Bog Myrtle & Peat

People say you should see Białowieża in the summer – that’s when the place is shining. But I went in December and it shone for me. Because everything that is done in summer must be undone sooner or later. There’s progress to reverse; death to finalize and then subvert. The forest is differently bright in… Continue reading

I first heard about Poland’s Białowieża forest almost eight years ago. It’s regarded as the last significant piece of primeval woodland in Europe, and it sounded to me like a fantasyland. It’s reckoned that nothing has changed there since the last Ice Age, but for all I was thrilled by the idea of wolves and bison,… Continue reading

Such rain as you’d hardly believe, and the sheep swept like dead leaves into the gullies and rushes. They’re miserable, and the water runs off them in spate. Cattle stand back in the whins and the pine trees bend and creak above them. There’s nowhere to gather steam or a cosy fug of comfort –… Continue reading

I was invited to be on television. Researchers found my blog and came to me with a proposal last month. They were making a program for BBC Scotland about young people in the countryside, and despite my increasing antiquity, I seemed to be a good fit. But then there was talk about grouse moor management,… Continue reading

Without wanting to get too turnip-heavy, it’s worth noting one practical detail about feeding turnips to cattle. My cows were baffled by turnips at first. They had never seen anything so ridiculous, and all my carefully-grown roots were completely ignored. So on the advice of friends and neighbours, I began to chop them up with… Continue reading

The turnips are frosted, but that’s not to say they’re finished. A third of the field has now been lifted and fed to the cattle, and the remnants are standing proud in the ice and driving rain. In trying to measure the conservation benefits of having grown turnips in 2019, I find it’s hard to… Continue reading

It was a fine treat to be invited down to Teesdale last week. I love the North Pennines, and always reckoned that if Galloway was wiped off the map tomorrow, I’d head straight for the hills between Alston and Wolsingham. That’s partly to do with the sheer quantity of black grouse in the area (probably… Continue reading

I was glad to revisit some of my old plantings last night on the edge of another brutally cold darkness. The thermometer on the hill was down to -7 as I crunched and spattered through the rime, and I turned in a moment of curiosity to find the juniper trees which I planted here in… Continue reading

Decent, fearsome frost and the turnips are bound to the ground. It takes a kick to get them up like, gouging them like eyeballs from their sockets – then I’m staring at clods of ice and the shaws falling away like rotten hair, somehow slippery and rasping in the same cold handful. And the tops… Continue reading

Out on the hills above Carsphairn, and lit by a low and sinking sun. I went up that way ten years ago, but that’s not long in the language of peat and granite. Nothing has changed in that time, but I’m a different person altogether and that alone is humbling. It was fine to pound… Continue reading