Unemployed

The two JCB Fastrac 3230s owned by the local farmers co-operative for the drying of grass, maize (corn) & straw, are probably having quite a good year after the initial slow start in spring.

They were both parked up for the day as Luna & I did the evening walk but lots of farmers own tractors were arriving with empty trailers to collect their finished products. I couldn't see properly onto the massive area where the "raw" materials are dumped on the ground before they are later put into the drying tumblers, but I got the impression that straw is currently being processed.

The majority but not all of the wheat has been harvested but as we discovered on the walk, there is a lot of straw still lying about and not drying with the incessant spells of rain we keep having. Straw is quite valuable in our part of the world as we are at the southern most part of arable grain production and there are still farmers who still use straw as bedding for animals, especially in the generally more organic run farms closer to the Alps where they have no straw. So if farmers here don't need the straw themselves, they can sell it for good money. Even get farmers from Austria coming here to buy complete lorry loads. The extra cost of having the straw mechanically dried can easily be passed on.

(I am not going to discuss the environmental sense of this as I simply don't know enough about the co-operatives use & re-use of renewable energy - at the site and as can be seen in the photo there are masses of PV units and a bio-gas set up).

The JCBs have been used for several years but I have no idea what their life expectancy is. I have often posted them including one, two days before the Brexit referendum when I asked the employees at the co-op about their views on Brexit & JCB's future if the vote turned out to be Leave. Little did I, Boris Johnson or anyone else think it would turn out the way it did but I guess Boris knew that if he kept blaming EU for all the misery in the UK's economy & social fabric, he guessed he had an outside chance. The JCB boss Lord Bamford & his monied mates like Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg knew they were on a great money-spinning machine - £billions for a night's work.

I suspect the co-op may consider buying JCBs again after the grass and maize drying season ends on 31st October. Currently, the GBP has only fallen 25% and the chances are great it will slump again on 1st November. Looks like we might have €/£ parity and maybe the independent UK (or what is left of it) will be asking to join the Eurozone.

Boris has now said he will visit Berlin & Paris this week, his first foot on EU27 soil since taking office. I suspect he will get the same answer as the EU has always given - "Give us a realistic alternative & we will talk about it'. No more to say.