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I was longing to get on the road again, and so within a month I had left my job, my girlfriend, my house, my friends and family, and exchanged it for an organic Wwoof farm in the valleys of central Switzerland.

European Tales: Switzerland 2001, a lengthy tale

Joseph Tame
2006-06-30 17:46:43

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I rambled on about all that had gone before and offering advice and help where they could. An additional part of my therapy was the training in the use of dangerous farm machinery. That "little boy" part of my character that was fascinated with big machines has never left me, and so I found it quite difficult to disguise my desire to get in the driving seat and play like a little kid. The first toy I was let loose on was the hydraulic crane suspended from the roof of the hay loft - this ran the length of the vast traditional Swiss barn on a set of wheels that ran on a pair of rails. The barn was long enough to get up quite a bit of speed. but you had to be careful otherwise you'd end up shooting off the end of the rails, through the barn wall and landing on the adjacent road. One also had to be careful when turning 180 degrees due to the relatively narrow nature of the barn. I had many close misses when attempting to carry out this manoeuvre as the clawed hay-hand on the end of the long arm was pretty big - one false jolt on the controls and you'd punch out a new skylight! Running alongside the crane's rails was a telescopic pipe, about 40cm in diameter. This was attached to a huge vacuum cleaner contraption and the entire setup was linked to a small computer. As Fredi brought in the hay so it was my job to fork it towards the mouth of this monster. Via the computer-controlled telescopic pipe it was then distributed evenly over the entire loft - I was warned not to get too close, as it was not unheard of for people to get sucked up too.

Naturally, the other pieces of machinery that I loved were the tractors. One of the two was an old English model, painted crimson red just like in my childhood books. That was the best - careering along the Swiss slopes in 3rd gear (being so old it didn't have the 32 speed gearbox that the other tractor did), sun shining, green meadows, car coming the other way.!

When the hay had been cut ...