This is my favourite time of year for dog walking in the countryside. Harvest time.

For once the fields are alive, with, hey! people working! You see tractors rushing around at all hours, combine harvesters motoring the lanes shedding straw, people actually in the fields. Instead of the anodyne, albeit high-yielding, emptiness, for a few weeks the countryside seems a living, breathing workplace.

(I'm well aware that one man and his tractor in 2010 can do the work of 30 men from 80 years ago...)

Of course, Esme does not care. She just likes the the crops because she can impersonate a dolphin, bounding through the barley, springing up on all fours, cresting the golden waves.

I like the harvest because I enjoy watching the mechanised choreography. You have the giant combine trundling along at 5 miles per hour, but undoubtedly the boss of the show. Then there are the tractors pulling huge trailers that take the harvest. The tractors wait patiently for their moment, then when the combines are full they move alongside for, at exactly the right moment, the long arm of the harvester to disgorge its load of wheat/barley/oats.

The tractors then wheel away to the farm to unload and return to begin the dance again. It's like watching a Queen bee and her drones, although not quite as manic.

Meanhwile, the residue lines of straw are being snaffled up by another tractor with a bailing machine that 'excretes' a bail of hay every five minutes or so.

Yet another tractor will be along to put the bales into neat stacks, the driver always making sure the 20-foot tall piles are created with one layer placed from one side and then the next from a 90 degree angle, for greater stability.

Most people would find this boring, but there is a soothing beauty to it. And the product is quite important. It's called bread.