Bog Myrtle & Peat

Decision taken, progress made – I’m heading for oats in 2018 and the work is underway.

There have been several speed bumps on this journey, not least because of a particularly bad oat harvest in 2017 which resulted in a real shortage of seed oats. I rang around most of Scotland and Northern England before finally finding enough seed to do the job, and I hadn’t realised the value of laying plans so far in advance. In my defence, it would have been easy to find barley or wheat, and even well-established arable folk have found oats tricky this year.

I began to rake through the ploughed field two days ago, building a fine, crumbly tilth to form a seedbed.  Having failed to find a set of disc harrows, I depended upon the Triple K Cultivator which came over from Kelso in March. As anticipated, this is not the perfect tool for the job, and the steel fingers quickly hauled up some big slabs of rotting yellow turf. A good deal of this messiness was my own fault, and I soon learned to refine the job as I went along, adjusting the height until it just tickled the dry furrows and broke them open.

I am pretty satisfied with how it worked out. The soil was crumbly and clear, and I raked it back and forth from every angle until the soggy old clods were powdery and light. It was a fine sight to be followed across the field by a cloud of dust in the evening light, and wheatears watched me from the dyke tops as I clattered back and forth. There are still some dips and troughs where the plough has scored the ground, but these will soon iron out and the project looks promising. I’d like to finish this job with some light chain harrows, but I think this would just be cosmetic and the bulk of the work is done. It’s frustrating that I couldn’t sow the crop then and there, but I have to wait for lime to be delivered next week. Maddeningly, it’s warm, damp and sweaty out there – perfect conditions for growth.

Aside from the muddle of picking a crop, I am very pleased to be working with oats, which are unquestionably Scotland’s national cereal. Oats run deep into this soil from every angle of history and culture, and while the plan is for most of this year’s crop to end up as cattle fodder, I can’t help looking back to Samuel Johnson’s derisive dictionary definition of oats as “a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people”. Defiant in the face of snootiness, I look forward to thriving on home-grown porridge, haggis and cakes…