Dawn Chorus

5^th May. 4.30am. Dawn. Soft grey, grainy light has slipped into the room through the window pushing the darkness into the corners. Somewhere, on the edge of consciousness, a bird breaks the silence of the early morning. A blackbird. Maybe the one that sings from the apple tree at the end of the garden.

I turn over, squint at the clock and hurriedly switch off the alarm. As I shuffle out of the bedroom I ask myself whose stupid idea it was to get up at this ridiculous hour to go on a dawn chorus walk. I could have listened to the bird’s wake-up call lying in bed, cocooned in a warm comfortable duvet.  ‘You booked it’ replied a tiny voice inside my head. No answer to that.

Filled with toast and tea, binoculars and notebook in rucksack I set off. It is the perfect morning to be up early; a chill rising from the ground, the sun lifting into a clear, pale blue sky etched with soft white contrails. And everywhere it is green.

After long months of wet and cold, with a false start in April that sent everyone rummaging for sun cream and shorts, followed by more miserable cold and wet, spring has finally spilled out across the fields, along the hedgerows and through the woods. The lane is laced with waist high white umbels of Cow Parsley, elephant-eared leaves of burdock and the tiny mauve flowers of Herb Robert. Gone are the glossy dark green leaves and yellow splashes of celandines. They have been shouldered out by clumps of Garlic Mustard, (or Jack by the Hedge) with its small white flowers and spicy green leaves. The Hawthorn has finally broken and the Sycamore is shedding its pale green florets across the tarmac. The Horse Chestnut at the bottom of the hill is covered in creamy white panicles each made up of tiny, white, five petalled flowers with deep lipstick pink centres quivering in the gentle early morning breeze.

Early May is the perfect time to meet up to enjoy the dawn chorus. Bird song is at its height because it is the breeding season. We might pause, hold our breath and listen to a blackbird pouring out its song from the top of a tree as daylight fades, amazed at the beauty of the sound but birdsong is purely functional as far as the birds are concerned. It is all to do with sex. The strident song of a wren hidden in a thicket of brambles is a come and get me call to catch that soul mate we all look for. The liquid sound of a nightingale late in the evening is a lure designed to attract migrating females passing overhead. The robin sitting on the fence, singing its heart out as daylight breaks is warning possible competition to stay out of his territory. In May sexual activity hots up and so does the bird song. By June most birds have paired up and the serious business of rearing young takes priority and nights out on the town looking for that perfect partner have become a thing of the past.

I arrive a little late (as usual). The group has already gathered at the edge of the village where fields open out westwards and the Downs sweep up towards the sky to the south. A dozen of us; all carrying binoculars and well wrapped up. After introductions and the inevitable safety talk we set off along a gravelled road dubbed ‘Nightingale Lane’ into the hushed stillness of the morning.

On our left runs an overgrown thicket of Hawthorn, Blackthorn and Elder with Willow, Sycamore, and Ash rising behind. The sun has lifted above the tree line and is picking out the new green growth of the hedge. Behind it lies a mill pond, overgrown with reeds and hidden from view.

We pause to listen to a Chiffchaff repeating its name followed by a trill. I am looking for a small grey, brown bird with paler underparts but cannot see it flitting around amongst the leaves. Migrants, they arrive here in April from the Mediterranean. To the right of the Chiffchaff our guide Andrew picks up the wheezing sound of Green Finches as they dart through the trees. They form loose colonies for nesting. Safety in numbers? We pick up the song of a Chaffinch practising its musical scales. Someone once told me to remember the Chaffinch’s song by imagining a bowler working up to pitch a ball and for me that works.

And then comes one of my favourite bird songs and I see him! A Blackcap performing his rich musical repertoire; just for me. Another migrant which arrives in April. He has a black skull cap, she wears a blue. A Song Thrush competes, repeating the same tune, not once, not twice but three times to make sure we have got it! There are wrens hidden deep inside the hedgerow singing against each other.

Finally, the lane lives up to its name and the warbling, bubbling sound of a Nightingale pours out into the still morning air. Their numbers are declining, mainly due to the loss and degradation of their coppiced woodland but there are other factors involved which we are uncertain about including an increase in the number of deer grazing on the vegetation they need.

