The Ferguson System

July 30th 2016 will go down as one of my most amazing memories. A cornucopia of Massey Fergusons beneath the Coventry ring-road is most definitely a first and possibly a sight that will never happen again.  I volunteered myself to head off at 5am on a Saturday morning to record a short report for Radio 4's Farming Today (of which I'm still trying to find a farmer who listens at 05.45 each weekday morning). Even though it was a Saturday, as a Massey fan myself it was a simple calculation, to go or not to go. I arrived at 8am.

 

 

The drive up the A46 was the beginning of my own journey, coming up behind a low-loader carrying three vintage Massey's near Evesham, that vision to be replaced by a convoy of 8 Massey's on the three lane highway just south of Coventry, amber flashing warning lights ablaze. Terrific. As was the sight as I peered down from the elevated section of the ring-road. Even as early as 8am, more than 20 Massey's and Fergies were assembling off the back of low loaders, in preparation for today's main event. And that main event was wonderfully named 70 at 70, a celebration the 70th anniversary of the Ferguson TE20 tractor being produced at Coventry's Banner Lane works, once Europe's largest tractor factory. Sadly this closed in 2002, Massey's are now manufactured in Beauvais in France thanks to huge resistance to keep Massey production in the UK by the French government. The site is now a  housing estate.

 

More than half a million Ferguson TE20's were produced over the decade they were in production before their replacement with the Massey Ferguson 35 following the merger of Massey-Harris and Ferguson. Better known as 'The Little Grey Fergie' these machines did arguably more than any other aspect of agriculture to modernise farming and make it more efficient, a dream of their founder Harry Ferguson. Harry Ferguson's dream was to feed the world with efficiently produced food. Beginning in 1919 he worked for over a decade to perfect his 'Ferguson System' which remained in production for decades before being replaced with modern electronics in the 1990's. However even today his 3 point linkage system is used on most tractors to attach mounted implements. It is a remarkable achievement that 70 years later, many of these simple 20hp tractors are still working.

 

This event organised by the Coventry Transport Museum was to celebrate the seventy years since the TE20 was produced but tractors from all ages were part of the day, including this flagship of the current range the mighty 400hp MF8737. Yes it is black, and that was a sprayed this colour in celebration of Coventy's bid as a City of Culture, and will remain that colour as it travels about on the exhibition circuit.

 

A huge difference from the oldest machine in the parade this 1947 TE20 driven by the wonderfully jolly Mr Dodds who was second in the convoy after the 8737.



 

So to the parade. At 09.45 we were off (Mr Campbell Scott head of Massey PR on a blue number) I'd been promised a seat on one of the MF's in the parade but as it happened seats were in very short supply, so I bagged a lift in the Coventry Transport Museum's land rover making up the rear. Not as atmospheric, but a lot more comfortable.

 

We chugged through the streets of Coventry, quite slowly, as can be seen from inside the land rover.

 

Before amassing at the Millennium Square for the official presentation and cake cutting. 

 

It was amazing to see so many members of the public taking photographs along the route. As Will my driver from the Museum said, the tractor exhibits at the Museum are a huge hit especially with children, more so than cars apparently.

 

Obviously there for work I did a number of quick interviews with some people there but the most interesting was with a David Walker, the chap in the above image with the baseball cap on. He worked for Massey's for 21 years as a technical writer and was involved with the 100 series right through to the 3900 series.in the late 1980's. Now retired he has written a very readable autobiography of his life. Sometimes these niche autobiographies can be a dry read. Not so Mr Walkers who has the wonderful ability to lift a technical career into a readable gambol through the world of agricultural engineering. He was as entertaining on air too.

 

 

Like all good things the day came to an end, for me at least. Switching off the microphone I metamorphosed into a member of the public for half an hour, strolling around the now static displays.

 

This beautifully preserved and still working MF135 had to be photographed by me as this was the model of tractor I first drove, in fact the first vehicle I ever drove at the age of 14 or so. This model even has the ploughing light on the back which I remember so well. I caught up with its owner later, from Newbury in Berkshire and he explained that it has been restored but like all tractors needs to be worked regularly so continues to do light work around his mostly sheep farm.

 

I took this image inside a cabbed 135, just for nostalgia reasons....its all so familiar even 30 years after I last drove one.

Blimey.........it's August already......gulp !!!

Well I notice it has been months and months since I have daned to post on the blog.....time and tide has no respect for a blogger. But today, I have time for a photo journey over the last few weeks as I have crossed England in the pursuit of the mighty airwaves.

June saw me on the Farne Islands. A fabulous day although we had to get off pretty sharpish as the wind picked up and we were in for a choppy return to the mainland.

