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Bringing in the sheaves

The day they bale the hay always feels strange. I can’t really explain. It’s a cinch a little black and white photo won’t give any sense of it. The color version isn’t much better, either. I need Uncle B’s fancy new lens. Or a drone.

Or 70mm Technicolor!

The actual field is about three times the size of the color pic and the way the bales are dotted along it makes them seem meaningful. Like Stonehenge. The hay, it speaks to me!

They’re baled, not rolled up into those giant rolls, because this was a dwarf wheat crop. I don’t think the stalks are long enough to roll. You can see a few unharvested ears left in front. Didn’t even come to my knee.

Harvest service this Sunday. Here comes Fall!

Comments


Comment from Mark Matis
Time: August 26, 2021, 7:41 pm

If’n that was a “wheat crop”, that ain’t “hay”. Instead, it is straw!


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 26, 2021, 8:36 pm

You’re right. It’s straw.


Comment from Mark Matis
Time: August 26, 2021, 9:20 pm

And straw baling usually is not round.


Comment from Anonymous
Time: August 26, 2021, 9:42 pm

Some new cameras will do panoramic by combining several shots together. When I was in Hawaii I used a freeware program called Hugin to do the same thing on my laptop afterwards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugin_(software)


Comment from Armybrat
Time: August 26, 2021, 11:20 pm

I lived in KS for 20 years. One of the most amazing sights I’ve seen was wheat harvest in western KS. I was headed towards Colorado, driving a 2 lane road. Crested a hill and saw 15 combines harvesting a field, all staggered about a combine length behind each other. Wheat horizon to horizon, the combines had only cut a small part.


Comment from Armybrat
Time: August 26, 2021, 11:25 pm

I’m the above anonymous commenter


Comment from Mitch
Time: August 26, 2021, 11:44 pm

Here comes Fall!

Can’t get here fast enough. I absolutely loathe the summers in Vegas.


Comment from ExpressoBold
Time: August 27, 2021, 1:53 am

From Maryland, USA…

https://blog.homesteadgardens.com/whats-the-difference-between-hay-and-straw

The comment is instructive, too.


Comment from Surly Ermine
Time: August 27, 2021, 11:35 am

We bale straw in the small square bales and stack it on the wagon pulled behind the baler. Dirty, exhausting work but a huge sense of accomplishment when you get done. When the straw and hay is stacked in the barn to the ceiling you know you can make it through another winter.


Comment from peacelovewoodstock
Time: August 27, 2021, 12:29 pm

Are those sheaves? Will someone be bringing them in?


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 27, 2021, 12:36 pm

Anon, I was going to recommend Microsoft’s excellent free panorama maker, Image Composite Editor only to find you can’t download it any more. They’ve retired the project.

Dammit, Microsoft, even when you do something good you can’t do something good.

I use it at work a lot. You can scan big documents in pieces – parts can be upside-down or crooked, program doesn’t care – and it stitches them together flawlessly.


Comment from drew458
Time: August 27, 2021, 12:54 pm

It doesn’t seem properly English if they’re not piled in proper stooks. OTOH, that may only be a hay thing. But it is a farming skill, like scything, probably long lost by now, as machines do the work and the heavy horses are all gone.

I guess they finally got that 3/8 gripley problem sorted. Shout out if you got that reference without looking it up.


Comment from BJM
Time: August 27, 2021, 6:50 pm

Oddly, with a lowering sky, the color photo is more ominous than the B&W. Something doesn’t seem quite right…Ned been there?

BTW- that may be Einkorn wheat.

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