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A Gallery of Rust<br />
next to a redundant satellite-dish. People<br />
comment on it. One day they may comment<br />
on the ugly dish. Still clearly visible is E H<br />
Bentall e Mill.<br />
Why here? This is a question about why<br />
the machine was originally brought to the<br />
farm, another is why its kind declined in<br />
use and so could be expected to sink into<br />
the ground somewhere. Hay-rakes lost to<br />
devices that pick up as well as bale, spinners<br />
lost to that which digs and gathers.<br />
Another question focuses on the exact<br />
spot. General themes of history become<br />
specific. Not farmers, but specific farmers.<br />
Not disc harrows, but this disc harrow.<br />
Sometimes machines outlast sheds. Roofs<br />
blow away, outbuildings fill up and new<br />
machinery needs to be kept dry. So old<br />
machines are dragged outside, one by one,<br />
and left like lonely exiteers from the Ark.<br />
There is no point dragging them further<br />
away for where would the ‘further’ be?<br />
Possibly that rocky spot on part of the<br />
farm that was sterile for cultivation? There<br />
they are. Sometimes, more poignantly,<br />
they were left overnight on a spot by a<br />
farmer who died. They mark an<br />
interrupted job.<br />
An Abandoned Clachan<br />
Sometimes they find their way into cottage<br />
ruins. ere may be no roof, but if you stow<br />
the machine inside, the farm looks tidier.<br />
I once looked into a house in an abandoned<br />
clachan that has a spectacular view of Ben<br />
More. I saw the upturned undercarriage of a<br />
vehicle inside, taking up much of the space.<br />
e doors were small, so the move would have<br />
involved heavy liing machinery. Maybe the<br />
question, “You did take that old thing away<br />
didn’t you, to smarten things up?” was<br />
returned with an otherwise expressionless nod.<br />
Fortunately tidiness is not an overriding<br />
concern, so we have the pleasure of seeing the<br />
once horse-drawn at the roadside le behind<br />
by history, though in a picturesque spot.<br />
By the area where boats from Inch Kenneth<br />
landed on Mull, there is my favourite hay<br />
rake, which I suspect was once landed on the<br />
island and parked by the road in order to be<br />
picked up later. It is still waiting.<br />
One day someone will find a machine with<br />
no make, no serial number, no obvious<br />
function, no adjacent field, no farm - only a<br />
barely visible ‘...and sons’ on an arm<br />
sticking out. And we will gather around<br />
it like some old stone circle.<br />
The photographs were taken by the<br />
author, Seth Cook.
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