The view from the hotel in Bamburgh wasn't bad either!

Nor the sunset on the causeway at Holy Island

And apparently there is a roseate turn in the middle of the arctic terns at the Long Nanny site up there.

further south I popped into Weardale for a botanical foray into the vampires of that dale

Later in June I popped up to Ingleborough to run about on slippy clints and deep grykes in limestone pavement country.

While in mid June we both managed to snatch a long weekend in Boscastle in Cornwall

The famous Valency river which although tranquil this visit, flooded Boscastle in 2004

The beaches of St Ives were stunning in 50mph winds but blue blue skies

The waves were therefore quite impressive around St Ives and seem to have washed up this mermaid cum seal on the rocks..........

July saw me back in Yorkshire, this time on Malham Tarn taking part in a research project to find Britain's rarest caddisfly, which is only found here.

Being given permission to be out in the Tarn at night with a light trap was just magical, as thousands and thousands of grouse wing caddisfly emerged from the lake all around us.

And I even managed to get to Newcastle to record the kittiwakes on the Tyne Bridge, or as our lovely Geordie contributor said.... kitti waaaaarks

Well just a flavour of where I've been, and why sadly the blog took second place to being out there and doing it as they say.

And so, if you want to hear more; the following Living Worlds are coming up on Radio 4;

Puffin - Broadcast last Sunday

Limestone Pavements - 07.08.11

Vampire Plants - 14.08.11

Caddisfly - 21.08.11

Go on......have a peek................ http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007qyz3

Memory like a sieve..

Back in the dark days of February, I posted a visit to see brown hares in Hertfordshire and I promised to let everyone know when it was to be broadcast. Well I forgot didn't I, and it went out on February 27th, at a time when I know you'll all be up and about, 06.35hrs on a Sunday.

Well all is not lost, as this programme, and others from the series, is available on the BBC i-player - Living World Hares, made by my colleague.

I only say this as I'm now enmeshed in the research for the next round of The Living World and it is the part of the job I love, hunting down new stories and new species which would make a good programme. I can't divulge obviously what is in the pipeline for the next 18 programmes but we'll be recording again soon, hopefully with some blog postings if I can, depending on the sensitivity of the location or subject.

I hope in the meantime you'll enjoy this photo of Molly the cat, which has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with this posting, but this morning I picked up a new cat flap for her at Argos. It's a rock and roll life in the media, I tell you!

Lament for the Dorsets

I was asked to listen to some 1960's recordings made of bird calls in Canada. To do this we had to dust off the reel to reel machine which has been languishing on the top shelf of the store cupboard for years.

Listening to the recordings made 40+ years ago it took my mind back to my younger days when my parents had a reel to reel machine and I'd watch the tape on the spools increase or decrease depending on which direction they were going. Somewhere in the recesses of a box at home are recordings my parents made on their machine of Christmas parties and so on. My father was a great one for recording events on tape. I must retrieve them and find out who or what is on there. Many of those I guess will sadly be long gone to the great audio machine in the sky.

I love old technology and using this machine at work was joy. All moving parts, easy to work out how it works, no manuals or complicated handsets, or Windows XP programmes to crash. Just a mechanical machine, some spools and a tape. Not all of the past was good, but I think we have lost something of the simplicity of life with the arrival of ever more complex computers. I love computers, after all I'd not be able to blog if we still had pencil and paper, but just now and again using something which is simple is a joy.

Speaking of the past, while researching subjects on Greenland this week I discovered, there is a culture called the Dorset culture. The Dorset culture (also called the Dorset Tradition) was a Paleo-Eskimo culture around (500 BC - AD 1500) that preceded the Inuit in North America. and why were they called the Dorset culture? Well in 1925 they were discovered in Cape Dorset, Nunavut, by anthropologist Diamond Jenness.

And so as this is a blog about Wessex, an area Thomas Hardy created as he lamented the passing of the old ways, I found this by a Canadian poet, the late Al Purdy who wrote a poem entitled "Lament for the Dorsets" This poem laments the loss of their culture and describes them and their end. Need I say more.

Lament for the Dorsets (Eskimos extinct in the 14th century A.D.)

Animal bones and some mossy tent rings

scrapers and spearheads carved ivory swans

all that remains of the Dorset giants

who drove the Vikings back to their long ships

talked to spirits of earth and water–

a picture of terrifying old men

so large they broke the backs of bears

so small they lurk behind bone rafters

in the brain of modern hunters

among good thoughts and warm things

and come out at night

to spit on the stars

The big men with clever fingers

who had no dogs and hauled their sleds

over the frozen northern oceans

awkward giants..........................killers of seal

they couldn’t compete with the little men

who came from the west with dogs

Or else in a warm climatic cycle

The seals went back to cold waters

and the puzzled Dorsets scratched their heads

with hairy thumbs around 1350 A.D.

