Attending the barley ballet

Late one August night, John Lewis-Stempel and his labrador are transfixed by the last dance of the barley field, as moonshine bathes the shimmering and swaying sun-goldened crop in an ethereal silvery light

- John Lewis-Stempel

‘It is sometimes consoling to remember how much of the pleasantness of the English country is due to men, by chance or design. The sowing of various crops, the planting of hedges and building of walls, the trimming of woods to allow trees to grow large and shapely, and so on, are among the designed causes of this pleasantness’ Edward Thomas, ‘The Last Sheaf’, 1928.

IT was nearing on midnight and there was no real need to see the barley again. The combine was coming the next morning, the date set in digital, as unrelenting as stone, as definite as Moses’s tablet. The grains of the sun-goldened barley heads had been run through several hands and, when squeezed, found to be firm, but milky inside, which in lay language means ‘ripe for harvest’. Moonlight was lying on the lane, as open as an invitation: a country lane exists, waits, to progress you practically from A to B. When illuminated by a summer moon, a lane will also actively entice and be a beckoning.