September usually is the prime field-mowing time here, but rainy and relatively warm fall weather have delayed things. They have made an often-difficult job even more difficult for the hard-working tractor drivers who are confronted with longer-growing, thicker, and often wet vegetation in the rough fields.
Above, we see master mower Richard Black on his Massey Ferguson 2850 workhorse, mowing our sloping North Field in yesterday’s light rain. He generously worked into the night in often miserable weather to get our difficult fields done.
The mower attached to Richard’s tractor is commonly, and often incorrectly, called a “Bush Hog®,” a brand name that applies to only one of the many rotary field and brush mowing machines. (The company says that, when it first demonstrated its novel product in 1951, an amazed farmer said: “That thing eats bushes like a hog.”)
Non-agricultural fields usually are mowed in the fall to assure that the summer homes of multitudes of birds, insects, and other animals are not disturbed while the fauna are in residence.
Mowing annually also preserves the environmentally-crucial, but disappearing, field habitats. Without mowing, the fields here soon turn to thick brambles and incipient forests. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on September 3, 2021.)