There were a half-dozen of the things. Mum brewing industrial quantities of tea and making vast batches of fruit buns was just one of those things that happened during harvest.
If it weren't for the combines in the background, Anthony Collins' stripey shirt, and the long hair and bucket hat in the middle row, that photo could easily have been taken in 1952 rather than 1972. Get rid of the Landy, the plastic-jacketed Thermos and the woolly hat as well, and you could be looking at 1932.
A lot of the people there would have seen the progression from US-supplied (lease-lend?) harvesters and spade-lug tractors running on TVO to such modernity as Q cabs with a wireless. And yet there is still a neolithic burial mound in the background.
We rarely used to combine at Bodafon; usually only about 20 acres of barley for cattle feed. However, I have very early memories of riding on the footplate of the combine as the bags were filled and thrown onto the field. The following year the contractors showed up with carrying trailers and augers!
I think six was the most I ever saw in one place (that wasn't Saskatchewan). I suspect the next problem would be some critical path malarkey with the number of twenty ton trailers (no point having more harvesters if you can't empty the things fast enough) and/or distance from the grain store and/or number of grain pits and/or dryer capacity if the grain was damp. ('If' on the Cotswolds... [FX: hollow laughter])
Obviously, one could have fewer harvesters with wider cutter-bars, but that leads to different failure-modes. While you could buy the big shiny New Holland kit with the detachable headers, I recall it being a right faff to perform that operation, so it was better to have headers narrow enough to fit through the gateways (and far far more impressive to have a procession of the things beetling down the lanes). Also, if you have less harvesters and you break one by ingesting stones or tourists, a greater percentage of your kit is down...
... You know, this is more or less exactly like server farm capacity planning.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2012-04-22 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-22 10:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-22 10:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-23 01:14 am (UTC)Great photo, that.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-23 03:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-23 03:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-23 08:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-23 11:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-23 03:23 pm (UTC)Obviously, one could have fewer harvesters with wider cutter-bars, but that leads to different failure-modes. While you could buy the big shiny New Holland kit with the detachable headers, I recall it being a right faff to perform that operation, so it was better to have headers narrow enough to fit through the gateways (and far far more impressive to have a procession of the things beetling down the lanes). Also, if you have less harvesters and you break one by ingesting stones or tourists, a greater percentage of your kit is down...
... You know, this is more or less exactly like server farm capacity planning.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-23 10:21 pm (UTC)