The hay paddocks next door were cut and baled today.This morning the wind rippled through the long grass; by evening only the rough areas remained, the rest razed, pressed into the enormous round bales that have increasingly replaced the traditional lozenges that one person could pick up and throw onto the back of a truck; the giant bales carted away by tractors larger than my kitchen. A couple of kahu cruised the evening sky, perhaps wondering what had so suddenly happened to the land they'd hunted over all year. Farming as an industrial operation; efficient only if you don't consider the cost of making and running the machinery. A necessary evil; the evil of necessity. Someone has to feed the world.
[21 December 2013, Olympus OM-D EM-1, 12-40 mm f2.8 at 12 mm , ISO 100, 1/100 at f11]
All content © 2013 Pete McGregor
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5 comments:
The round bales are getting increasingly common over here too.
And, how I wish we would feed the world instead of overfeeding some of us, and denying basics to others.
A beautiful photograph none the less......but as E.C. says......
When I was in Switzerland many years ago I watched an elderly couple spend two days in their tiny, steep hay field, cutting, lifting and carrying their precious crop by hand. Not a blade was wasted.
Well said, EC.
RR, thank you. I remember seeing women in the Indian Himalaya carrying enormous loads of foliage. The contrast between that and the hay-making here now seems like a difference between planets.
That is one hell of a good photograph, Pete. What makes it is the lenticular cloud formation. Did you wait for it to flow into place?
Thanks Avus, and merry Christmas :^)
The cloud was there, waiting. I wanted a photograph of the hill, so waited until evening to get good light; I was fortunate to get the cloud sitting in the sky in the right spot.
Lenticular clouds are common here, probably because of the influence of the Ruahine Range (that's it, just visible under its cloud cap in the background).
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