Funny farm

Stand-up farmer looks at lighter side of technology

Ialways thought we were reasonably modern for a Perthshire upland farm until one harvest day an onlooker stopped and asked if we were hosting farming yesteryear! I guess he had a point, with some of the kit in the field having been bought – brand new, I hasten to add – after the “guid tattie year of ’76”.

Reluctantly our combine harvester, a Class Senator 60 with a 10-foot cut, was retired a couple of years ago. It was dissected with gas bottles and then hoisted on to a scrapper’s lorry via a high ab crane with all the dignity of an auld coo getting winched on to a knackery lorry.

I thought it was a sad way to go after four decades of service.

And it was a bit like Trigger’s brush – over 40 years it had been given a replacement engine, header, drum and numerous bearings, pulleys and belts… still the same combine though!

Nowadays I get a neighbour in to cut the barley and it’s a lot less hassle, but not nearly the fun. I can feel the 12-yearold boy in me yearning for a shot of driving it as my 40-year-old self is now demoted to carting off – a job which I can keep on top of as it’s a mediumsized combine.

There’s no way I could cope if I had the local contractor in to do the harvest with his 30-foot header and 10-ton capacity grain tank – that’s not much use when your grain bogie only holds six ton! These modern machines can get through a power of work in a day, but in a decade from now they will seem a bit dated. I can just imagine retired farmers meeting up at the mart 60 years from now telling young folk about the old days: “Aye laddie, it was a slow process back then ye ken, we only had a 40-foot header and a 16-ton grain cart, you thought you were never going to get finished.”

Very shortly we will have driverless tractors which will no doubt be of great benefit – but how will that encourage youngsters into farming? I mean, where’s the fun in that?

Fair enough, it’ll be handy for the boring jobs like bed tilling or de-stoning potato land, but don’t deprive a 13-yearold of their divine right to be in charge of clearing bales at harvest time.

Even in the world of children’s carpet farming things are evolving with the traditional small British tractors struggling to pull the much more popular but larger Bruder grain cart, and it seems that physically playing with toys isn’t enough any more, with wannabe farmers all requesting the video game Farming Simulator for their Christmas.

This is a game where you can pretend to not just drive tractors on a computer screen but grow crops, buy livestock and take part in all aspects of farm management.

A good pal of mine told me that his eight-year-old son has the game and he wanted to go contracting on his neighbour’s farm so he went to the bank and borrowed £250,000 so he could buy a new combine.

I hope he gets a good first year at it otherwise by the age of 10 he’ll be having a simulator roup!

Very shortly we will have driverless tractors but where’s the fun in that?

Jim Smith combines farming in Perthshire with a stand-up comedy career.

His forthcoming tour has sold out but dates for an autumn tour will be announced soon.

It’s a 13-year-old’s dream to be in charge of clearing bales at harvest time.