At the end of the lane, a gate opens out into a wide grassy valley with steep sides where if you look carefully you will find cowslips and Early Purple Orchids growing alongside each other. There are Skylarks rising and falling and singing around us. We climb and behind us the Weald yawns and stretches out his arms and turning around we can see forever. In the distance lies the smudge of the North Downs. Below us are fields, hedges, woods, churches, farms, villages wrapped in the soft cellophane light of a spring morning.

As we climb, the sun climbs and warms our faces. We are surrounded by open country dotted with clumps of brambles and thorn bushes. Here there are Whitethroat with their raspy song as they take off and dart from one clump of brambles to another. Linnets flit from bush to bush. Someone spots a Yellow Hammer, and we stop to listen to the ‘chink, chink’ of its call.

Almost at the top of the hill, a pause for breath and in the clear blue sky is a Buzzard, up early. This one has not waited for the air to warm so he can use the thermals to lift into the sky. We leave him and as we plunge into the shade of the woodland that runs along the top of these Downs a Green Woodpecker yaffles across the valley. Amongst the trees Andrew picks up the call of a Stock Dove. Often in pairs they nest in holes in trees. Finally, he pauses to listen to the song of a Gold Crest, too high up in the branches to see and too high pitched for me to hear.

Sadly, we begin our walk back. Down from the hills, through the valley, along Nightingale Lane and back to the village. Back to noise and cars and people. Back to reality.

Piggies

We turned off the main road onto a country lane. Narrow, winding, muddy and lined with trees. The Downs were a misty smudge to the south as we headed north into the Weald through ancient bluebell woodland that rubbed shoulders with small lush green fields grazed by sheep. We drove down Furnace Lane, passed a large pond on our right and Hammer Pond Cottage on the left. Ghosts of another age when these woods vibrated to the sound of an iron industry that thrived on abundant wood for charcoal, iron ore, and water for power.

The farm land here was very different. The smallholding we were heading for was on heavy clay, much lusher but also much wetter. More grass for sheep but more problems with their feet. 

The directions were clear. A large red brick wall on the right and a little further on a gate and a large pig arc. As we arrived dead on time, the tight little knot in my stomach tightened.

This was it. A plan, a long time in the making, was about to come to fruition.

We were expected, the gate was opened. Parked beside the track leading into the farm was a Land Rover hitched to a trailer. As I climbed down from the truck and walked over to it a belligerent squeal echoed around the inside of the trailer.

The idea of keeping pigs had been there at the beginning; from the point when I knew I was going to take on my father’s old small holding. It was part of the deal I made with myself. There would be chickens and ducks for eggs, an allotment and an orchard. I hadn’t planned the sheep but they came anyway. I definitely wanted to rear pigs. The plan was to buy in eight-week-old weaners which I would fatten up for slaughter at around seven or eight months to fill up the old white freezer that stands in the corner of the shed.

I know this is the point at which I lose the vegetarians and the vegans have already left at the mention of chickens and ducks.

Why don’t I feel guilty, mortified by the idea of keeping an animal, perhaps growing fond of it, that I plan to kill and eat? Perhaps it is because I am a farmer’s daughter. We kept pigs when I was child. I have dim memories of the pig pens, the smell, the snuffling grunts as they moved around, soft white bodies, floppy ears and prying snouts. I enjoyed the pigs but I knew they were with us for a purpose. They would become pork and I liked pork.

So, when I embraced the concept of self-sufficiency, meat was on the menu as well as vegetables. I respect anyone who has principles about eating another creature but we are omnivores and I am never going to be a vegetarian. I feel it is acceptable to rear an animal to eat, providing it is given a good life, with access to the outdoors and freedom to move around naturally while it is alive. I am turning my back on cheap factory farmed meat, which is what we as consumers demand, and going for something free range and home grown.

As I peered into the trailer at the two pigs that I would be taking home with me, I was aware that this would not have been possible without the help of a good friend, an agricultural contractor I use for fencing and hedging. He was my hero over the pigs.

For a start he didn’t laugh (not even a smirk) when I confided in him that I fancied keeping pigs. He actually suggested that I use the shrubby piece of bank that divides my top field from the bottom as an area to run the pigs on. The larger trees would provide shade, the long grass and shrub something for the pigs to root around in. He agreed to sort out the fencing, which given the terrain, was never going to be easy and then he gently took me in hand and organised my dream.

