The Worm Forgives the Plough

by John Stewart Collis

  As I say, I did not always find my orders easy to follow. Sometimes I did not understand what ’E had actually said, and sometimes when I did I still wasn’t sure of the moves referred to. For instance one morning it was – ‘Take the cultivator back to the centre field, then drag the field you cultivated yesterday. The drags are in the field next to the house. Put one each on they ones that have slides, then take ’ee up to the field. You’ll find a pole by the straw-rick in the beanfield. When you’ve finished there get the roller and do the wheat field.’ Straightforward enough perhaps, provided I remembered all the geographical designations and the tactics involved. Seizing the main outline, I went along hoping things would clear up as I went on and saw the objects that had been mentioned. I reached the field where he said the drags were. But slides? Ah yes, I saw that two of the four drags if turned over became sledges so that you could pull them along across roads and so on. So I turned them over and put the other ones on top. This entailed removing the long pole connecting the four, which enlightened me as to the necessity of that other pole he had alluded to, a smaller one for present use, to be found in the beanfield. There it was; I got it and coupled up and went to the far field to be dragged.

  That done the next thing was to get the roller and do the winter-wheat field. I found the roller, but how couple up without assistance? While backing the tractor you cannot hold up the shaft of the roller, and one’s arm isn’t long enough to reach the ground when you get into position. Such elementary improvisation as was here needed flummoxed me – again there was no obvious rule of thumb. But come! I said to myself, use your ingenuity! So I looked in the box and found that the hammer was long enough to serve as a prop. And it did do perfectly well in this capacity. But while coupling up, that is to say while keeping one foot gently on the clutch, the left hand on the steering-wheel, and the trunk bent backwards so that the right arm can reach right down to the roller-shaft, I wondered why some armchair agricultural strategists imagine that tractor-driving is just a question of sitting down all day.

  Having then taken the roller to the winter-wheat field I carried on there for some time. This field was beside the track running up through the centre of the farm, and suddenly the Van appeared coming down it. From the Van an arm, ’E’s arm, was outstretched – pointing. What was it pointing at? I looked down at the roller. One piece had disappeared! Then I saw that piece at the far end of the field, sitting there quietly by itself. I had been stargazing. A minute later and on turning a corner I would have seen it; but ’E, with his pointing arm, always appeared at the psychological moment.

  His eye would discern one’s smallest wrong-doing from some way off. A few days later I was chain-harrowing a pasture when the Van appeared. It looked as if it were passing on but it swerved and came towards me and the Arm pointed at my chain-harrow. A link had come undone and hence a portion of the chains was crumpled. Typical of me, I couldn’t help feeling, not to have noticed it. Then ’E lodged another complaint. I had been seen yesterday – one is always detected – getting water from a certain big house near this field. ‘Waste of juice,’ he said, ‘going right over there when there is a trough in the field. Use your brains!’ I could not see the force of this, since you can take a tractor to a trough but you can’t make it drink unless you have a filler with you.

  While going on with my harrowing I thought over that admonition – ‘Use your brains.’ I am not a brainy man in any marked degree and have never passed for one, though my capacity to use what brains I possess and to pick the brains of others is second to none. Still, brains was not the right word as used by ’E. I suggest that the word Ingenuity would better fit the case. I possess some Imagination: that is I can occasionally see what is there; but I have little Invention, which is the power to see what is not there. And I fancy that the faculty of invention goes with the faculty of ingenuity and improvisation. But these things are also a matter of habit and experience. An extremely brainy farmer is not likely to be much better and could quite easily be much worse than a stupid man who is born to the tradition, does what he has seen his father do, and which he has been made to do from an early age. The overcoming of mechanical and other difficulties will come to him quite naturally, ingenuity will be second- if not first-nature. What would puzzle me will be simply obvious to him. For what is obvious is not a question of brains but of training.

  At a certain gold-mining district in Africa the natives were accustomed to fill buckets with earth and carry them to the inspection yard. One day the British overseer introduced wheelbarrows for use instead of buckets. The natives looked glum at the prospect, and on returning later the overseer found them carrying the wheelbarrows on their heads. It was not obvious to them what function the wheels would perform. It is obvious to me when I write a letter or a book where I should put a full stop. It is not in the least obvious to agricultural labourers. When using the first person singular it is my habit to write it with a capital I. It is not their habit. They very often use a small i, as in French or German, since it seems less egotistic.

