Bog Myrtle & Peat

A hare knows more than I do. She lies on the open ground and wisdom grows upon her. She learns how the wind moves through the grass, and she keeps the fields when I’m indoors and the night lies dead against my window. She is the real master of this place; there is not a… Continue reading

It’s hard to imagine a more depressing General Election. It falls far outside the remit of this blog to enter the world of politics, but there is a single strand of policy which has become increasingly noisy and childish over the last few weeks. I can hardly resist a note of exasperated despair. In a… Continue reading

As autumn comes in and the cattle begin to lean upon me for additional feeding, it’s fun to rediscover the differences between belted galloways and riggit galloways. The two breeds are often lumped together as “the same animal with different markings”, but I’ve found a wealth of examples to show how different they really are.… Continue reading

I can hardly resist a brief note to record the damage caused by badgers on a few of our fields during the last month. In foraging and rootling for worms, they’ve turned over some big patches of turf in several places across the hill. If you were to add all these patches together (as you… Continue reading

The bull was loaded up and I brought him home in the wagon on the edge of darkness. His life now falls into two uneven halves. He spends four months at work on the cattle, and the rest of his time he’s back on home turf. I brought one of his calves to keep him… Continue reading

The wind stays in the north and east, and it’s cold enough to wipe the smile off your face. There’s a hare lying in the leeward edge of a turnip rig, and the ice birls upon his jacket. I long for a brutal winter, and I’m forever disappointed. In recent years, winter has become a… Continue reading

I found a book this afternoon, and the world seemed to fall upon me. It’s been seventeen years since I saw it last, and that time has not been kind to the spine and the wrinkled cover. It looks like an old thing, but I remember buying it new in a shop near Ons Hoop in… Continue reading

This high pressure’s enough to make your eyes pop. The wind’s in the North and the sky’s come over crisp and bare as a baby’s iris. In twenty years of watching and waiting, I’ve managed to glean a single piece of wisdom, and it’s dear to me because I learned it for myself. Whisper it,… Continue reading

Turnips make for a strange diet. The cows hardly know them as food, so I’ve begun to mash them up and slice the roots into chips. It’s a “serving suggestion”, and the beasts will soon learn. It’s grand work chopping turnips and I love it. I get up early just to do it. Strike a… Continue reading

Owls come out of a broken ash tree. A late brood has got away, and the youngsters hiss like a brush on a wet floor. I was ill a month ago. I couldn’t sleep. I heard the owls from my bedroom window and I went out to watch them in the darkness. White shapes came… Continue reading