Work started on the fencing in February and continued through the bitterly cold weather that the beginning of March threw at us. I had decided on stock fencing reinforced with two strands of electric wire at snout height. Belt and braces, because if there is one thing that pigs are good at, it is escaping. Colditz has nothing on a couple of smart pigs. We rigged the electric fencing up to the mains. Then came the problem of water. I had visions of filling a trough with a bucket but this was quickly rejected and I now have a self-filling water butt connected to the mains supply. Pigs drink a lot, and I mean a lot. He moved the pig arc I had bought into place and I took his advice on where to dig a wallow for my pigs to cool off in. Thought and care and attention to detail went into the job of turning this small piece of land into a suitable home for the new arrivals.

Both of them! This was never going to be a big commercial enterprise! The plan was to buy the piglets in the spring and fatten them up over the summer ready to send to slaughter at the end of October. The land would then have a chance to recover over the winter and the process would start again in the next spring. I am a fair-weather pig keeper. I don’t want to wade around in lots of mud coping with frozen water pipes.

I had chosen Oxford Sandy and Blacks, which have been around for almost three hundred years. Without the dedication of a small enthusiast group of pig breeders they would disappear. I peered into the trailer to meet my new pigs. They are, as the name says, a sandy, ginger colour with black markings. We loaded the larger of the two piglets into the dog crate I had bought for the journey home. He was predominantly ginger with small patches of black and one white ear. The second piglet was smaller but louder and much darker with a black rump. His ears hadn’t dropped. They were still pinned against his head. Three weeks on they are still pinned to the side of his head and he is still the loudest.

As we finished loading and I paid for them the enormity of what I had just done settled in the pit of my stomach. I know virtually nothing about keeping pigs. I am learning on the job. I have read up on pig keeping, frightened myself by looking at all the diseases they can suffer from, registered with a local livestock vet who has checked them out and successfully negotiated all the paper work that goes with keeping even small numbers of animals. I have listened to a lot of people with different advice and the main thing seems to be that everyone I have talked to is enthusiastic about keeping pigs and has assured me I will enjoy them.

As I take them their feed in the mornings and watch them rush up to the gate, squealing to greet me, I have to smile. They are characters; intelligent, friendly, inquisitive, funny and yes definitely …. enjoyable. 

If Winter comes can Spring be far behind?

I am sitting in my office at home surrounded by seed potatoes. They are ‘chitting’! I have popped them into egg boxes, each one carefully labelled because I know from previous experience that they get muddled up and one potato looks very much like another, even if it is a red Desiree. They are laid out along the windowsills and across the floor where they catch the light and warmth of the sun. My son believes that I have finally lost it but as I pointed out they would not be in here if he hadn’t returned home after a stint of travelling and reoccupied his bedroom!

Hopefully, the potatoes will respond by sending out tiny grey, green shoots and if the weather changes dramatically by the end of the month I could be living dangerously and planting the first earlies out.  Living dangerously, because the smallest hint of frost will seriously damage the tubers and blacken any leaves foolish enough to raise their heads above ground. For the uninitiated, in the earthy world of potatoes, first earlies, as the name suggests, are the first potatoes planted in the spring. These are real ‘new’ potatoes. Forget the imposters from Egypt. Freshly dug from warm, dark soil they are mouth-watering gently boiled with a sprig of fresh mint and rolled in melted butter. I plant Arun Pilot and start lifting them about a hundred days after they have gone in.

Then come the second earlies. For the last two years I have planted Charlotte. Next come the tough guys; the main crop which, all being well, will provide potatoes all through next winter and into the early Spring. My choice? Cara, Pentland Crown and Desiree.

The potatoes wait. Outside darkness sits around the cottage. The windows are streaked with rain and the rising wind is slicing across the field from the west. It is wet but warm and it seems impossible that just over a week ago we had snow coming out of the east.

Despite the veil of wind and rain that lay across the sodden hills, January and February had carried a seed, a promise that the year had turned but early spring is a deceiver, a siren, calling from the depths of winter. Her beguiling smile tempts us with glimpses of good things to come as days lengthen and the sun, trapped in sheltered corners, feels warmer and the air carries a tingle of excitement.

Light had begun to creep under the window at six in the morning and the birds had started rehearsals for the dawn chorus. The rooks in the wood above the small holding had been adding daily to the number of untidy, large, dark nests that stand out against the bare branches of the ash trees. There were splashes of vivid yellow and purple where crocuses had lifted their heads through the grass. Tiny dark green buds appeared from nowhere on the elder and the lower branches of the elm that grows along the side of the road on our walk to work had broken into tight, soft, pale green buds. Toads were on the move.

