The end of summer

It is interesting to see how rapidly these days the gathering in of the crops is followed without pause by the cultivation and sowing of the same fields. Long gone in general is the old-fashioned notion of the field ploughed during autumn lying fallow over winter and then cultivated and sown the following spring.

Now many of the fields round here are cultivated the same day that the combine finishes its work, the giant baler has baled the straw and the JCBs have loaded the bales into enormous stacks (the bales are big and heavy enough to crush a person and unfortunately sometimes do). Then within a week the high-powered seed drills move at speed across the the same fields and a week after that the crops begin to sprout. It seems extraordinary that these apparently delicate little shoots can survive the frost, snow, icy winds and brief hours of daylight during the winter.

Here's a selection of photos of what's been done over the last few weeks of summer.