Although the harvest spectacular at West Stoke had to be cancelled on September 6 due to torrential rain (nearly five inches in the week in my rain gauge) the moon quietened everything down as it sailed through the early autumn skies by the 15th.

Combines ancient and modern raced to the rescue of the drowned fields of oats and wheat making the best of the precious grain. Not all of this was good but as animal feed will certainly save our bacon.

Somehow the collapse of the Lehman Brother Bank and the spectre of another Twenty-niner crash did not seem so frightening. If both oil and wheat had failed where would mankind be then? Can you imagine a Sudan in Sussex?

Even if oil were to fail and the magnificent vintage machinery shown here at last year's harvest spectacular (held at Heyshott) ground to a halt, we could always go even further back in time and use horses again.

In 1880 the McCormick hand-binding harvester made life a trifle easier for the farm labourer as he was then called, promoted from peasant serf. In this period advertisement produced by the American company, the workers look almost like city gents in their bowlers, waistcoats, fine white linen shirts and with protection from the blazing August sun under a coloured canvas sunshade.

The chap driving the frisky race horses has the best job holding the reins while his chums handle the stalky bits. One could imagine city slickers in an oil-free age spending a lively break from the drudge of their city desks during the dog-days of August. What fun for a fortnight.

What is amazing is that the grindingly-hard job by sickle and scythe had taken so long to revolutionise. In 1783 The Royal Society of Arts offered a prize for machinery 'by which the mowing or reaping of wheat, rye, barley, oats or beans may be done more expeditiously or cheaper'. Engineers tried, but failed. They made scythe blades revolve on a machine wheel but to no avail. The sickle and scythe held sway for a century more.

The first reaping machine to tie corn into sheaves was invented by a Northumbrian schoolmaster in 1822 by the name of Henry Ogle. That name appeared on a straw elevator which my father used on his Norfolk farm in 1944. We children said OGLE stood for 'Our Good Little Elevator'.
To cut the corn father used a machine that was vintage even 60 years ago, having probably been made during the latter part of Victoria's reign. This design using the McCormick cutter, Marsh collector (using a series of endless rolling canvas conveyer belts) and finally the really difficult bit of bunching the corn into sheaves and tying them together using oiled twine, invented by John F Appleby, these machines continued in serious use till 1948.

Hundreds of thousands had been built in factories in Chicago and under licence in Britain. Few survive. Today's combine harvesters were first thought of 180 years ago in 1828. It had a cutter, a shaker, a winnowing fan and sack filling apparatus and the whole business was pulled and revolved by horses. By 1854 it was up and running on commercial scales.

Eighty years ago, in 1928, saw the first internal combustion-powered combined harvester. But the horse made it work first, and on a grand prairies' scale. So there is hope for mankind yet.

My thanks to Lou Hazell of Chichester Tractors and Ray Knight of East Ashling whose machines were on display last year among all the other vintage artefacts at that splendid show. Let us look forward to next year and pray for fair weather and a harvest moon.


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