St Valentine’s Day unfolded to the sound of a woodpecker booming close to the house and there was a perfect early-spring-warm evening when the dog and I walked home in daylight against the crimson of a sunset that threw its reflection across the eastern ridge of the Downs in front of us and turned the hills a soft pink in the fading sky.

But then fickle Spring turned her back, shook her hair, shrugged a cold shoulder and delivered snow. In a second the world ground to a halt as it vanished beneath a covering of white.

The snow had arrived overnight and by dawn the garden lay masked under a soft sprinkling of white and a flurry of tiny, icy flakes drifted across a dark, grey, heavy sky. The ground turned to iron, pipes froze and the wind chill factor took the temperature down to something that felt like minus three. The dog, from a long line of working Collies, refused to go out. His only excuse as far as I could see was that at three and a half this was the first snow he had seen. I donned another layer of clothing, coaxed the resisting canine outside, slide my way along the lane to the small holding, prayed locks would open, carried water, laid down extra straw in the poultry houses, cracked ice on water troughs, fed hay to the sheep and gritted the yard. This was real winter.

Peering out between hat and scarf, eyes stinging with the biting wind I could only wait for a rise in temperature, a thaw that would soften the ground, open up the water pipes again and uncover the grass for the sheep.

And sure enough, the world turned and having left a trail of disruption the snow disappeared overnight silently and swiftly as it had come.

Wind and rain have filled its place. The mud has returned. But maybe (with the optimism only a gardener processes) the rain will ease; the wind will dry the soil and in a few weeks’ time I can plant out the first of those potatoes.

Something in the Air

The end of January and outside it is still dark as I grope my way down the stairs and put on the kettle for that first early morning cup of tea. Yet there is something in the air, a special magic when I open the kitchen door to let the dog out.  A hushed dark stillness, rain-washed overnight, hangs above the garden. I wait and watch in the warmth of the doorway as black softens into muzzy grey and the long limbs of the trees across the garden lift out of the darkness. From the upper branches of a hawthorn in the hedge comes the muted song of a robin. Then from the top of the elm over the road comes the piecing high note of a thrush, carefully repeating his song, again and again and again. Across the lane, in the bushes on top of the bank opposite, there is movement; birds flashing from one branch to another, silhouetted for a second against the hedge. Excited, long tailed tits.

As dawn opens her wings, a tingle, a shot of magic runs through the darkness and the dampness. Sharp, fresh, exciting; the year is turning. 

I am not the only one to have felt the shift in the seasons. There has been a great tit singing in the plum tree just outside the vegetable shed down at the farm, the familiar, strident ‘teacher, teacher’ call of early spring filling the damp air with its promise of things to come. I watched a pair of blue tits cavorting around each other a couple of days ago and I am sure the rooks in the wood above the small holding are getting restless as they lift and fall with the wind above the rookery. The low dark cloud around them carries the sound of their squabbling as they jostle for landing space amongst the moving limbs of the leafless ash.

On a neighbour’s double chimney pot sit two dark crows thinking about nest building, heads bent together prying into the dark interior of the stack.  

A week ago, there were tightly budded clusters of tiny snowdrops at the top of the lane, knuckled down against the bank of ivy at the side of the road, holding out against the rain and wind driving off the hills. Now they have opened; flawless white flowers standing out against the dark as I walk home in the evening head down against the cold. There are yellow crocuses on the lawn and a single celandine hiding beneath the bay tree.

In the corner of the bottom field, just beyond the boundary fence below the wood and the rookery, someone, somewhen, planted three hazel trees and coppiced them so they rise like outstretched fingers from the stools that were left when they were cut. The male catkins appeared before Christmas and now look long and showy, pale green against the bare branches of the ash that grows beside them. I look carefully and find tiny scarlet tipped female buds growing from the lower stems. They will open in a few days into minute vibrant crimson tufts; small, beautiful harbingers of Spring.

It is all too early but there is no going back.

