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Sugar harvest


Oooo the cane harvest is starting.  Narrow gauge railway lines for cane trains criss-cross the county everywhere around here. I read that there is 4000 kilometres of them!

Most cane is harvested green these days and chopped into short lengths by the harvesting machine.  Apparently cane has to get to the mill quite quickly after harvest and the trains facilitate quick delivery, though some is delivered by truck or the trucks carry the cane to the train and dump their load into the train carriages.

What I am wondering -- if we travelled up here a few  months later would the landscape be bare?

Comments

  1. Love how you captured this scene.

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    1. Thanks JM. You might notice the foreground is blurred. It was a quick shot out of the window of the car as we were moving along, not much time to frame or think.

      I was hoping to get a photo of one of the little trains but I didn't see many of them and this was a better shot anyway.

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  2. I don't know the answer, but you got a fine picture. What an interesting journey!

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    1. I think I got to understand the answer as I moved further along. As the cane was being harvested they were tilling the soil for the next crop ... there was more or less a patchwork of tall cain fields and tilled fields. In some places the replanting had been done and there was already a shimmer of green. So I guess in time the field of green is not so tall but isn't all bare at the same time.

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  3. The terrain is very flat with no elevation on the horizon. It looks like Kansas and the Oklahoma panhandle. In a month it will look like the surface of the moon with stubble rather than craters.

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    1. Bill, I noticed nearly all of the cane fields were on very flat land. But this image is deceptive there was usually a mountain range running behind the fields. I am fairly sure i have a shot of that a little further along in the sequence.

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  4. Yes in a few months it all will be stubble.

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  5. This photo reminds me of a Jeffrey Smart painting.

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    1. Hey I like that. It is a nice image because it is "functional" rather than "beautiful" and in the end has a beauty of its own.

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  6. It's amazing how quickly it re-sprouts!! It was a sad day for Pilchard when the cane fires died out ... although you still get them from time to time!

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    1. I have never seen a cane fire. It must be quite stunning to see. I'm also wondering if it has a sugar smell as well.

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