Mechanical Fanning The tractor, came bustling round the corner from
another building and backed to the implement shed where an enormous trailer was coupled up to it. The young man who was driving the tractor said he would soon be called up and grinned when I asked him where he wanted to do his National Service. " The Tank Corps," he replied and took the trailer away, turning through the obstacles in the farm- yard with such ease and precision that the two pieces of equipment seemed to have the flexibility of a snake. Later I watched the same young man working with a buckrake and climbing tractor and rake on to the spongy mound of a silage pit without a sign of nervousness, although his front wheels rose more than a foot from the ground. Hodge has become a stage character. The modern farm worker can often operate complicated equipment and talk about hydraulic lifting gear and the principles of the internal combustion engine with an amazing familiarity. Time and motion study is noti far away from the business of ploughing and sowing when farmers begin to check with a watch the time it takes to couple a mowing machine to a tractor as I saw them doing that day.
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