elf and safety

...with some of our visitors gone we decided to have a more relaxing day of local walks in the olive groves. This last winter and spring has been one of the wettest and coolest in our neighbours' memories, all of which has seriously delayed the year's first hay cut. The arrival of a few days reliable sunshine has galvanised the locals into action and the air has been full of the sound of meadows being cut. In Italy, the wild-flower hay is grown on the terraces beneath the olive trees and is cut by hand. Traditional scythes have mostly been replaced by what might loosely be described as strimmers but, instead of nicely guarded nylon cord, the head of their tools is a rapidly revolving steel disc that is very similar to a circular saw. Amazingly, this is completely unguarded and they are working on steep uneven slopes!

So, instead of blipping a lovely blue butterfly or any of the other colourful images that I captured today, I felt I just had to use an image of one of these lethal machines...