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Down on the farm.
I grew up in the the Exe valley in south Devon, in a beautiful area surrounded by farms. I well recall harvest time and helping, as a small boy, with the harvest on a local farm. I remember hot summers and trying, as a seven year old, to drag bales of hay onto a trailer. Even in those days farming in Devon was mechanised, with combined harvesters, bailing machines and tractors. Fast forward to 2014 and I now live in a village in Wiltshire which is also surrounded by farmland, with even larger farms and machines that seem to do every type of farming task; farms here are almost totally mechanised to maximise production and the labour force is reduced to a handful of men. In other parts of the world farming remains still, totally labour intensive, if people want to eat they have to do so by hard physical toil .... in the case of Burma either in monsoon rain or energy sapping heat. Despite the weather and the backbreaking work I have been welcomed wherever I have wandered, people have given me their time, allowed me to ask questions and take images of them and have even been genourous enough to share their food with me, without exception they have been patient and charming to an outsider with a camera. Perhaps I should try the same approach locally .... well perhaps not.
Copyright Paul Strawson - Blog ref: 91