– couldn’t figure it out

went around saying to each other

plaintively..............

'What’s wrong? What happened?..............

Where are the seals gone?’

And died

Twentieth century people

apartment dwellers

executives of neon death

warmakers with things that explode

– they have never imagined us in their future

how could we imagine them in the past

squatting among the moving glaciers

six hundred years ago

with glowing lamps?

As remote or nearly

as the trilobites and swamps

when coal became

or the last great reptile hissed

at a mammal the size of a mouse

that squeaked and fled

Did they realize at all

what was happening to them?

Some old hunter with one lame leg

a bear had chewed

Sitting in a caribou skin tent– the last Dorset?

Let’s say his name was Kudluk

carving 2-inch ivory swans

for a dead grand-daughter

taking them out of his mind

the places in his mind

where pictures are

He selects a sharp stone tool

to gouge a parallel pattern of lines

on both sides of the swan

holding it with his left hand

bearing down and transmitting

his body’s weight

from brain to arm and right hand

and one of his thoughts turns to ivory

The carving is laid aside

in beginning darkness

at the end of hunger

after a while wind

blows down the tent and snow

begins to cover him

After 600 years

the ivory though

is still warm

© Al Purdy, 2000

The Potter Wasp, the Walk and the Cathedral....

Last Thursday found me in Devon. I had an early start down there to record a Living World programme for Radio 4 on the Potter Wasp, Eumenes coarctatus. Not many people know that in Britain there are over 6,500 species of wasp. We all know the common wasp, the one which pinches our jam and drinks our cider. But those social wasps number but a few species, of which the wonderful Hornet is the biggest in Britain.

However the vast majority of the wasps in Britain are solitary wasps, who species number in their thousands, with probably hundreds more yet to be discovered. It is of this group that the Potter or Mason wasps belong and in Britain we only have one true pot making wasp.

These potter wasps are found only along the southern most counties of England, principally on Lowland Heath, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex. They have a fascinating biology, which at this time of the year sees them producing wonderfully delicate pots. The photograph above is a potter wasp quarry. It doesn't look much, but from here the female potter wasp gathers a tiny amount of wet sandy clay and flies to a site 60 or more meters away to make its pot.

And there it is. I've always loved social wasps for the wonderful work they do in the garden eradicating pests, plus their extraordinary ability to produce fantastic paper nests. But having now made a programme about solitary wasps I'm hooked. Just look at that pot. The sheer effort the female goes into the construction of this pot, in only a few hours, is staggering. Once completed, the wasp fills it with paralysed caterpillars, deposits a single egg and seals the pot. The egg will hatch and the larvae overwinters inside the pot, munching its way through the still paralysed caterpillars. In the spring the wasp emerges and the cycle begins all over again. Nature at this micro level is absolutely fascinating.

Normally only one pot is made in a chosen location, but here we have two joined together, and up to 7 pots have been recorded. The photographs above were taken by me on location. However none of this would have been possible without the dedication of local naturalist John Walters. I urge you to visit his website here.

It has taken John over 4 years to get to the stage where he can find and record the biology of potter wasp pot creation. The 2 photographs below were taken by John earlier this month and well what can I say, is this not just a remarkable sight?

We'll broadcast this programme later in the autumn, and I hope that those of you who listen will be as enthralled as I was with this little solitary wasp on a Devonian gorse bush.

While there, we also went to a common wasp nest in a hole in the ground (there is a wasp in the hole if you use a magnifying glass)....

... which allowed me to record some much needed wasp buzzing sounds as the drones and workers flew in and out doing their daily chores.

Not the most scientifically-technically competent way of recording wildtrack but the wasps flew happily over the microphone and I got what I wanted......

That was Thursday. As I now spend most of my weekends in Wiltshire, unsurprisingly by Friday evening I could be found recumbent in that fair county. Rested, fed and watered on Saturday we arose and after shopping, went for a long walk in very inclement weather across the Marlborough Downs, Rockley to be precise. It is wonderful up there in storm like weather. A few other hardy souls were braving the elements but pretty much we had it to ourselves, and when a rain band came across, we did have it to ourselves, except for the many hardy corvids who were enjoying the wind along the escarpment.

We walked about 6 or 7 miles from Rockley up to Barbury Castle and back along one of the many trackways in this part of Wiltshire. Highlight being a red kite, just as we got back to the car, quartering the hillside. Definitely a walk to blow the cobwebs off, and provided a fitting prelude to a convivial evening in the Wagon and Horses public house at Beckhampton. Which I discovered during the evening was an inspiration for Charles Dickens.

