Bog Myrtle & Peat

I’m always pleased to receive feedback from readers of this blog, but I must say that it’s equally gratifying to receive material support. Having followed my progress and been in touch for several years, a long-term reader recently contacted me with the offer of a plough. Knowing that I would soon be needing such an item and having little use for an old one of his own, he generously put the implement at my disposal. It was good fun to head over to Roxburghshire to see him and collect the plough last week when work finally made the two hour trip convenient.

I found an arable landscape in the east; I was a fish out of water. The countryside smelled of soil and vegetables – a patchwork quilt of colours and textures. Galloway is rich and varied, but our agricultural land is dominated by grass. The view from my office window provides me with a million shades of green. I forget how monotonous this place can be when compared with other parts of Scotland, and it was a joy to drive through alternating stubbles, furrows and winter cereals.

One recently ploughed field was littered with lapwings, and I slowed down to watch a pair of hares wandering through a strip of something I couldn’t identify. Reed buntings and larks rose up from the barley stubble, and rooks stirred to and fro in the cold wind. There are still wild partridges here, and a local shoot has resurrected them back into prosperity again. Wildlife has been lost in the Borders over the past forty years, but there are still burrs of activity which our grassland world sadly lacks in the west.

The trailer was soon loaded and I took to the road again. I couldn’t resist the idea that I was taking some part of that mixed arable richness home with me – the seed of proactive diversity, symbolised in a plough.