'Tis the Season

Williams Wharf Road, Soybean Field

Many of the county's soybean fields have been harvested, but this one down Williams Wharf Road was patiently awaiting its turn last week. No doubt a combine will be working this field soon, if one hasn't already.

Same field closer up

Last Friday night on my way home from Gloucester (for the fourth time that day but who's counting other than  CBW my poor Saturn and my last two functioning nerve and brain cells), I was nearly forced off the road to allow an approaching combine to pass.  

Mathews has some unique driving hazards including: fiddler crabs  the roadside crew working on The New Sewer Line; commercial watermen's trucks laden with crab pots; sport fishermen hauling over sized boats; the average citizen hauling brush or trash to the dump (with stuff flying out all over the place); and farm equipment, including tractors and combines.

With the possible exception of the average citizen hauling trash, most of these can also be found in our annual Christmas parade. (A representative from the crew working on the sewer line should be Grand Marshal.  They're practically family now, they've been here so long.)

This year's parade, on December 11, will be during the day rather than at night. I always loved that evening Christmas parade and am sorry to hear it's changing. There was something magical about all those lights.

Regardless, I look forward to seeing the boats, tractors, trucks and sewer line crew combines all dolled up.

Until then, and as long as the soybeans are being harvested, we can expect to see the combines in our daily travels.

In case one of you two reading has never been run off the road by seen a combine, here's what Wikipedia has to say about them:

Among the crops harvested with a combine are wheat, oats, rye, barley, corn, soybeans, and flax. The waste left behind on the field is the remaining dried stems and leaves of the crop with limited nutrients which is either chopped and spread on the field or baled for feed and bedding for livestock



This Wikipedia photo is of a small combine.  We grow 'em much bigger around here--they easily take up 1.75 lanes of road on Routes 14 or 198.  On the unmarked side roads, they span from sea to shining sea ditch to ditch. (Imagine that small combine above on the road in the first photo, to illustrate whatever point I'm trying to make.)

Have you ever been on a combine?

I haven't but have always wanted to operate heavy equipment of all sorts.  Must be some deep-rooted desire to knock people off the road to be in control.