At the beginning of the month in a surge of enthusiasm and optimism, on a wet, windy morning with storm Eleanor driving across the allotment, rocking the polytunnel and threatening to tear it from the ground, I collected together small pots, an assortment of cell plant trays, plant labels, and mixed a tub of part soil, homemade compost and well-rotted manure and set about sowing seeds. In pots I sowed Sweet Peas; four tiny black seeds, saved from last summer, in each and carefully popped them into a propagator to stop the mice from feasting on them. Over the plant trays I optimistically sprinkled Artic King lettuce seed, and more optimistically Coriander I had collected from the plant that took over a corner of the polytunnel two summers ago and finally totally optimistically I found a half empty packet of parsley seed and scattered that over a tray. Having carefully watered everything I stood back and waited. I put my money on the Sweet Peas but in fact it was the lettuce seedlings which appeared first about ten days ago. As I lifted the bubble wrap I cover everything with at night there they were; tiny miracles. Then the Coriander appeared against all my expectations.

Disappointment inched its way into the polytunnel as morning after morning I lifted the covers on the empty Sweet Pea pots. Had the mice miraculously found a way into the propagator, had the seed failed? Then two days ago they appeared, thin and spindly but definitely seedlings, four to a pot and if nothing else eats them and they don’t rot through my clumsy watering I have the beginnings of my flower garden for the summer.

Now I need to buy the rest of my seed.

It has started. Tomorrow January becomes February and the year is already unravelling, rolling out in front of us, carrying us onwards into the distance.

'Beam me up Scotty'

I had one of those moments last week, in the middle of a vast supermarket, half way down the ‘dried pasta’ aisle, between the fusilli and a vast range of different flavoured bolognaise sauces.

Maybe it’s my age. I did have a birthday last month which was something of a reality check. Or maybe it is the time of year, with Christmas, the festive shopping season and now the new year sales. Or perhaps it was the blue fading from the sky outside and the dusk gathering across the rows of parked cars, reminding me I needed to get home to shut up my ducks and chickens before Mr. Fox seized the opportunity of an easy meal.

Perhaps, I also need to explain that I don’t often shop in large supermarkets these days. The allotment provides the vegetables I need. The ducks and chickens more than keep me in eggs and the sheep are there to provide meat for the freezer. I try hard to shop locally and I am lucky because the village has a reasonable supermarket, a real greengrocer, two butchers and a fishmonger. Oh, and a chemist.  What more could you need? There is also a monthly farmer’s market which blends local food and local people, adds a dash of laughter, chatter and quite often music, stirs them together and serves them up warm with a sense of community as a side dish.

If all else fails there is always modern technology and home delivery from a van that blocks our narrow road when it unloads the food I have ordered.

Maybe all of this explains why I suddenly stopped dead in the middle of the aisle causing the shopper behind me to mutter something under his breath. Packets, jars, boxes, bottles screamed at me, pleading with outstretched fingers for me to buy them. There were tempting new recipes, bargains galore, a hundred ways to make a quick meal. So much choice I stopped

As I stood grasping the handles of my half-filled trolley I had this overwhelming sense of needing to escape. A ‘beam me up Scotty’ moment.

Suddenly I didn’t belong. I no longer wanted to be part of the feeding frenzy that was going on around me. I wanted to step off this enormous consumer conveyor belt that our human race has built. Saturation point had arrived. I didn’t want to buy anything, spend anything. There was nothing to tempt me. The ads since Boxing Day had failed. I didn’t need a new smart phone, a tablet or a vast television screen. I didn’t even want a choice of six different shaped pasta.

I shut my eyes for a second. Nobody needs all these things. We may want them, desire them but we don’t need them. We are manipulated into believing that happiness and fulfilment can be found in objects; in the latest intel processor or the most up to the minute coffee machine. (If it can’t do the ironing it isn’t worth having!!). Nobody’s life would be empty without them, less rich, less fulfilled but our world, our planet might be in a better state of repair if we were not driven by our greed to own more and more. Our atmosphere might not be clogged with greenhouse gases, our oceans trashed with pieces of non-biodegradable plastic, our forests logged, our rivers polluted and our countryside covered in concrete. Our future might be brighter.

Economists argue we need growth, ecologists plead for sustainability. Me; I want my new grand-daughter to grow up surrounded by a beautiful world that she can touch and see and hear and smell, a world where we have learnt to balance our needs with the needs of everything else alive on this tiny blob in space. I pray that when she looks at nature it is not through a screen, a virtual world of what once existed. I want her to feel the cold, wade through the mud, lick falling snowflakes, enjoy the warmth of the sun on her face, listen to the storm. I want it to be real.

So, what did I do? I chose the fusilli and headed for the cash out, piled the shopping in the back of the car and drove into the deepening dusk. I took the country lane leading down to my small holding, avoided the pot holes at the side of the road and watched the trees glide passed against the evening sky. I fed and shut up my ducks and chickens and stood for a moment looking out across the field to the wood set against the sky and the swelling hills beyond as the day drained away in the west.

