"CAN I borrow an old spoon?" John asked as he rummaged around in the cutlery drawer. Strange question. The spoons are as much his as mine and do not normally need a letter of permission to be used.

"Ah, but there's a risk I might lose it," John explained. "I've lost a bolt in the combine and need to rig up a bit of kit to reach it."

The "kit" was a long piece of cane and he was by now busily taping a soup spoon to the end of it to provide himself with a long scoop. I knew the job he was on with - mending the straw walker in the bowels of the combine so that when the corn is ready to go, so is the combine.

Earlier in the day he had already taken another piece of the straw walker to a nearby garage to weld where the piece had been bent and broken. He had found this particular part of the walker, missing since the end of last harvest, in the centre of a big bale of straw. He had rolled the bale out to provide fresh bedding for the bullocks housed in the fold yard.

The piece must have dropped off the back of the combine when he was harvesting and was then subsequently baled inadvertently.

Yesterday I had helped John lift one of the sieves, where the corn is separated from the chaff, out of the back of the combine and then load it into the back of the trailer.

The sieves had gone to be repaired by the John Deere supplier as they were cracked and needed strengthening. Our combine is getting rather elderly and needs a lot of TLC to keep her going through harvest. But when the repaired sieve is fitted back in, she will be good to go once the weather permits.

Back to the spoon on a stick. "Do you want me to find you a magnet?" I asked. My thought being that a magnet might be a better tool for this job than a soup spoon. But John had chosen the right implement, and a dustier, oiler and more straw encrusted farmer emerged after a few minutes, with the bolt clasped firmly in his hand.

To carry out this work John has moved the combine from out under the big shed to in front of the grain store where he has a mini workshop laden with his agriculture toolkit. But no soup spoon I noted.

This has meant the door to the grain store is open. And Millie, to her joy, has licence therefore to rummage and sniff around to see if she can flush out any mice that might dare to have taken up residence.

Within seconds she had found a nest of mice in a heap of barley. The shed is vermin proof, and we have never had a rat in there, but mice can creep in where rats can't. So combine mended, mice eliminated and soup spoon back in cutlery drawer. Job done.