Harvest

Lots of pictures today, almost all taken from the track where I take my walks each day. It goes between two fields. This morning one of them was full of potatoes and the other of beans, brown and dried up and withered-looking; but now in the evening both fields are entirely empty, and they’ve even started sowing one with a new crop. Industrial agriculture is nothing if not efficient. In living memory, potatoes used to be picked by hand. It was called tattie howking and those who did it were tattie howkers. A lot of them used to come over from Donegal for the season. Now there are gigantic harvesting machines, with fleets of tractors standing by to take the loads of potatoes from them. Now it’s evening, the bats are out, and it’s time for a cup of tea. The machine in the picture was spraying the ex-bean field with something. I caught it just as it was folding up its long limbs ready to head home for the night.