Bog Myrtle & Peat

The hay I made was a mile away, so I travelled back and forth from my farm to the fields over several days in a range of tractors and trucks. Amidst this constant shuffling of machinery, there were often times when all the kit was either here or there. That left me high and dry, so I sometimes had to walk or walk home. The journey takes me twenty minutes; down the track and over the bridge, then out along the main road and up the far side to the loaning. This walk is no great distance at all, but it’s opened my eyes to a thousand small details I might otherwise have missed.

I found a pheasant nest and a brood of newborn stonechats. There were honey-coloured leverets in the verge, and haws fattening on their twigs like grapes. It’s hard to see these crops from the window of a moving vehicle, and tough to clock how well the dog rose shows just now. There’s a riot of roses, and even in the time it took to make the hay, the bramble flowerings began to boil like confetti beneath rafts of purple nightshade and almost-edible honeysuckle. I wonder how much of this I’d usually overlook; so much of my time seems to pass in suspended enjoyment – I tell myself that I’ll focus on my surroundings when I get there. Instead I should focus on the better truth that I’m always there.

As I cross the river, ducklings rush away and the water crowfoot swirls in a gurgle. Something killed a young magpie on the shingle banks, and now the black and white feathers are losing their contrast in the dew and the raging sun. Sedge warblers sing almost constantly at this time of year. They sound like a careless fag-end in a crate of fireworks. It’s a riot of sound, and always herons padding gently along the silt. My twenty minute commute has become a safari until I reach the main road and walk for a quarter mile down the main road. That’s when I’m brought back to earth with a bump.

Timber lorries blast past within arm’s reach; they make the ground rumble with their enormity. Once when I tried but couldn’t step off the road into the verge, two cars blasted their horns at me because I made them steer and brake. Later on the same trip, a friend stopped his car and reversed back to see me. He asked if I wanted a lift, because surely I wasn’t walking by choice. I said I wasn’t going far, and he told me to “watch yourself, this road’s not safe”. Then he waved goodbye and driving off in a rush, he reminded me that the best way to avoid the danger is to become part of it.

It’s an old and well-established jibe that no matter how much farmers complain about crops, subsidies and the inadequacies of government support, you still “never see a farmer on a bike”. Even in the hardest times, they’re still buying range rovers with personalised number plates. If you never see a farmer on a bike, you’re even less likely to see one walking, and yet there’s value in taking this kind of time to reconnect with the farm and see it from a different angle.

I’m being unreasonable here. Agriculture’s bound up in an endless rush to perform a thousand different tasks across ever-larger areas. And when the whole world’s geared up for rushing, slowing down is nigh-on heresy – mot everybody can afford to saunter out for their day’s work like Laurie Lee. But a little extra time’s repaid when it reminds you why you’re doing this work in the first place.