My neighbour is a lifelong beef cattle farmer. Mark Cottle and his family have farmed the land next to me for decades and there isn’t much he doesn’t know about our part of Somerset. When weaving his pale-blue tractor down the lane that runs between his farm and mine, he often stops to hop off and have a chat. This year, with the first stirrings of spring in the air as we stood surveying his fields and mine, Mark cast a distinctly critical eye over my land. ‘It’s all a bit of a mess, isn’t it?’ he suggested with a half-smile, raising an eyebrow.
Compared with his well-maintained farm next door, he’s right. His hedgerows are trimmed, box-like, to perfection annually; his well-fertilised grass mown and rolled in wide stripes, a dazzling shade of green. Mine is unkempt and it’s getting worse. We’ve sold off nearly all of the livestock: the 40 Dorset Poll sheep are gone for good and all but two of the White Park cattle, too, for a time. Our plan is to have them back in a few years’ time, once Nature has run riot.
We’ve ripped out all of our internal fencing, dug out several new ponds and filled in the artificially straightened ditch that ran deep and dark along the valley bottom, creating in its place a rewiggled, shallow stream, free to meander as it likes. Already, small patches of thorny scrub, gorse, blackthorn, dog rose, bramble and hawthorn are springing up through the sward and the wetter corners of what were once neatly enclosed fields are home to woodcock and snipe, which explode from the rushes at the slightest disturbance. All around, Mark sees intolerable species that hamper productivity—sallow, rushes, thorns—whereas I see something different: the beginnings of an exciting period of Nature recovery and, with it, an entirely different way of managing my farm.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة August 18, 2021 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة August 18, 2021 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds
