After the Storm

Perhaps it's tempting fate to say it, but we've been quite lucky, while the rest of the country has seen hurricane force winds and torrential rain, we've just had a bit of a storm.

Even so there is a bit of damage, on a bright breezy Sunday morning I found this fallen willow, full of catkins, blocking Rake Lane.

Fallen Willow, Rake Lane (click to enlarge)

A little further up Rake Lane a hawthorn has bitten the dust.

A Hawthorn bites the dust, Rake Lane (click to enlarge)

Moving further up into the field next to the A64 the mature ash in the cattle pen has snapped and lies in ruin across the broken top rails of the pen.

Broken Ash (click to enlarge)

It's sad to see established trees go and we should appreciate the ones we have left, here fresh spring sunlight picks up the subtle red and green tones of bark and algae and near Keeper's Cottage conifer trunks lurk in dark green gloom.

Study in colour and shade (click to enlarge)

Conifer trunks (click to enlarge)

Here some of the smaller trees have been thinned out and snowdrops are pushing up around the fallen trunks.

Snowdrops promise spring - I (click to enlarge)

Snowdrops - II (click to enlarge)

 Snowdrops are everywhere now, this carpet of white is next to the track that winds up the hillside track back to Herbies:

Snowdrops - III (click to enlarge)

Spring is on its way! Hooray!



All material © Philip Stone 2014

Planting by Numbers

The next time you buy some oven chips, think about this : they were probably planted with the help of robots controlled from outer space. No, I've not gone mad, it's a fact.

On Monday evening I walked over to the fields to the west of Rake Lane because Richard Wainwright, the farm manager, had told me that they were starting to plant potatoes and there would be some big machines to see and photograph.

The first thing that caught my eye was a cluster of tractors and machines in the corner of the field and
a telehandler busily loading seed potatoes into a hopper on back of a tractor.



A Manitou telehandler loads seed potatoes for planting (click to enlarge)

But where was the robot?

Far off down the hill, there was a yellow tractor running on caterpillar tracks, it was dragging a large
cultivator and heaping the soil up into three huge ridges. Curiously it was cultivating every other row,
leaving a gap of uncultivated soil and then at the end of each row, turning back and cultivating the
clear strip.

CAT Challenger - precision ploughing (click to enlarge)

As I took photographs the tractor drove to the end of the row and stopped and the driver, a softly spoken young man called Carl got out.



CAT Challenger with GPS controlled steering (click to enlarge)

He explained that the tractor, a Cat Challenger, weighing over thirteen metric tonnes, was steered by a computer system that in turn figured out where it was using GPS (Global Positioning System).

So this was the robot.


GPS Relay (click to enlarge)

A relay station, on a tripod in the corner of the field, picks up the location signals from GPS satellites, orbiting the earth. These signals are relayed to a computer steering system in the cab, Carl then has to cultivate his first two swathes of earth and mark way points on them using the computer system.

Once this is done the computer knows where all the other furrow need to be cultivated and so it takes over and drives the tractor to replicate those first two swathes all over the field, the only intervention needed is to disengage the automatic steering at the end of the row, lift the cultivator and turn the tractor. Once the computer detects that the tractor is at the start of a new row it takes over again.

Carl explained that the system is accurate to within a few centimetres and so reliable that he could start the rows at random all over the field and they would match up perfectly without any gaps or overlaps.




Inside the CAT - lots of controls in the cab. No, I don't understand it either (click to enlarge)



Inside the CAT - rear view from the cab (click to enlarge)

But I was still confused about all the other equipment, so Richard explained the whole process to me. The objective of the exercise is to make ridges of stone-free and clod-free soil for planting potatoes, just as you'd want to do in your own potato patch at home.

The GPS tractor makes a first pass, cultivating the soil and heaping it up into large ridges. Then
tractors equipped with de-stoners lift the soil and riddle out the stones and clumps. The soil is deposited back to make a broad ridge of fine soil and the stones and clumps are dropped into the grooves between the ridges. When the de-stoners turn round and come back up the next row these stones will be squashed back into the soil by the tractors wheels so they can't damage the machinery when the potatoes are harvested.



Finally - a potato planter in action (click to enlarge)

Finally, the potatoes can be planted: another tractor runs down the ridges and inserts the potatoes along with suitable fertiliser and pesticides and reshapes the rows.

