WHEN we arrived here 10 summers ago, the land felt very different. Grazed hard by the cattle, the pasture ran up to the hedges in an uninterrupted velvety sward. The fields lay open, quietened and empty, with a shadow of the diversity they support today.
Over the course of that first winter in 2011, I combed the land, looking into the knit of the turf to see what it might tell me. The grasses ran thickly where the ground was rich, but, on the thin soils of the higher ground, a more diverse weave of perennials pointed to their potential for meadows. The next summer, we struck a deal with a local farmer and put three-quarters of the land back to meadow. He would have the hay and the grazing in exchange for two loads of ‘black gold’. I was happy to have the manure in exchange for the fields being managed as we wanted and he was delighted with the grazing and the hay.
The five acres below us on the rich slopes that run to the stream were retained for yearround grazing and as an open area of ground for a new orchard and nuttery. The remaining 15 acres were allowed to grow to meadow. We were lucky that the farmer before us had never ploughed the ground and had re-sown it with fast-fix rye grass. As he was notoriously careful with money, neither had it seen chemicals or nitrogen feed.
However, it has not been a case of simply letting the grass grow long. The rich ground where the soil is deep is less conducive to diversity and the grasses grow thickly there at the expense of the flowers. We did see promise where the soil thinned on the higher slopes and, in talking to neighbours, we found that our top fields had once been known locally as the Hospital Fields. Sickly animals had been grazed there to self-medicate on the herbs that grew in the pasture.
Denne historien er fra September 16, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra September 16, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
