Bog Myrtle & Peat

Dusk, and a small shape comes into the yard. I blink and frown and narrow my eyes. It’s urgent and gliding on leggy pins; fluid and nervy and rolling like a ball beside palls of sow thistle, bramble and burdock. Whatever this is, it keeps jagged company. Then a surge of recognition. A hedgehog. Hello… Continue reading

Rain in the blue dawn; bats guddle in the mirk. I sit in the yard and listen to the day. The year has passed beyond the point of skylarks; they’re all gone now, or silent, which is the same thing. So morning comes with the clattery chime of swallows – a special song which belongs… Continue reading

It’s a grand swell of pride to go up among the calves of 2019. They stand to their hocks in the seedheads, and they snuff the wind and blink as I come near. We finished up with three perfect riggit calves, two solid black calves and two jumbly beasts which lie somewhere on the spectrum… Continue reading

  It’s a habit of this blog that I flag the coming of autumn. I mark a day in the first week of August and I note the first breath of a new season. This article from 2016 is a good summary and a fair assessment of how I’ve come to do it, but it’s… Continue reading

The oats resurge, and now I find them through the turnip field in clumps and rustling spires. They spring up from the gateways and the handy corners where the bull was fed in winter; he has crapped them into life again, and now they come to me as a weed. Here’s a reminder that the… Continue reading

Owls are easily undone. They’re soft and beckoning, and hawks hunt for them along the wood edge. I well remember the brittle crack of an owl struck amidships by a falcon. The white wings folded into a shuttlecock, and the pieces were strewn across the long grass like shreds of paper. So they fly in… Continue reading

What a child I was to stand off this crop and imagine that I was in control. I worried that my hoeing would destroy all the weeds, and I prepared to cordon off certain corners and protect them from the ruthlessness of my own efficiency. I had no idea what I was talking about. That… Continue reading

Yes, it’s grand work hoeing turnips. The hoe comes easily to hand, and the blade rubbles up the weeds something rotten. You can do a good job or a perfect one; it’s your decision. So you work away beneath the sun as if the world was nothing more than your own shadow on a rig… Continue reading

I’d like to meet the man who invented plastic baler twine. I’d wrap that stuff around the most sensitive part of his hands and steadily tighten it over several days until the skin was smeary and white and he wailed for mercy. We’ve now endured everything that might possibly have gone wrong with the hay.… Continue reading

  I met a man who used to keep curlews in captivity. It’s not an easy business because the birds are edgy and hard to settle, but he took that as a challenge. After many years of trial and error, he slowly taught himself how to raise young curlews in pens and then settled them… Continue reading