Among the fields of barley

When my granny was a girl (I think she was born in 1890) she spent her summer holidays on a farm in Kent. Her father had emigrated to South Africa to start a new life for his wife and daughters, but vanished without trace. Family history says he died in a hotel fire in Johannesburg, but who knows? Anyway, that's by the by. She used to tell us tales of her holidays haymaking, when she carried baskets of lunches out to the farmhands and would ride back to the farm on the wagons of hay that were drawn by horses.

I was reminded of this by the combine harvesters that have been driving down our lane at all hours for the past week; motorisation and headlights mean that there is no 'quiet time'. Make hay while the sun shines - and harvest when you can. Rural life still revolves around the weather, whatever New Labour would have us believe.