Tractor heritage, news and features

Joys and pitfalls of country life...

Heston bales, for those who don’t know, are giant size rectangular bales which are equivalent in size to about 12 or 15 small bales. It’s a much cheaper way of buying hay and straw, but if you don’t own a large shed and don’t have the right machinery to lift and carry these heavyweights, then they are an absolute pain to handle. If all you own is a Massey Ferguson 35 then you have to get quite imaginative with your big bale spike in order to move one around with any accuracy. Well I tell a lie, there is a 1953 David Brown, but I’m not even going there, because that just never starts without you having to virtually rebuild it prior to each outing.

So, the reliable little 35 it is. I put my little son in a pushchair to watch, far enough away so that he’s safe, but not so far that he feels left out and throws a toddler dickie fit. Approaching the tractor I’m dismayed to see that the front tyre has gone flat again. Argggh – it has a slow puncture, which is going to have to be pumped up again before I can do anything. I can feel my pulse rate rising already, because when you are doing jobs with a toddler in tow you need to be as quick as possible, because toddlers will only stay still for a certain amount of time, after which they start to become extremely angry.

I search the sheds frantically for a foot pump. Now my partner doesn’t believe in doing anything by hand when you can have a machine that will do it for you, and he seems to have done away with the ancient but reliable foot pump that I once owned. I phone him, and we shout a bit at each other, partly because he can’t hear me over the sound of the tractor, and partly because I’m livid that he’s lost my beloved foot pump and has replaced it with some unpleasant looking contraption that goes on the PTO shaft and pumps the tyres up that way.

I’ve never used this before, but with a great deal of muttering I work it out, and have to admit to myself that it is actually a lot faster than the foot pump, but I won’t tell him that. By now though my son is screaming, not because he’s cold, tired or hungry, but because he’s two and he loves tractors and is furious that I’m with the tractor and he’s sat some distance away strapped in his pushchair, watching, angrily. What should have been a five-minute job has already taken a quarter of an hour and I haven’t even started moving the bale yet.... Ahh, the joys of family life in the glorious countryside....

I blame my parents: they used to multitask like nobody’s business, managing one way or another to get jobs done with up to six children in tow, which makes my efforts look quite pathetic in comparison. A lady in the nearby town one day told me how she and her husband (who were both rather prim) had called around to see my parents one Saturday, back in the early 1970s, and had found them baling hay in the field next to the house.

Noticing that I (then a toddler), was nowhere to be seen the lady asked “Where’s Josephine?”, and was horrified when my mother said “Tied up under the tree with the dog...” and pointed to a shady spot at the edge of the field where the sheepdog and I were sat together, restrained by our respective leads – apparently mine was safely around my waist, not my neck – my parents were nothing if not sensible!

I have no recollection of this event, so it can’t have emotionally scarred me too much. Normal? Me? Yes I’m as normal as the next person...