What I so WANTED was a small cabin beside a forest fence surrounded by wilderness. A log burner, running water, the basics, energy from a solar panel, a small domestic wind turbine, carbon neutral where the rule was do I want it or do I need it? A home where I could wake to the sound of rooks lifting into the dawn sky and go to sleep to the call of tawny owls across an empty valley.

We all have our dreams. Mine is to step off this world and leave only a small footprint behind.

Is it just me or are there others like me out there?

Autumn

A solitary robin breaks the heavy silence with his call from the plum tree that overhangs the vegetable shed.  A pause as I open the door and look for him amongst the bare branches. He suddenly darts down onto the ground, hops towards the shed and then he is gone, disappearing across the allotment. Silence. Even the rooks have nothing to complain about this morning.

The air lying in the valley is still, quiet. There is a greyness where the sky blends into the softness of the hills in the distance. Corners are fuzzy and there is a hint of dampness hanging just above the grass. There is a smell of rotting leaves and wet earth. For the last month October has stomped its way across the allotment, dragging wind and rain behind it, stirred up storm after storm, picked up the tail of a hurricane turning the sun blood red and mid-afternoon night, rocked the fruit trees, torn at the polytunnel, rattled the glass in the greenhouses and shaken the roof of the shed.

Today is respite, a lull. Above the grey the sky has lightened and scattered patches of blue are floating across the field. It has been raining leaves all morning. They fall gently, drifting down to nestle on the damp earth, small splashes of yellow, orange and red.

The clocks have changed, autumn is sinking into winter, sunrise and sunset have moved closer together, the days have shortened and the air has lost its warmth. Sadness has crept in.

The shed strikes cold as I enter. I need a cup of tea to get me going this morning. As I switch on the kettle I look out at the fruit trees and across the allotment. Last week we stripped out the remaining beans poles, unravelled the tendrils of the plants and collected the brown shrivelled pods. We dug out the dried stalks of the sweetcorn. The sunflowers were chopped up and carted to the compost heap. The last of the husks of the marrows, emptied by the squirrels, were thrown into the wheel barrow and tipped beside the sunflowers. All that is left behind is heavy, wet, bare brown earth.

The end of the season.

Across the field, beyond the fruit cages I can hear the chickens and the ducks. They too know it is autumn. As the days have shortened they have stopped laying eggs and several of them are moulting; pecking around in the mud looking forlorn and scruffy. Some of the ducks have already been through their moult and they are looking very smart with neat well preened dark brown feathers. As they splash into the pond first thing in the morning I watch the murky green pond water slide off their glistening backs. They are laying well compared with the hens and I just wish I could persuade the family to enjoy their eggs as much as their sisters'.

Back in September I increased the size of the flock by buying in some point of lay hens which I am hoping will come into lay any day now to provide me with enough eggs for the winter while my old girls have a well-deserved rest. They are a mixture of black glossy Copper Maran’s, brown muted Rangers and Black Tails (Rangers in disguise with black feathers in their (you guessed it) tails. They have had a rough ride since they arrived; new kids on the block who have been bullied as a new pecking order has been established. They were not welcome at the feeder or into the coop at night to begin with but things seem to be settling down. Cold war rather than armed hostility. One of the incomers very quickly became adept at dodging aggressive, grumpy old hens, pushing in to get what she wanted and the others are slowly following her example. A chicken to watch!  Cleaning out the coop last week and watching the group of new arrivals scratching around I noticed that the combs on the top of their heads have reddened up, a sign that they are about to start laying. My winter egg supply?

I just need to ensure that the chickens and ducks are safe now that the evenings are drawing in so fast. It is dark before five and as the sky gathers the heavy clouds of night together, creatures of the dark emerge. For the last week there has been a tawny owl calling from the trees on the bank above the shed and an echo across the valley. A haunting welcome sound but last night just as I connected the electric fence around the duck run, the hair on the back of my neck prickled as the eerie cry of a fox drifted out of the gathering gloom at the far end of the field. Winter is coming; a lean time for all, cold, wet, hunger, desperation and only a wire fence and a wooden shed separate predator and prey. As I finish the welcome cup of tea and move outside I make a mental note to check the fence is working as it should.

