Aerating Manure
Today I saw a strange machine so I stopped to watch it in action. It went over a pile of manure and flipped it around to get air through the pile to help with the forming of fresh manure to spread on fields shortly.
The Environmentally Unfriendly Farmer
For several months I was not bothered by the noise of an environmentally unfriendly farmer. This farmer loves to use a really old tractor. He loves to turn on the engine and let it run for minutes at a time, without moving. It is running now, as he fills the container with water and pesticide, or whatever he is concocting. A rational human being would cut the engine when a tractor is not moving, to save on fuel, and cost, and to protect the environment.
Not this farmer. This farmer just turns on the engine and lets it run. There is just one case where I have seen an engine running when a vehicle is not moving. Deicing trucks. With a deicing truck you need to keep gallons of water and deicing fluid at a certain temperature so that they are ready for work, on shift.
A tractor is not a deicing truck. A tractor should be like a car, equipped with start/stop technology, so that when the machine is stopped for refuelling and more, the engine does not run. This would save on fuel, air and noise pollution, and maintenance costs.
I often think that it is a shame that we are seeing the emergence of electric trucks and cars, but no one is thinking of electric tractors. Electric tractors would make sense.
Of all the professions that would benefit from environmentalism and environmental consciousness, farmers are it. If global warming leads to drought they lose their crop. If the air is polluted and precipitation is polluted they suffer. If the soil is emptied of nutrients, they suffer. A few seasons ago farmers asked for the right to keep using petrochemicals on their fields and this made no sense. They asked to have the right to destroy their own environment, and when the swiss voters said yes, they said “thank you”.
Of course farmers have to earn their living, but their behaviour is unsustainable, so farming will become harder, rather than easier.
Moving Sugar Beet
For a few weeks you see piles of sugar beet at one end, or another of fields. They stay that way for a while, until it rains for some reason. When it rains those piles of beet are loaded into hundreds of tractor trailer loads and transported to the train yard. The closest to Nyon is in Eysins.
During this time you see two things. Tractors going back and forth from the fields to the loading yard all day long filled with sugar beet and muddy roads. I don’t know whether they wait for the rain to clean the sugar beets before moving them, or if the wagons just happen to be free when the rain falls. In either case the roads around this train stop are covered in mud. It’s dangerous for scooters and bikes at this time of year.
Sometimes you see six to eight tractors with their loads parked with a sheet of paper with “25m3” or some other reading. Apparently the farmers drive their tractors to be unloaded and seem to leave them there either because it’s lunchtime, or because they are waiting for the train or loaders to get more wagons ready.
It would be interesting to pick up one or two sugar beets that fell by the side of the road during transport and try to process the beets to make sugar.
I walk almost every day, and by walking I see the seasonal changes in fields, and the different stages of different plants. We can all get in cars, drive for an hour, and walk for an hour but I prefer to walk locally, to see local seasonal changes, and to avoid spending money on petrol. I also like to reduce my carbon footprint, by driving less.
That’s it for now.
Tudor Monastery Farm – A documentary series
I took advantage of a rainy day to watch a series of documentaries by the BBC called Tudor Monastery Farm. It is a documentary series where three individuals live the life people would have lived at the relevant time period for a year. During this year they try farming, mining, fishing and other skills and crafts from the time.
These are observational and experimental documentaries. They take the observational cinéma verité and Direct cinema approach to factual television production. As you watch these documentaries so you are transported to a different time period.
For years or even decades I thought of this time period as a bad time period. I thought of the church as being an oppressive force. Through this set of documentaries I eventually felt sad that monasteries and the way of life that was illustrated in the series of documentaries was dissolved by Henry the Eighth.
Imagine a monastery with 20,000 sheep, imagine the work that was lost by stone masons as the need for monastery construction and other activities declined.
If you find this documentary series I strongly recommend watching it.