Harvesting in Beverley

Before I knew it, I found myself sat next to farmer, Simon Braun ( once I managed to get up the steps) and watched him harvest one of his paddocks yesterday afternoon. Those machines are amazing! 

Inside the cabin is air-con so it is nice and cool and free of dust. You can see everything that goes on from behind a giant window. The cutters, collectors, spreaders and sifters - not sure they are the right names. Directly behind me is a window where you can see tons of wheat  piling up ready to be transferred into the bins that are carried away by the trucks. 

As I turn around in my seat, this is the view looking through the window behind my head. The harvested wheat filling up so fast..it is almost chockers!

I really wish I had recorded my chat to Chris, who has been a farmer for 40 years and said this was  of the most dense crop he had harvested in a long while. After 3 or 4 lengths of the field he had to off load all the grain. Most impressive was the precision in which Simon controlled the machine to manoeuvre so swiftly around tree stumps or rocks, and even more stunning was to see the whole machine do a 2-point turn in a narrow part of the field. Simon was saying that he has to stay alert for the rocks because that can be a costly repair job. 

He spends up to ten hours a day inside that cabin when the conditions for harvesting are good and he wouldn't want it any other way. He loves the farming life and comes from a generation of farmers in Beverly going back 120 years. He and Jenny live in the original farm home that has been renovated of course. 

Jenny is an artist and a key organiser of the station gallery monthly performances. In the house she had the best art collection I've ever seen in a private home including her own work.  Most of them are not by well -known artists and are average to small in size, but it was the variety of styles and media that I appreciated. I am gifting her one my own found-paper-collages which she was admiring when I first arrived. She doesn't have room for anymore on her walls but I will be proud to have one of mine in her house somewhere, maybe I could suggest pride of place on the back of a 'dunny' door

Now home for a roast dinner thanks to Jenny.

Jenny's gift.