Harvest is GO!!!

Amazing what 48 hours does, despite thunderstorms the harvest has begun in earnest!,  While the Wheat is a week or so away the Spring Barley is being chomped by combines all over the place,
After work i cycled to the shops and seen loads of combines out on local farms...

Surly ECR;
ECR = `Escape Commuting Routine`...
Off road to work today on the ECR through harvested fields to check recent bike mods are ok for this weekends goofing around Harvest bivi ride with friends...

Another pair of Jones Loop bars fitted,  after a few scary cross rutting moments on the drop bars , a try of MTB bars were to similar to the KramPug bike, so settling for Loop bars, sold the Woodchipper drop bars and fragile (off road)  STI shifters to help pay for these bars, a rip off at £135 compared to £20 - £30 for regular MTB riser bars but it`s a cornered market...

No problems with trapped cables with the handlebar harness, the drop STI shifters were no good with the 90 degree gear cables...

120 tpi Chronicle tyres needed 2 wraps of underlay foam to air up `Ghetto` split tubeless,  the 60 tpi Chronicles did not need any foam, will stick with them for future purchases....

Really liking the bikes set up now, a lot different to the higher BB height 29+ Pugsley `KramPug`...

The bike is going to get the gears swapped out to a Shimano Alfine 8 speed internal gear hub (IGH)  soon to make it more versatile, making riding through long grass like in the pic below not a problem for the drive chain, apart from this the ECR is a great bike...

Rear Rack added (Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op rack) this evening to take panniers for shopping or an extra `communal` tarp for camping...

Bike is ready to pack tomorrow evening for the weekend,

More soon...

Harvest; It`s begun...

First combine out on the east coast of East Lothian!, right here on my doorstep, i had a pannier full of frozen food from Tesco! so could not hang about, rain came on shortly after this pic but be more of this soon though.
My favourite time of year is during the harvest, the colours across our county if on a sunny evening are amazing.

History Lesson;
In 1786 the Threshing machine was invented and patented here in East Lothian, SE Scotland by a millwright called Andrew Meikle of Houston Mill, East Linton on the river Tyne.
This invention started the agricultural revolution changing a harvesting labour intensive process called flailing that had been in use since the middle ages.
Then in 1834 American Hirman Moore produced and patented a combine harvester- combining the three processes of harvesting corn; Reaping, Threshing, and Winnowing,
The first combines were horse drawn, then later rhey were steam powered, and then as they are today self propelled with a combustion engine.
These Combines were being made in Scotland and operating in East Lothian by 1939...

Today all around the world the combine harvester still use a threshing device that operates on the basic design as invented right here in East Lothian by Andrew Meikle.
East Lothian`s rich agricultural lands are also known as `The Garden of Scotland`...

Film i made last Harvest 2013, just uploaded it to Vimeo to remove all the pop up advert crap of youtube!
Song is `States of Mind` by Utah Saints

Tomorrow`s Harvest - is about to begin...

Out tonight on the SURLY Pugsley,  and at Whitekirk today i saw the first Combine parking up in a nearby field and prepped to start. Still too damp today with last nights showers but with the forecast for the next week expect to start to see these mechanical monsters reaping the harvest across our county of East Lothians golden brown fields...

-:)

The seeds sown are about to be reaped. Its about to begin..

Amazing sky this evening...

Not many old East Lothian farm steadings remain that have not been developed into housing...

In 5 1/2 years blogging about East Lothian i have still not done a post on Tantallon!, despite having ridden around , and under it on the coast, i will get around to it sometime...

Along the coast to North Berwick and it was a lovely evening with calm water as i headed to the towns harbour...
There would be as forecast no sunset due to cloud to the west. But between 6 and 7pm we got as so often here on the East coast that `magic hour` of light... check this out...

Life is good...