Bog Myrtle & Peat

The tractor’s bellied, and that’s given us work for a week in the rain and driving snow. Perhaps the trailer was too full, and maybe the ground was wetter than we knew – but here’s a fitting finale to the final drills of turnips – work that went on too long and rediscovered the meaning of “shut up and get on with it”.

But even in this irritation, there have been puzzles and ploys to recover the old machine – it’s been something like fun to toy with every angle and ponder the challenge from new perspectives. We’ve brought in support from other tractors and winches across the glen, and we finally fell to digging about the sump with spades.

I gather there are geese on the bottom fields; greylags rumbling in their hundreds above the floods. But I can’t see a thing from under the cast-iron hull of a Massey Ferguson 565.