Page 16 - Demo

PAGE 16 Four fire engines were in attendance in the middle of September at a stubble fire which spread to the hedge along the road from Astwood to Cranfield.How it started is still unknown, but with the recent dry weather, one spark or ember is all that is needed to set a fire going.This made me think about how quickly a normal situation can change to an abnormal one. These types of fires used to be quite common, when stubble burning was a part of the agricultural calendar, but the practice was stopped in 1993 due to environmental and health issues.Having not experienced anything like it for a while, to see the blue lights heading to the scene of the flames was quite dramatic but would have been VERY common back in the 80%u2019s when I was still involved with agriculture.I also thought about change this weekend when I volunteered at a Ploughing Match in Kent. Ploughing was also a traditional event in the annual agricultural calendar and dates back to over 4000 years BCE, and of course many people will be aware of the lines in the Hymn %u2018We plough the fields and scatter, the good seed on the land%u2019 but I am still waiting for the replacement verse of %u2018We Min-Till the land and direct drill the seed%u2019, as the act of ploughing that we used to see so often as we drove around the countryside, has massively dwindled due to recent advancements in technology and also our understanding of the environment.