Bog Myrtle & Peat

With dry days and the nights so cold, it’s fair to guess that my oats were sown too soon. I’ve been looking forward to revisiting cereal crops, and it’s been fine to see birds and beasts responding to my work in a new field where the grass ley was almost fifty years old. Thrushes crammed themselves into the new furrows at the end of February, and hares crept around the clods in the aftermath of harrowing. It’s yet another confirmation of the old truth that nature responds to action. Plough, burn, fell or plant – actions like these create a frizz of interest and curiosity in the landscape. It’s relatively counterintuitive too, because conservation often feels like it should be based on protection; swaddling and preservation. Perhaps I’m overly bullish, but what I’ve seen endorses a growing feeling that it can be important to act; to roll up your sleeves and make a mess.

There was one blissful moment of sheer magic when, as I worked to harrow this field and powdered the crumbs of soil into a finer haze, gulls descended. They fell from a deafeningly clear sky and coasted around me in a riot of light and shadow; seventy herring gulls, evil-eyed and crisp as napery within arm’s reach. I laughed aloud and watched them follow as if I was the pilot of some noisy boat, trailing a wake of newly rummled sea behind me. Many landed, but when I turned and came back past them, they rose in disgust and were gone. I stopped the tractor and climbed out, trying to see where they had gone. Far up high on the very edge of what I could make out, gulls were turning and heading for the shore. I was of no lasting interest.

Now lacking even the smallest dash of rain, the oats are rising from the ground, powered only by the memory of dew and soil moisture. I see swarms of linnets; great waddling doos which slap and clatter away from the hunting hawk. There are leverets and rooks and a new surge of goodness afoot.