Paula McGuire: Field of dreams - or nightmares - down on the farm at harvest time

Nowadays, I’m all about making hay whenever the opportunity arises. Rain, hail or fine, I’m out with the rake, baling up adventures without regard for seasonal conditions. Sure, I understand that there’s a time and place for everything. But when that time doesn’t fit my diary and the place is further than my petrol stores will take me, I’ll fudge the schedule and move the mountain to make that experience happen.

This week though, I had to shove aside my calendar and trust the maternal instincts of nature because harvest, my friends, picks its own festival.

Hopton in Ancrum is a family-run farm in the Scottish Borders, and it’s also the scene of my first act as a reaper – and, trust me, I was grim. Not only does farmer Stuart Nimmo, have the temperament to manage the jollies and follies of agriculture, he also has just the right depth of madness to let a novice of the poorest order loose on his field – and his profit margin. I’m not saying the pressure was on, but my stopcock wasn’t fit for moderating that one.

I’ll admit I wasn’t the most prepared for this particular adventure – my dainty ballet pumps came perilously close to an early mud bath – but how does an urban girl, who slicks the city like a snail on grease, navigate the world of animal husbandry? Sustaining one marriage on my diet is work enough – and he pretty much grooms himself these days.

As I trudged across the field, unsure if there was any other method of getting across a field other than trudging, I worried briefly that I was about to drive both a tractor and a combine harvester without being able to tell the difference between the two.

In the near distance, a pair of hulking machines trundled about their business, while I tried my best to decode what exactly that business was. Sure, those burly John Deeres looked industrious enough, but their industry was so far from my own that I couldn’t quite make out their remit.

To watch me board that tractor would have been like seeing a crow board a plane: feasible, just completely unnecessary. Even with the benefit of opposable thumbs,

I struggled to open the door to the cab and, once inside, had no clue how to get back out again. Davey Jack, the tractor’s real driver, seemed to find my bewilderment endearing, demonstrating how a door works without even a hint of sarcasm. After a quick introduction to the controls it was time for me to take the wheel. If only all things in life were figurative; I’m much better with metaphorical vehicles. From the barn, where Davey had unloaded the last stock of barley,

I was tasked with towing our now-empty trailer down the winding farm track to the field, avoiding stock, stables and suicidal chickens, whose tendency to dart close to the wheels made me hungry for sandwich meat.

Now, I pride myself on being a decent driver. But perching at the helm of some industrial machinery that, at best, could wipe out an entire species of poultry is somewhat daunting. In spite of Davey’s insistence that the tractor did, in fact, have higher gears than first,

I slow-and-steadied that beast through the farmyard, making turns wide and eyes wider. To distract my passenger from my ineptitude, I picked his brains about rural life; garnering what I could about those experiences so different from my own. The path was short, but our time together was not – you do the physics – so as the trail gave way to main road, we had covered family dynamics, tree-felling and the education system to its fullest.

I won’t pretend I was anything other than relieved as I clambered from the tractor – well, maybe a little achy of leg – but the release lasted only the few spongy steps into the wide shadow of the combine harvester. I’d already heard that this particular vehicle was more difficult to pilot and, of course, there was the weight of a farmer’s crop added to my load.

Thankfully, the Old MacDonald of the piece had both a farm and a progressive attitude towards its management, since I’m not the only learner that the Young Nimmo allows to attack his fields regularly. Stuart is an agriculture teacher at the nearby Borders College, so his students are often trusted with the farm’s harvest. Stuart lined the combine up with the proposed next row of barley and, before I knew it,

I was in the hotseat– mainly because the air conditioning was on the fritz.

With a row of buttons to my left and only my heart’s place in the right, the cockpit wasn’t quite the Enterprise but it sure wasn’t life as I know it. When delaying was no longer an option, I used what I can only call adrenaline and my thumb to lower the blades on the header to what I assumed was the right height, since Stuart didn’t vomit in immediate disgust.

And we edged forward, towards what I assumed were terrified heads of barley, but maybe I was just projecting. After a faltering start, the farmer urged me to push forward on a lever that I’d been wilfully ignoring – the one that was essentially the accelerator; and I only say “essentially” because I’m a big fan of downplaying.

The numbers on the speedometer crept up towards the 3mph mark, and I willed the harvester to develop sentience and keep itself heading in the right direction. I swear I was channelling all my mental geometry to drive a line straighter than a European banana, but as we reached the field’s end and turned to set up once more, I quickly lowered my ambitions.

There’s little that can prepare you to accept that you’re not a natural farmer, but something that will definitely convince you is seeing the mess you’ve made of a crop harvesting. I’m not sure if

I was taking into consideration the curvature of the Earth or if my spirit level had gone to the other side but, as the afternoon continued and

I familiarised more with the controls, the Escher sketch I was recreating became more elaborate still. Stuart was unruffled, and I daresay amused, even when I beached his pricey equipment in a hole, arguably of my own creation.

Even still, he wouldn’t allow me to duck out of the riskiest part of the process: pouring the grain into the trailer while still on the move. As I lumbered carefully alongside the tractor, while trying to continue reaping what a better man had sown, I was thankful for the lack of air conditioning to explain away my sweating brow.

Please note: no barley was harmed in the making of this column. But it was only through the steadying hand of Stuart on the wheel that his entire season’s crop fed the whisky industry, rather than the field’s waiting birds and bugs. I left Hopton Farm before sundown with a new sense of occasion and a greater understanding of the workings of modern agriculture. But if you get a brand new combine harvester,

I won’t be offended if you don’t give me the keys.