  The boss of the farm which I have written about in Part One was a member of the Home Guard. One day he turned up at a meeting at which several proper military men, including an ex-colonel and major, were present. He found them in a quandary. They had wished to move the large desk which was at one end of the room, to the other. But how accomplish this? There seemed no solution. It was not obvious to the Army. Then Agriculture came in. ‘The very man we want!’ they cried, much relieved at sight of the boss. ‘We were wondering how we could move this desk to over there.’ Too astounded to speak, he said nothing. In complete silence he walked over to the desk, removed the top portion to the floor, carried the two other portions to the required place in two movements, and then placed the first piece again where it fitted. The job was done, the problem solved – amidst the applause of an enlightened Army.

  Thus I saw that I must form the habit of ingenuity and improvisation. I was shocked into doing so. Let me no longer, I said to myself, be one of those people who can’t do things for themselves, but have to get others to ‘do for them’ as the phrase goes. I date that resolution from the moment when I had found myself flummoxed by that simple coupling job with the roller. So the next time I found my tractor in need of water I did take it to the trough – and used my hat as a filler.

  11 Operations in Progress

  We were into May now, a most beautiful May, but I cannot say that I noticed it much, beyond an occasional glance at the turn-out. Nor did anyone else. It is your townsman who is conscious of the seasons and who talks about spring. The agricultural labourer does not notice it. He does not think in terms of months or seasons. He sees it in terms of work. This will have to be done now, then that; it is drilling time, or harrowing and cultivating time, ploughing time, hoeing time, haymaking time, harvest time, and so on – the New Year being in October. He does not know the names of the flowers so well as the country-loving townsman. He does not rejoice in the spring nor become melancholy in the autumn. The scent of hay is not grateful to him. And never, never does he think about ‘the summer holidays’!

  I could see four operations going forward from a certain high field which I was rolling on 7 May (to take the exact date from my notebook). Away to the left there was a curious activity in progress. A fire was alight under a cauldron. One man, it was ’E, kept poking a stick in the pot. Beside him the shepherd sat upright with a lamb in his lap. Dick was in general attendance. It was rather a lowering day, and the scent appeared as a mixture between an illustration in Alice in Wonderland and the Three Witches on the Blasted Heath stirring that remarkable pot boiling twenty-three separate ingredients. Having to ask for certain instructions, I approached and found that they were cutting off the lambs’ tails – a bonus of threepence each going to Robert.

  On another field Harold was planting potatoes with ’E’s daughter and one boy. No more assistance was necessary, for a potato-planter was being used. It is a contraption fitted to the pl
ough – in this case a three-furrow. One person sits on the plough and drops potatoes on to a sort of conveyor-belt which passes round with pockets to hold potatoes and then channels each into one of the three furrows which are opened and covered at the same time – a remarkably neat affair. A tractor-driver, with two assistants or one, can sow a three- or four-acre field in a day. Remembering what it was like planting by hand, I certainly applauded it, and I am wondering when we shall see a picker-up of potatoes.

  Further off I could see the land girls couching. Couch grass is an irrepressible and desperate weed. With hugely spreading roots it clings to the fields. You cultivate the field, drag it, chain-harrow it, pulling up enough couch to build a rick – which you then burn in bundles and lines. But you can get more up – and then more. I refuse to use space in writing about it, but I had plenty to do with the stuff, both in getting it up and burning it when I wasn’t using the tractor. It was a job which went on all the time – a ceaseless couch-battle. It is the farmer’s curse. But I gather from a neighbour of mine that it has non-agricultural merits of a pleasing character. A great fellow in the use of herbs, he told me that if you cook some couch-roots you can cure lumbago. But this may not be universal, I fear. He seemed particularly sensitive to roots. Once when he got boils he dug up some dock-roots, ate them, and never had boils again.

