Last of the Apley Estate 2014 harvest

Every year, I mean to make a photographic record of the fields changing, but I’ve got enough shots to make it complete enough.

As soon as I got back on Friday, I exercised 1 of our children’s ponies & captured on film one of the last fields to be harvested on the Apley Estate. Click here to see the combine working late, making the most of the required warm & dry weather conditions.

I did the same 24 hrs later, to find they’d already baled the same field. Click here to see the change.

These are somehow magic evenings for me: I adore the sunshine & heat, especially warm evenings, when it stays above 15 deg beyond midnight. The harvest is a culmination & celebration in the farming year.  And of course galloping round stubble fields is just huge fun.

These films & photos can now represent the beginning of the farming year which I’ll endeavour (with more intent !) to record on camera.