoot off at the end of the drill and line up in the next one ready to go, thus saving valuable time.
The race between machinery manufacturers for improving efficiency and production certainly isn’t slowing down.
I see John Deere have launched a combine harvester called the X9. With a name like that I would expect it to fly! It sounds like something the Soviets developed secretly in the early Eighties, before Clint Eastwood was sent in to steal the prototype for the Americans.
It can harvest an impressive 100 tonnes an hour and comes with an £850,000 price tag – just outside my price range. But I’ll look forward to buying one of these machines at a farm sale in 40 years’ time then driving it home with a soft back tyre whilst holding the door shut with some baler twine.
I did actually buy a combine this year though, a 38-year-old Class Dominator 96. Now, I can hear you all chuckling away to yourselves, but it was still technically an ‘upgrade’ on the now ‘retired’ Senator 60 which was six years older.
However this machine is not like a fine wine; it does not improve with age. She was in decent condition though, and cost reasonable money, and she only needs to work for four or five days of the year. How difficult can that be?
It’s funny to think that when this combine had her first harvest in August 1982, Dexy’s Midnight Runners were number one in the charts with Come On Eileen, Prince William was still in nappies and Jim McLean’s Dundee United were kicking off their winning league campaign.
We are also very lucky in this part of Perthshire to have Wilks Brothers, the agricultural engineers just over the Tay at Murthly.
Eric and the team have a lifetime’s experience on these green machines and spend the whole of autumn keeping them all going through harvest. In fact these lads must be responsible for half the harvest in Strathtay… around here they are the fourth emergency service!
Of course harvest is a team event. Girlfriend Morag is there for moral support and sandwiches, and mum is on hand to go for spare parts.
Mum at harvest is like one of those people that stand in the support boat whilst someone swims the Channel: I often hear her talking to the old combine shouting “come on you can do it”!
On the last day I knew the rain was coming so I drafted in an auld college pal and my 15-year-old nephew to help cart off.
With a few acres still to go, a nagging hydraulic oil leak got worse but we just kept her topped up every few rounds.
As she came up the last bout she had lost more oil that the Exxon Valdez, and I often think there should have been a wee crowd clapping as she did the last 15 yards and limped over the finish line.
There was great relief, and as we had a few beers at tea afterwards, the craic was good.
But the most warming thing was having my nephew Finlay helping at the harvest – something I and his gran were immensely proud of. Here’s hoping for many more.