  How much has to be done to a field before its bed is fit for sowing! Ploughed twice perhaps; cultivated first one way then criss-cross; dragged twice; chain-harrowed and rolled; the couch burnt. Does the general public realize that all this is done to that field seen from the road, looking so silent, so deserted, as if no one ever went near it? Does the man on the road know that it has to be scratched and beaten and turned over like a rug, and scorched and burnt and knocked about? Does he know that before we can live even by bread alone, before bread can begin at all, all this must be done? I did not, when I was a man on the road and in the train.

  The carter was busy drilling clover-seed in a field of young corn. The clover would not come up with the corn, of course. It would follow after the field had been harvested – a new fresh green push between the ruined stalks.

  Thus I could see work progressing all around me, while I also was doing my share. I was well in the centre of my world now, and my main feeling was that of being privileged to be there.

  I commanded a view also of another field – the hundred-acre which we had drilled in April. It was no longer brown. It had turned green. The field was carrying on by itself. No clumps of men on it as during the drilling time, no carts and sacks and tractors, no operations. But it was the silence of vast schemes not discerned by the eye, not heard; invisible, inaudible, and, it would seem, motionless; yet all in motion, a lofty design being built up, and exchanges made between water and air – that which is fluid being made solid, and that which is solid being made soft.

  12 While ‘Making a Show’

  I was surprised at the amount of rolling that had to be done, especially on grass and young corn. When taking the heavy roller, not to mention the wheels of the tractor, across the tender shoots of corn, it made me smile to think how the conscientious citizen out for a day in the country will edge his way beside such a field lest he tread on ‘the young corn’. It is a bit of a paradox, certainly, that by crushing down the supposedly feeble green ribbons with a heavy roller you thereby make them fit to stand up all the better. But of course the ground is thus made firm, which gives the corn a steady grip, and as for the effect of the roller on the shoots, they are too soft to be injured by something hard, and we all know that elasticity of body, even of the body politic, overcomes all things.

  With regard to chain-harrowing the green fields, I had previously thought that pastures were just pastures off which the cattle fed, and that was all there was to it. But no, you cannot leave them alone, they also must be cultivated. The cow-droppings must be spread, otherwise you get a ‘sour’ patch; too rich. The innumerable mole-hills must be knocked over and dispersed, otherwise your pasture will quite soon disappear altogether, owing to this mole ploughing. The grass itself must be scraped so as to let the air in. Hence this work which looks so uneconomic, pays in the end. For after all, what is this green field but milk, cream, butter, and cheese?

  Thus these days passed quickly. Some severe-minded persons say that tractor-driving is boring. I did not find it so. I have, of course, had to do some long fool-proof jobs on big fields, but if it was boring it was not as boring as some other jobs on a farm that have to be done. Moreover, on such occasions one can remain more or less physically fresh and therefore mentally fresh, which makes all the difference. In any case, during these early days of mine there was no question of the time dragging while I grappled with my preliminary and consecutive difficulties and mishaps. It was the other way round, my object was always to get something done, to make a show before anything went wrong – before the Van appeared. One day I had been told to roll a certain field. There was a breakage in the morning and I did not get on to the job before early afternoon. Could I do it now in four hours? I wondered. I just managed it. All the time I was fighting against Space – so Time fled.

  Above I have used the phrase ‘make a show’. It is an amusing one, so I repeat it. Whenever I started to do any job in company with Dick, he always said – ‘Don’t you think it would be better to do it this way – it will make a better show.’ That was my idea also, whether with him or by myself, to make the best impression. And I often used to think how differently I would do certain jobs if I were my own master, with no consideration save the nature of the job itself. Sometimes I would go slow, doing a given piece very thoroughly, since no one would come and say – ‘Haven’t you finished yet?’ I would skimp another field which really didn’t need much attention, since no one would say – ‘Look, you have left out that piece!’ Vast indeed would be the difference. But for the moment I want to ‘make a show’. Having got stuck in a gate one day and thus wasted time, I was late in getting started on a field which I had to roll. So in order to make the best show in the remaining hour at my disposal, I went up and down the field instead of around it. In due course ’E appeared and told me I was doing it the wrong way, and that I should have gone round since I would not then punish the corn by unnecessary turnings. I did not explain that I had gone up and down merely to make a better show.

