Its almost a month since the start of the cereal harvest, and the final bales are being collected. Most arable fields are now either stubble or have already been ploughed. These round bales are considerably more labour saving than when "bale carting" was my annual summer job as a student. The small traditional bales had to be gathered into groups, stacked, loaded onto a trailer, offloaded onto an elevator, and pushed firmly into place in a haystack in a barn. I remember barley straw bales made me itch,and wheat or oat straw rapidly wore out my jeans. Round bales may be stored in a Dutch barn, or maybe just wrapped and left by the field side.
