First summer seed haul

My first harvesting of the year with Glorious Grasslands, and we returned to the same place where we had been two years ago to the day. One of the memorable features of the last harvest here was the huge swirl of hawksbeard seed which really irritated the eyes, and marked the point where safety glasses became a standard part of my harvest PPE. However, today the hawksbeard had mostly blown away. There were five of us today and two harvesters. It was pretty full on from the off, especially as a huge amount of grass was being picked up. We experimented with raising the brush (although we didn’t want to miss the yellow rattle) and also lowering the revs on the harvester motor. The latter seemed to work most effectively and we then started to get more manageable loads. Tom thought about maybe going to a couple of other nearby fields, but on closer inspection the key species in those fields that we would have wanted hadn’t set seed yet. I learned something new today – Red bartsia is also…