season of burning

It's the last of harvest round our way.

What that means is that the wheat and barley stubble left in the paddocks are being burned off. It's the ideal weather for burning paddocks. No wind, air is fresh and dry. The smoke drifts lazily across the plains. It also drifts across the road and in the early, early touches of twilight looks like fog and surprises me every time I come across it.

What also surprises me is potato harvest. Man that takes an age to get done.

Because it's an arable (poncey word for cropping) farming area we have the World Ploughing Competitions coming up in Methven next week.

By hokey the town is full of older couples and the men look they have just stepped off a tractor, which they probably have. There are accents from all over the world. Today after freezing in our cave of an office (seriously it's paining my left leg and I've been on munching pain killers) I went over to the Blue Pub (Methven has two pubs, a blue one and a brown one)

I sat in the sun at that table just by the door there.

I watched the ocker Aussie who served me dodge the wasps crowding around the tables outside - he spun some story about be allergic, I suggested he get stung to entertain me (being charitable is a work in progress I did promise to save him.)

Punters wandered in to buy lunch (pretty pedestrian lunches by the way, I might have to try the Brown Pub next time). There were groups of older people all chattering away in indecipherable accents, excited about ploughing no doubt. What was really cool was that everyone had different accents, so lilting Welsh were talking to Lake Wobegon Minnesotans, flat voweled Aussies were nattering away to nasal Frenchmen - it was great, made me feel like I was in the big city except there was no traffic noise cause there is no traffic unless you count really noisy tractors and harvesters driving down the main street.

Here are the competitors - it's quite exciting you know...

COMPETITORS 2010WORLD PLOUGHING CONTEST
Country/Conventional/Reversible

Australia/Andrian Tilling/Peter Gladwell

Austria/Stefan Esterbauer/Margareta Heigl

Belgium/Tom Smits/Niels Marien

Canada/Greg Timbers/Bert Beijens

Croatia/Marijo Spudic/Tomislav Kuharic

Czech Republic/Vaclav/Milik Ales Maly

Denmark/Niels Balle/Soren Svenningsen

England/Simon Witty/Colin Bowen

Estonia/Kaspar Jarvala/Juri Lai

Finland/Matti Rautiainen/Hannu Alander

France/Bertrand Rott/Fabien Landre

Germany/Stephan Mueller/Heiko Jaeckle

Hungary/Jozsef Nagy

Italy/Domenico Barletta/Michele Falcone

Kenya/Mark Kurui Toroitich/Simon Otidi Oroni

Lithuania/Rimas Kleiva/Kazys Gencius

Macedonia/Stojne Nakovski/Nikolce Talevski

Netherlands/Har Meuwissen/Jack van den Broek

New Zealand/Bruce Redmond/Paul Henson

Northern Ireland/Samuel Gill/Thomas Cochrane

Norway/Jan Erling Aurstad/Harald Bohnsdalen

Republic of Ireland/Willie John Kehoe/Liam O’Driscoll

Russia/Andrey Zhurow/Pavel Saraev

Scotland/Andrew Mitchell Jnr/Andrew Greenhill

Slovac Republic/Daniel Nesticky

Slovenia/Stefan Cigut/Igor Pate

Sweden/Daniel Svensson/Rolf Eliasson

Switzerland/Toni Stadelmann/Peter Ulrich

USA/Gene Gruber/Roger Fourman

Wales/Brenig Bryan/Emrys Owen

See lots of countries and even a girl - she's doing the reversible whatever. That must be in honour of Ginger Rodgers “Sure, he was great but don’t forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did…backwards and in high heels.” - he being Fred Astire.

I wonder if Austrian Margareta will be wearing high heels when she ploughs?