"It was a comfortable-looking place. There was a strong cheerful light in the bar-window,"

Begins Dickens's description of this handsome stone and thatch 16th-century inn on the Marlborough Downs. Its heyday was as a coaching inn between London and Bath, (hence the name), when waggoners would stop to freshen up and horses would get re-shoed at the inn's smithy. Dickens travelled this way in 1835 and featured it in The Bagman's Story in The Pickwick Papers.


All of which, now brings me to Sunday and a visit to Salisbury. Being left to amuse myself for a few hours, I ventured to the Cathedral to play with my new camera. Which I have to say I'm loving. 2 hours spent in there experimenting, followed by a cup of tea and a cheese scone, is my idea of a good Sunday day out. So what did I get up to then?

I photographed the font using the inside setting. Then I photographed the water cascading off the font using the macro and a forced flash.

Then I played around with the exposure metering to photograph the cedar tree in the quadrangle, from within the cloisters.....

...before trying my hand at the "candle light" setting which I thought worked wonderfully well.

Just before leaving, I tried some more of the auto-functions, and this one, for providing grain to a black and white image, I do like. I do like this effect a lot.

There is just something evocative and textural about black and white photography, and with this grain effect, it just excites me. Later in the afternoon I took 50 or so portrait shots of Julie using the same grain function. Just magical, but the attractive subject through the lens of course helped enormously.

Not all of my photographs over the weekend were artistic. Some have provided deep rooted trauma in the beholder.......

There's nothing like a strange shaped root vegetable to get me taking even stranger photographs. I'm not sure which is worse, the shape of the vegetable, or the fact I saw a photo opportunity..........

Busy but enjoyable....

Where on earth does the time go. This time last week I was impersonating a crane and here I am 7 days later and full of busy.

Last weekend was extremely good fun. On Friday night we were recording an "in front of a live audience" down at the Bristol Festival of Nature, the premise being "Biodiversity, the trouble with the word". It was an excellent evening had by all and you can hear the results for the evening tomorrow morning at 11am on Radio 4 or play it again on the BBC i-player here.

That's the commercial break over. Back to the personal stuff. After the event Julie, (who'd come to see this recording), and I pootled back home and sat outside with a bag of chips, some fizzy wine and relaxed the garden on a warm night, while watching bats dive bombing moths over our heads. At one point a fox began to cry too in the fields behind, such an eery sound, but all of this made the perfect end to a busy evening.

Saturday morning though we were both up at the crack of dawn as I'd volunteered to help at the BBC stand at the Festival of Nature, above, in the morning. This photo was taken just before the doors opened and it was the last time the floor was seen for 2 days such was the popularity of the event. People love coming to the BBC tent as we try and allow them access to cameras and so on. I didn't play much part in this event this year other than standing about like a lemon in an official tee shirt and pretending I knew what I was talking about. No that's not me.

Lunchtime came, that was enough for me and so we headed back home and my house martins. When I bought this house in December there was an old martin nest on the apex of the roof. Last week was the first time I'd noticed the nest was occupied, and by Saturday morning, plaintiff cheeping could be heard continuously. I love the fact that my house, just 16 years old, is home to sparrows, starlings and now house martins. I think bats too, as they swoop from the direction of the roof when they first fly in the evening. At the back of the house is a field frequented by foxes and between the field and the house a selection of shrubs which are awash with smaller birds. Yesterday afternoon a female sparrowhawk tried to pick a few of these off, but failed.

But back to Saturday. After a rest, at 5pm we drove to Lyme Regis. I never tire of this place and a stroll along the beach and the Cobb was wonderful. The light was staggering and made the artistic side of me want to stop and stare for a long time.

However we had another aim. Eggardon Hill. Maybe I shouldn't advertise this place, as it is very special to me, as somewhere I've come to for nearly 30 years, and I want to keep it that way. My place and quiet. It has a spiritual quality to it I can't explain. But up there anything seems possible and I'm on top of the world. I was last here for Julie's birthday in March (she was with me) and then we had a sense of something around us as we sat on the hill in the moonlight. I sensed years ago someone standing behind me, but of course there wasn't anyone there when I turned around. But who knows what is going on. Ley lines also cross the fort, which being a fort must have seen many human activities good or bad.

There were however a lot of things around us on Saturday. More tangible things. A herd of frisky bullocks. A conundrum then, we had a picnic. If we sat on the hill fort with the picnic would the bullocks pinch our sarnies? Or worse still, wine. It was too much so we sat just on the other side of the fence and watched the sun set while the night enveloped us both eventually. it's quite something to just sit in the countryside while the sun sets and the moon rises. A lot of noises change from day to night sounds. It's fascinating. But even at 10pm, the skylarks were still singing, 15 minutes after this photo below was taken. Nature doesn't stop for light.

I like this place very much. And on a June evening with not a soul about and then walking back to the car in almost total darkness, with just enough light to pick out pale moths rising from the cow parsley, it was a truly magical experience.

And that finally brings me to a few lines which have inspired me for as long as I can remember, because it is experiencing nature, the countryside and the soul of the environment which has driven me for years. And places like Lyme Regis, Eggardon Hill, Lindisfarne, the Coquet Valley and a whole host of British landscapes are places I'm drawn to time and time again.

The author BB used these few lines taken from a gravestone in the Lake District in the front of all his books. Nothing I've ever read before or since, captures what nature, the profound sense of well being I get while experiencing nature, truly experiencing it, quietly, on my own, or with someone who also understands. So I recommend we all read these words and remember them next time we are in the countryside as we pass by, but once....

The wonder of the world
The beauty and the power,
The shapes of things,
Their colours, lights and shades,
These I saw.
Look ye also while life lasts.

Of Cranes, Dames and .... hanging baskets

Somewhere in the recesses of my mind was a saying. Never work with animals of children. The latter I happily avoid, but the former is pretty much a constant in my life.

Take yesterday. I was up with the larks and heading to WWT's Slimbridge for work to record a piece for Saving Species, on the Great Crane Project, a partnership reintroduction project to bring Cranes back to the Somerset Levels, later this year.

And yes that is me holding that fluffy thing. So I know what is going through your heads. Why are those 4 people dressed like nuclear power station workers. Well it's obvious isn't it? It was Paris Fashion Week!!

Actually we were dressed like this as we were in the Crane School enclosure where the hatched chicks are being carefully raised without any human imprinting prior to being released in August. and below is one of the inmates. Another ahhh cute photo on the blog. And after recording at Slimbridge, we headed down to the Somerset Levels to record their ultimate destination at their release area.

It is such a pleasure to be given access to such projects which aim to bring much needed biodiversity into the British countryside. It's 400 years since Cranes last bred in Britain, but with luck down on the Somerset Levels from this autumn, the plaintiff cry of cranes coming in to roost of an evening will be hard. It's hoped 23 birds will be released this year, with similar numbers in the following 4 years. We'll be back then to record what happens when the birds arrive here....... and no sorry, I can't be more specific as to the location for obvious reasons, sadly, but here's a photo from my Blackberry of a mute swan and cygnets taken yesterday near to the location.

So that was the day job. The weekend job is man of action and intrigue. Or at least that's what I try and think of myself as. Actually what it often is, and I love it, is man of gardening. Saturday was again grass cutting and hedge tidying at a client's of Julie's; but on Sunday after a leisurely morning (we went to the Polly Tea rooms in Marlborough for a scrambled egg breakfast - I love doing that) Julie began on some more hanging baskets for clients.

Now this is where it gets scary...... for you the dear reader. I'd recommend those of you with a nervous disposition, look away now and do not read on further.

Julie is a consummate packer of plants into baskets. All spring she nurtures her plug plants and then in May and June populates wire baskets, such as the half finished one below.

Being a man I thought to myself while watching her from the comfort of a lounger and drinking beer shandy, "that looks simple, I could do this, it can't be that difficult". So I offered to make her a hanging basket for herself, after all after all this hard work nurturing and bringing on her babies (as she calls them), it would be a shame if she didn't have her own basket to admire in the summer sun.

I set to with an unwanted tray of lobelia. Visions throbbed through my mind, a veritable riot of colour, a basket packed with so many plants a cigarette paper wouldn't be able to pass between the foliage. Designers of Chelsea gardens would come knocking at my door for my services. Julie would be mightly impressed and we'd be delighted for months by my creation.

It isn't as easy as it looks.

Many a lobelia clump became detached from it's roots. Not ideal for further growth. The compost kept falling out of the basket when I made the holes for the plants. After half an hour I had more compost and foliage on the lawn than in the basket. I was exhausted. I was frazzled. And very quiet. Julie said she's not seen me this quiet for so long, ever. And in the time it took me to half fill a basket, she had made up 2 baskets. This is too much. I persevered, and as ever when I concentrate hard, my tongue stuck out from my mouth (why do we do this?). Eventually, I'd used up all the lobelia and stood back to marvel at the foliage rich vision I'd produced.

Go on, admit you are absolutely astounded ?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

I'll stick to making radio programmes and cutting grass I think.