When to cut the wheat

It is definitely harvest time. This week we have travelled through the midlands from Coventry up past Fradley Junction and Great Haywood to Stone – villages that probably mean very little to most people but are famous to narrowboaters, as they were developed around the canals in the 18th Century. The countryside is mostly arable farming – wheat, corn, barley and sweetcorn.

I imagine it has been tricky for the farmers to know when to harvest. As you can see from my picture, taken near Nuneaton, the wheat is full and ready for cutting, but if it is damp, the moisture levels are too high and the price the farmer can get comes down. And the weather has been very mixed this week. One minute it is bright sunshine, the next a heavy rainstorm.

So not surprisingly some days the fields have been empty, and other days every piece of farm equipment has been out. On Saturday we moored up near farmland and were woken about 11pm by the bright lights and noise of a combine harvester and associated tractors. I am not complaining. The farmers have to get the crops in whenever they can.

Living on a narrowboat has brought me closer to nature and how the land is used. You can be steering through an industrial cityscape, and round a corner you find the view opening up over fields to distant hills. This week I saw a kingfisher darting between the bushes alongside the boat. Yesterday evening we were “bothered” by two swans tapping on the side hatch to ask for food. It is not a bad way to spend a summer.