Thursday 4th September 2025. ancestors
This morning I leant during breakfast that I was to be spending the day with dad on the new demo tractor learning to use the plough. I was a bit nervous at first, but I think it was out of excitement rather than any sort of fear. The morning got off to an even better start when I beat Eric in the bi weekly bin race. Eric tried his usual cheating business by blocking my exit from the kitchen with his chair. But even though it worked and he got to the bins first, I think William had put a body the garden bin which Eric takes, because it weighed a ton. It took Eric several attempts to get it on to it wheels, by which time I was half way down the path.
The first thing we did when getting to the field was to mark out the headlands. This involves setting the plough in such away as to just leave the back furrow turning over a shallow groove in the earth. This line has to follow parallel to the field edge and is there as a guide to where to plough to before lifting the plough out of work. The point of the headlands is that it's where you turn the tractor around in order to make the next run down the field. At no point must you run on the earth that has been turned over by the plough. Once the headlands were marked out we then set to with ploughing proper.
The field we were in is in two parts, so after lunch dad drove over to the second part of the field and said for me to swap seats with him as he wanted to see me have a go. I was a bit nervous at first, the job was new to me as was the tractor.
I need not worry though as my dad's voice was a familiar, calm presence in the cab of his new Massey Ferguson 8S. "See, it's just like drawing a straight line," he said, his hand resting on my arm as I gripped the steering wheel. The engine rumbled beneath us, like a steady heartbeat. The air smelled of fresh of turned earth, which seemed to become fluid as it came in to contact with the mole boards of the plough.
The tractor, sleek and powerful in its new paint, had arrived just after the
harvest. It was a serious piece of machinery, a big step up from the old one I was used to.
With a deep breath, I eased the tractor forward. The ground ahead was a perfect, flat canvas of wheat stubble. My dad talked me through it, his instructions simple and clear: "Find a point on the horizon, keep your eye on it, and don't let the front of the tractor drift." I focused on a lone oak tree at the far end of the field.
It was possible to just set the satnav, the line would have been perfect without me even having to touch anything. But dad said that before I used anything like that he wanted me to learn how to do it the proper way. The way that had been passed down through the generations. It was my connection to the family. I may not have been born of them, but things such as this made me apart of them.
The first line was shaky, a little crooked at the start as I got the feel of it. I felt a surge of panic, but my dad's hand on my arm was a steady anchor. "You're doing great," he said quietly. "Just correct it slowly. Small movements."
I adjusted, and the furrows behind us began to smooth out, each one a rich, dark wave of soil. It wasn't just about driving; it was about feeling the land, listening to the machine, and moving in a rhythm with the field. It was a dance between man, machine, and earth. It is this feeling that draws me to work on the tractor. I noticed when I first drove a tractor by myself, when I was applying the fertiliser, how you can actually feel the earth that you run on change from one place to the next. The tractor somehow has an ability to communicate this with you.
Hours passed. The sun came and went as did showers of rain, and the field transformed, stripe by stripe. What was once a flat expanse was now a textured landscape of deep brown and black, ready for a new season. My dad watched from the side of the cab, his face a mixture of pride and quiet satisfaction. He didn't have to say anything at all after a while. The perfectly ploughed field, stretching to the horizon, said it all. it was very satisfying for both of us. I had learned to draw a furrow, and in doing so, I had learned a little more about my dad's world, and my place in it.
As we were leaving we saw a rainbow coloured light seemingly emanating from the top of one of the wind turbines. It was quite amazing and a wonderful end to a day with my dad learning a new skill.
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