  Apart from any reasons just suggested as to why there was nothing boring about tractor-driving for me, it was often extremely pleasant on many occasions. It was sometimes necessary to take the tractor with some instrument from one end of the farm to the other. This meant quite a long round-about journey across fields, through gates, along leafy lanes and byways – delightful. Anyone who has experienced stooping or standing for hours at one stationary job understands the difference only too well, and if thus engaged will cast envious eyes at the tractor-driver passing by on his unmonotonous way. And there were some fields that it was a joy to roll. There was a lovely forty-acre field called the Park, where the soil was very soft, and when I rolled the corn I experienced no noise, no clatter, no bumping, no dust. Perched on my comfortable seat, with no animal to bully and shout at, I could glance now and then at the beautiful parky view around, at the gleam and sheen upon the meadows and the groves, at the chestnut trees with their Maytime torches, at the sequestered House beyond with its Old Garden enwalled from the world’s woes.

  I must add that at other times it was quite the opposite, and I became thoroughly fed up with the roller. There were some very stony and uneven fields which I rolled after dragging, when there would be an unholy clatter all the time and dust would cover me and blind me. On days like that the coming of dinner hour was a great moment, when I stopped and the clatter and rattling ceased, then switched off the engine so that its noise and belch also ceased, and a great calm fell suddenly upon the scene. Turning my back on the tractor I would walk away in the delicious silence towards some good spot for my meal. On a day in May I had it beside a chestnut tree. It displayed
a magnificent show of flowers, and when the breeze blew, the petals floated down quite startlingly like a shower of snow. The tree was very large and old. I went and stood under it. A massive trunk. The few holes in the thick canopy of leaves looked like blue stars. I do not think anything in Nature is more mysterious or more effective than a big tree. It is not only that so much proceeds from so little, though this aspect of it is a supreme exemplar of Nature’s method of turning thin air into hard and lofty substance: there is something more about a great tree. Standing under this one and looking up, with knitted concentration, quite baffled, I got the impression that it emanated – Goodness. It stood there firmly like a noble Thought, which, if understood, would save the world.

  During these dinner hours that so briefly dashed past, when I sat beside a tree like that, I often remembered the Forest of Arden where it was so inviting ‘under the shade of melancholy boughs to lose and neglect the creeping hours of time’. That phrase has often haunted me. Not very pleasantly perhaps; for being lazy by nature, I am afraid of idleness, and have never been happy when neglecting time. But now that time was no longer my own I could think with guiltless longing how wonderful it would be to lie down under such a tree, and, neglecting all things, dream my life away.

  13 A Free Day

  On the following Monday I turned up at the yard as usual just after 7 a.m. No one had yet arrived. Some ten minutes passed and still no one appeared. Going to the dairy where work was in full swing, I found ’E there. He was surprised to see me – for it was Whit-Monday, a holiday! I hadn’t realized it. We had worked through Good Friday and I had heard no mention about a holiday on Whit-Monday – nor did I realize that it was Whit-Monday. What a break! Yet, how frantic the thought that I had got up out of bed when I could have remained there – a most bitter thought. For this early rising was the very devil. I have never been a late riser and have always held before myself the ideal of early rising, if not the practice. But it is one thing to rise at seven and another at a quarter to six, work all day and get back by six in the evening, and then do the same thing again next week. That was now my routine. I lived in a bungalow ‘in the wilds’ again, though with some near and very kind neighbours. It was twenty minutes’ ride down to work, and at least three-quarters of an hour uphill back. I could not therefore rise later than five forty-five, for I had to have breakfast, shave, prepare two lots of sandwiched meals (three if there was overtime), and get down to the farm. As I never succeeded in going to bed before eleven, every single morning’s getting up was a little battle. My alarm-clock would go off and I would have to tear my eyes open. Then I would not get up, not at once. I always held back till it meant a rush afterwards. I would be there, facing Time, as it were, feeling that if I lay quite still perhaps I could hold Time, get it to stop, as a man might hold the end of a hose and keep the water back.