Inanimate or not?

Watering the spuds

Thursday 16th July 2015

It's that time of year, when the heat (at last) dries up the soil and the fields of potatoes need irrigating to produce the best crops. Farmers use different types of systems to put water onto the fields. This particular one caught my eye in one of Sledmere Estates fields on the road from Garton on the Wolds to Sledmere. I was fascinated by the way a large area of the field was watered by a combination of a swivelling head and a swinging boom at the end of the head, that interrupted the length of the water jet. Water was fed from some supply through the giant hose reel and into the red metal stand finally being squirted out of the pipe. The more I looked at this inanimate object, the more it came to life! On a calm evening I could hear the water falling on the crop, there would be a 'hiss' as the boom dropped onto the water jet causing a secondary spray. Coupled with this was the head twisting and firing water almost at random, as if it had a life of it's own. The hose reel was completely inanimate, but the red metal structure with two arms and feet, plus a head that could turn and spit suggested to me some form of dragon, squirting water instead of fire. Rain forecast tonight, will that kill it?