End of the day (click to enlarge)

By now the light was starting to fade and photography and potato planting was was becoming tricky. Carl had already driven the CAT off,  so I thanked Richard and headed back home, walking between rows of potatoes made by a robot controlled by satellites from outer space. Oven chips will never seem the same again.

Many thanks to Richard and Carl kindly for making the time to explain the basics of farming to your agriculturally clueless editor.

All material © Michelle Stone 2013

Field of Beans

The Truth Is Out There (John Deere sowing field beans by night, click to enlarge)

It's Friday the 12th of April, the time is about 9pm at night, the sky is dark and the countryside should be quiet. But there's a strange glow in the fields and a mechanical whirring sound fills the air. I step through a gap in the hedge and silhouetted against a distant blaze of lights I can see a spidery machine disappearing slowly into the distance. Has it finally happened? Have aliens come to earth at last? And have they quite rightly chosen Huttons Ambo as their first point of contact?




If John Deere made spacecraft... (click to enlarge)

 No. Actually the noise is a John Deere tractor pulling an Accord seed drill - Richard Wainwright, farm manager, is sowing beans and making use of every available moment of the fine weather.




The John Deere comes back to the barn at the end of the day (click to enlarge)







Refuelling for another busy day tomorrow (click to enlarge)

 Later on I caught up with Richard as he refuelled the tractor ready for duty the next day. It's been a tough year for farming (when isn't it?), the soil has been wet and heavy and difficult to work and the cold winds have held back germination of the crops that have already been sown. At least the winds have dried the surface soil and now that the weather is relatively fine every opportunity is taken to get crops sown.



John Deere 7530 Premium, soil compactor and Accord seed drill (click to enlarge)




Accord pneumatic seed drill (click to enlarge)



The next day Richard was at it again, sowing more beans in Coach Field and in the field behind Valley View. The tractor is equipped with double wheels to spread the load, the tractor alone weighs just under seven tonnes before being loaded with the seed drill. To make sure the surface is evenly compacted Richard runs a soil compactor on the front of the tractor.

A Field Bean (click to enlarge)

 This is the little chap that all the fuss is about: a field bean. These beans will be grown for animal feed, but higher quality beans may be exported to the Middle East.

The end product - a field of beans (click to enlarge)

The field sown, Richard drove the tractor off back down to the Grange Farm, the drill has to be reloaded and he still has to sow the fields over at Hutton Hill. A farmer's work is never done.


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All material © Michelle Stone 2013

A Little Light at the End of the Tunnel

Branches & Cloud, Low Hutton

You don't need me to tell you that it's been a long cold winter and that Spring is late coming, but as the clocks go forward and we get an extra hour of light in the evening the elements have relented and given us a sunny weekend to keep our spirits up.

Barns & Telephone Box, Low Hutton

And we are turning the corner: the world of wildlife is waking up, the other day a hedgehog wandered through our garden and yesterday on the lane I stood not four feet from a tiny wren busily foraging in the hedgerow. Today long tailed tits were ducking in and out of the bare hedges and chattering to each other.

Ploughed Field & Branches

Listen carefully and you'll hear the woodpeckers hammering away in the woods and soon, if we're lucky, the cuckoo will make its return.

 

Crocus, Low Hutton

 

Chins Up!

All material © Philip Stone 2013

St Mark's Flies

St Mark's Flies

Near the end of April and the beginning of May, on those warm sunny days that punctuate spring showers, the country air is filled with large glossy black flies. These ferocious looking creatures drift in the air above the hedgerows, trailing their legs in a most menacing manner but zooming off suddenly if approached. In fact they are completely harmless and simply looking for a mate.

AKA Hawthorn Flies

They are known variously as St Mark’s Flies – because they emerge around St Marks Day (April 25th) – or as Hawthorn Flies because of their predilection to group over hawthorn bushes in hedgerows.

This year (2012) they must have had a hard time of it, for despite fine weather around Easter, the last several weeks have seen rain of almost biblical proportions and they have had few sunny days to fly and breed. Like mayflies, their adult lives are short, they will survive only a couple of weeks and will die soon after mating, however their eggs will hatch into grubs which live in the soil for years, until they emerge again in early May for a few brief days in the sun.

All material © Philip Stone 2012