Clear blue sky appears and there is warmth in the sun on my face as I haul the wheelbarrow out of the field shed towards the dung heap. There is still much to do before I put the allotment to bed for the winter. Those areas I have not managed to sow with green manure, turn with the cultivator or dig can still be mulched with well-rotted horse dung. There is celeriac to lift and the strawberry plants need weeding, the long brown stalks of the asparagus need trimming, raspberries need tying in, and there are brambles along the fence beside the greenhouse that need cutting back.

The end of one season and the beginning of another.

Natural Disaster

When disaster strikes there is really only one thing to do: you go home, have a cup of tea and bake a chocolate cake! On the Richter scale of 0 to 10 I suppose, if I was objective, it was a three, maybe a four. It could have been worst; the polytunnel could have ripped in two and taken off across the hills, the glass in the greenhouses might have shattered, I might have lost my ‘inner sanctum’, the garden shed, or the roof of the field shed could have been damaged exposing hay, straw, and tools to the elements.

At the end of the day all that happened was that I lost half of my runner beans which in turn took out half of my French beans as they collapsed under the force of a storm that lashed down the valley, pulled down the shutters on the hills, and swept wind, rain, and hailstones through the allotment. It only lasted for a few minutes but the devastation was complete as the hazel poles supporting the beans; dry and brittle after the heat a month ago, snapped and yielded to the full brunt of the storm.

The beans had taken two and half months to grow and seconds to lose their precious hold on the soil which gave them life. I had lost a crop. As I stood in the middle of the wreckage trying to separate the tangled mass of leaves, dripping red flowers and broken poles, desperately hoping to save something from the carnage, I wanted to sit down, give in and weep. Irrational, illogical response to the situation. I was not going to starve to death. The local greengrocer does a very nice line in runner beans. So why the despair? Was it all the wasted effort that had gone into growing them; saving last year’s seed, sowing them, putting up the poles? Was it knowing that I had ignored my better half when he had pointed out to me, just as I finished putting in the support poles, that I had planted them side on to the wind, making them vulnerable to storms? Or perhaps it was something less tangible.

We have stepped out of the process of growing our food, the cycle of sowing, growing, and harvesting. We live in a world where everything is always available regardless of the season. Standing in a brim-full supermarket we forget that growing food is not easy. The weather, disease, pests all take their toll on the crops we raise to feed ourselves. We have forgotten the importance of a harvest and we have forgotten to say thank you for it.

Our ancestors celebrated the beginning of the harvest season at the festival of Lammas Tide on the 1^st August. It was a ceremony of gratitude giving thanks to Mother Nature for all her fruits. Its origins go back to the Celts who called it Lugnasad in honour of Lugh, the sun god but the Anglo Saxon renamed it half-maesse meaning ‘loaf mass’, the day when the first new grain was milled and baked into small loaves of bread which were offered as thanks giving for the first fruits of the harvest.

If you grow things, raise crops, if you are a farmer, a market gardener, have an allotment or just grow tomatoes in a window box you step back into that cycle that binds us with our past.

Farming may now be mechanised and high tech but nothing has changed; the Anglo-Saxon farmer and the agricultural contractor high up in the cab of his combine harvester are part of something that has turned the world since the beginning of our time. They both play a game of chance with the god of weather working day and night if necessary to bring the harvest in. Once upon a time the corn was cut, stacked in stooks in the field to dry and then loaded onto carts to be carried to the barn for threshing; today the combine cuts the corn, swallows the grain and spews out the straw ready to be baled. Once upon a time the last wagon of corn or ‘hock’ cart would be decorated with flowers and ribbons in honour of the goddess they believed lived in the corn and the villagers would all turn out to escort it home. Today, the driver of the combine turns off the engine, checks his mobile for messages, jumps down from the cab and drives home alone.

But maybe both the peasant farmer and the combine driver pause and look back at the empty field as the light fades and evening creeps in from the corners where the corn once stood and maybe they both smile at what they have done, what they have achieved in bringing the harvest in.

The peasant may have believed a corn goddess lived in the crop and the combine driver may have an on-board computer in his cab but they are both part of the same timeless, endless cycle of sowing and reaping that turns the earth.  

Maybe, whether we grow things to eat or not we all still carry a thread from the past within us where the loss of a crop did mean hunger or hardship.

Maybe, this is why I felt so wretched that I had lost my ‘crop’ and maybe why I still have a corn dolly hanging in my window.