The prickly heat of the husks jabbing all over your body as you turned the hay before baling. Then the mad teenage machismo of feeding the bales on the elevator as fast as possible. All in a golden haze of pollen and flies and butterflies and beetles and diesel fumes.
And the deep Xmas pudding smell of the hay already beginning to ferment on the wagon as you rode on top of the last load under an unfairly wonderful immense universe, with the starcurtain lowering like snowflakes as the horizon went through blue to indigo to purple and black. Then stacking the barn to the rafters, with the hard fungus tang of last year's bales being gradually drowned out by the sweetness of the new summer's wild harvest.
Then later, the barley. With the neighbour's combine lumbering across the slope like a Baleen Whale harvesting cryll - Comanched on all sides by gulls and daws and starlings.
And then hauling the sterile straw bales, which were much more hypodermic than the hay. Then the stubble burning, with the late summer sun blasting its way through the blue smoke. And the mad scattering of the rabbits and the squealing or exploding of the broiled frogs, their legs like teeny barbecued chicken drumsticks - once the dare had been taken. And much more delicious. And grown-up beer to wash them down - and proper cheese sandwiches on Mother's Pride - real farmers being far too busy to bake their own bread, like in the stories.
Then the strawfights with tumbly farmers daughters - and then the buckets of water just to wake up out of the heat trance of dust and sunburn and teenage competitive labour. And home to sweat out the sunburn through the sticky night.