Winter blossoms
When afternoon chores were finished on Saturday I drove south to a large field that had attracted my attention a few days earlier. There was an old implement shed standing several hundred yards from the edge of the field, on the side closest to the road … it was surrounded by trees and looked much like another shed I had photographed not too long ago. Mowing hay fields can be a tricky business. Most cutting implements are offset (to the right, as you look ahead) and opening a field requires that you drive counter-clockwise around it. This way the cutter is up against the outer edge of the crop. If you were to drive clockwise your tractor would be riding over good ground. Once you’ve opened enough room for the tractor to pass you turn around and finish cutting the field by driving clockwise (the tractor is now passing over forage that has been cut and the implement is moving into uncut ground on your right). You have to be very careful, when opening a field, to get right up to its edge. If you don’t you’ll find that it’s even more difficult to do so the following year because whatever is growing outside of the field, a wood for example, will encroach and if you’re not careful you can lose inches of good crop ground every year. Cutting or plowing around woods can be difficult but cutting around buildings can be even more so and is why large trees are often seen growing in the middle of pastures or crop land … right up against sheds or other structures. A knowledge of secondary succession tells us that as time passes grasses will give way to weeds, in these hard-to-reach and uncut areas, which will give way to shrubs, small tress, and then large, and very much larger trees. I drove to the aforementioned field with my super-wide angle lens and, in my excitement, ignored everything I knew about the convergence of parallel lines and not one of the images was any good. On my way off the field however there was a wheel rake which had been parked for the season – I stopped to take a few pictures. I desaturated two of these – and Joanna said that they looked like winter flowers – I agreed.
I love the extreme mechanical genius of farm machinery and my sense is that agricultural engineering (prior to it’s current dependency on chemistry as the basic field) was full of incredibly imaginative minds matched by highly skilled hands. This kind of machine in the field is a kind of huge Swiss clock running on friction and the fact that everything was measured properly. I remain deeply impressed by hay baling equipment, especially the knot tying mechanism on the baler … who the heck first started working on that idea?!? Great images, Dave … like Japanese line drawings:-)
Yup … you got it. I once determined to turn the fly wheel by hand … trip the knotter … and watch all of the gears, fingers, and flippy-things tie the knot in slow motion. Once you do this the mechanism makes pretty good sense. Now, having said that … how some folks got together and figured out how to build such a thing in the first place is absolutely beyond me. I suppose they said that about the wheel too! And that crazy thing called the air foil! Perhaps we should write a book together … in our spare time! Thanks for commenting in the brief moments of spare time you have. Seeing your Gravatar always puts a smile on my face. D
Joanna is right. They are winter flowers! Wonderful photographs!
Thanks George … how are you today … it’s 15 degree here and I wish I were in Texas! Just for the day however … it’s supposed to be warmer here tomorrow! D
I thought at first they were taken against a backdrop of snow, hence the stark contrast. I love how you used the desaturation tool to edit them to such delicate art forms. Well done. I have to re-read the mowing directions and get a pencil and paper out to make the tracings to help me better understand the pattern! It’s fascinating and I can’t believe I’ve never realized it! That’s because I have always been the one on the ground, throwing bales, never got to drive the big tractors! Oh well, I’ll know now when I get my chance at the wheel one of these days! Thank you for interesting and fascinating post and photos, as always!
You should absolutely determine to take the wheel next summer. Tell your operator to take a break and that’ll be your opportunity to take the controls! Although I always do the cutting and the raking here Joanna has always been the one to run the balers … she’s much more methodical and thorough than I when it comes to collecting windrows in an orderly way. She also tends to be much more reasonable about all things … she sees to it that we take water breaks at the appropriate times and that we’ve got sunscreen and wide-brimmed hats on for the duration. Once you’ve got cutting figured out you can move along to raking. We use a side-delivery rake which requires that your first circuit be counter clockwise (pushing your first windrow to the left on top of the second) and that all subsequent circuits be clockwise … pushing individual rows one-row-out (save the first which is a double). I know it sounds a bit crazy but it’s pretty easy once you realize what has to happen and how to do it. Everything is a bit easier if your crop is small and you can double-up the rows. Perhaps Pairodox and Wing and a Prayer should open a school for wanna-be farmers? What do you say? D
We’d have so many enthusiastic students! The nicest folks, too! Truly, I have monthly visitors that want to learn more … there is a market for it! Thanks for the tutorial – this is great. Now it’s on my 2013 bucket list!
Ha! You’re more than half serious! If you ever need a consulting farmer … let me know. D
I think they look like fans!
Yeah I suppose – I would have thought ‘egg beaters’. It’s really fun to watch them working during hay season. They don’t spin a rapidly as you might think .. just kind of a leisurely rotation. D