Bringing In The Wheat Crop Pt. 2

Bringing In The Wheat Crop (Through Rose Coloured Spectacles).
Val D'Arda, Emilia Romagna. Circa 1972.
Part 2.

Cont.

We set off with Nonna’s counsel reminding us to keep our hats on in the sun, and the sort of enthusiasm only generated by kids who know that they’re in for a bit of a 'Beano', in twenty minutes we had cleared enough crops so that Bruno could make a start with the BCS Reaper. 

A BCS Mower/Reaper

This machine which has the appearance of a tricycle in reverse, was and is, a boon  for the smaller farms. It serves a multitude of uses, from being an oversized lawn mower to (with attachments) a crop reaper. It runs on benzina, (these days it’s diesel) and has no electric ignition, and so must be started by means of a pull cord; gears in neutral, set the choke, four turns of the rope round the pulley, and heave…. If you’ve got it right its fires into life with a very satisfying roar.  The crop reaper attachment  looks rather like a cross between the rear paddle wheel on a Mississippi river boat and a crab’s front claws and has two functions, to gather the wheat etc toward the cutting blades and then to tie the cut stalks into small sheaves.

Having given Bruno a few minutes head start, we then followed behind him as a group. The adults armed with pitch forks would gather the prepared sheaves and heave them up onto the trailer which only a few years earlier would have been drawn by bullocks, and now was being pulled by a Fiat tractor being driven by yet another cousin Romolo.

Now this all sounds very prosaic, but there is a certain amount of skill involved in lifting these bales on to a cart, especially as it becomes more heavily loaded. The observant would note that the bed of the cart has been lined with a large tarpaulin, this is to prevent any of the precious grain from falling through the cracks in the plank floor of the cart and being lost. At this stage of development the seed heads on the stalks are very fragile and therefore any rough handling  would mean losing valuable grain, so each sheaf would be speared in such a manner that it could be carried vertically to the trailer and then they would use a gentle sweeping motion to lift the bale of wheat onto the cart, where it would be stacked with all due care and deference. I’m sure you will appreciate, that although each sheaf weighed  only about 10 kilos,  taking turns to lift one of these to a height of between  1.5m and 5.0m every couple of minutes  all day, every day in the August sun until all the harvest is in, is no mean physical feat (or so it seemed to us).  Meanwhile my brother and I would continue our quest to gather all the stray wheat.

After an hour or so Nonna turned up with breakfast; fresh bread, cheese and flask of Nonno’s favourite morning pick-me-up, a deeply satisfying combination of milk (fresh from the cow), beaten raw eggs (fresh from the hens), lots of sugar, and a splash of Marsala, (protein and alcohol; if that doesn’t get you going in the morning, nothing will), and yet another reminder about our damned hats. And so it continued, sheaf, after sheaf, hour after hour, pausing only to wipe the fevered sweat from one’s brow or, for a drink of cold water drawn from the spring not 200metres away, followed swiftly by a quick dash behind the nearest bush for a “you know what”  and of course lunch, which came in the form of an Italian version of a ploughman’s panini, and a bottle of the local rough red and more cold spring water.

It seemed to us that we had never worked so hard, if that’s what you can call it, because all I remember is that we had a great deal of fun. With all the field now cut, where once was a stand of golden brown wheat that swayed and changed colour in time with the movement of the sun and wind, all that remains now is a vast expanse of small yellow straw stalks no higher than a  hedgehogs back. There we stood wet through with sweat, covered in our well earned battle scars of small scratches that we had picked up from the sharp cut edges of the straw, and immensely proud of our “achievements“.

Our reward for the days effort was a ride back to the village on the top of the cart carrying the day’s harvest , and two invitations, one, to share a grand evening meal with all of those involved in bringing in the crop, and the second from Morpheus, to join him in the sleep of the innocent.  Both of which we gladly accepted.  For the adults, the day was not yet concluded, as after dinner they had to unload the cart into the barn  and prepare for the following days exertions. However, for us, we had done our bit, had a damned good time doing it and compared our battle scars to establish future bragging rights to the days adventures.

As for tomorrow…. that’s another story, for another day.