A farmer drives a horse-drawn reaper through the fields, cutting the hay, while sailboats glide by on the river. Children toss the new-mown hay and play ring-around-the-rosie. Men pitch the hay into carts until, piled high, the horses pull them into the barn.
It's a series of lovely images of a rustic life in a simpler time, when people worked themselves into early graves and sent the horses to the knackers. For everything we lose in simplicity and a sense of place and belonging, we gain something too. Likewise, every gain has its loss. We live longer but lose any sense of connection with who we were. We eat better, but too much. We look at these antique movies on a computer screen in our home, easily and cheaply, but miss the community that seeing them in an audience would bring.