Wildflower meadows on the Barrow Hill Footpath

Richard Fonge writes:

This is the second consecutive wet December, with the ground at saturation point. More planting was done in the autumn, than last year, but there is still much to be done, as can be seen up the concrete road.

Last month I briefly outlined agriculture development through the seventies and eighties, finishing with the consequences of over production. All arable producers had to take 10% of their land out of production, reducing to 5% after a few years, and there was a compensation payment. You could if you so wished put the whole of your arable land into the scheme, and thereby enhance the Environmental impact, subject to guidelines laid down by government. With the growing industrialisation of farming, there became quite rightly, concerns about the destruction of habitat and fauna, although it was sometimes forgotten that the building of houses, by passes, motorways et al were also damaging nature to an equal degree. By the noughties Environmental schemes were introduced, and farmers and landowners embraced them, to go along with the new payments. Margins of grassland were left round fields, beetle banks made, wild life mixtures planted, trees planted etc. Much good Conservation work, a lot of it unseen has been done over the last twenty years. On the Barrow Hill walk, you go through two wild flower meadows, rich in their diversity of plants, and past two woodlands of a young age, with strips of game and nectar mixes to feed a wide variety of birds and provide cover for the game birds. Pheasant and partridge shooting are an intrinsic part of rural life.

As we leave Europe new policies are being proposed, for farming and the countryside, which will obviously have an impact on the countryside we admire each day. Let us hope a balance is struck between food producing and conservation. Always remembering that you can’t eat the view.

We are so lucky in these difficult times to live in a village surrounded by unspoilt countryside to enjoy and relax in, albeit we are having to suffer the great scar of HS2.

A happy New Year to all.

Richard Fonge

Friesian Dairy Cows as kept by Richard Fonge in 1975

Richard Fonge writes:

This November just like last year is turning out to be a wet one. As there is very little to observe around the Parish at the moment, I thought I would write about how farming has developed and its Environmental impact on the countryside, and why it is so important that we strike a balance between food production and conservation. Back in 1972 a White Paper was published by the government called “Food from our own resources”. This predicted that by the mid nineties we as a country would be short of food. A series of measures were put in place to increase the production of food, with new farm buildings, concrete, hedge removal, plant and machinery etc all attracting grants of up to 30% to 50% with an accompanying business plan submitted to your local Min of Ag office. The response was positive, and the way forward was led by the larger landowners, amongst whom there were now insurance companies and pension funds and others from the square mile who were buying land as an investment with the high rates of inflation at the time. Up to 18% at one time!

What our experts at the time hadn’t factored in was that science and new technology would by the early eighties bring about huge surpluses. For example: A fungicide spray was manufactured for the first time, this meant that the leaf of the plant could be kept free of disease allowing photosynthesis to have a greater effect. Result – yields went up by 50% or so. The nutritionists came forward with better diets for dairy cows and along with much improved genetics, milk yields increased. I was responsible in 1975  for a herd of 160 dairy cows whose average lactation yield was 5,500 litres, by the end of the decade the yield had risen to 7,500 litres (A lactation is 305 days). The cumulative result was corn mountains, excess butter and cheese, even wine lakes. Milk quotas were introduced, with each producer allotted their own amount they could produce, and we had to leave 10% of the arable land fallow.

The industry and those that serve it were a victim of their own entrepreneurial success and with farms getting bigger, labour getting less and greater awareness from the general public, farmers and land managers had to take heed of the Environmental impact.

The coming of the 1990s saw the greater influence of the Environmental lobby, and I will write a follow up to this article next month explaining as I see it how the different interests have developed.

Richard Fonge

Autumn in the Sulgrave countryside

Richard Fonge writes:

We are now halfway through Autumn with the leaves just starting to show their different colours. The winter season doesn’t start till December arrives, so please ignore all those in the media especially, who seem to think otherwise. At this present time we need more stories that are uplifting and not a surfeit of doom and gloom. I think it’s significant that we have on our screens so many programmes relating to the countryside, because in general the bucolic scenes they depict show a way of life that we all find relaxing to watch.

The squirrels are busy gathering nuts to hideaway for the winter, but the albino squirrels seen down Manor Road and the area behind have not been seen of late.

The planting of winter cereals is well advanced, but some fields such as those up the concrete road look as if the new crop has germinated. In fact, what has happened is that the previous crop shed some of its corn when combined. It was delayed in harvesting by bad weather, so when harvested a lot of corn fell to the ground when cut. Those seeds have now germinated after the ground was cultivated. In time past the housewives of the village and their children would have gleaned the fields. To glean was to clear the field of any ears of grain left lying on the ground and to use them, depending on type, to feed the family or the chickens or the pig, both of which were so vital to the well being of the home. It can’t be stressed enough how important the allotment, the hens and especially the pig were to villagers’ well being. That was why the church and chapel harvest festival services were so important. When you live off the land, your appreciation of it and the vagaries of the seasons have a much greater significance.

We have around Sulgrave a great variety of hedges, the Saxon double hedge that defines the boundary between Sulgrave and Stuchbury, newer hedges that have been laid and grown again to form stock proof hedges and wildlife corridors, and those that are trimmed mechanically each year, and these too harbour so much wildlife and fruits. There are two good examples of skilled mechanical hedge trimming. The hedge on the left of the Magpie Road and those on the way to Hemdon past Stuchbury. Hedges were planted as a result of the Enclosure Act of 1773 and are a unique feature of the British countryside. Before the act, all land was common. Once enclosed by hedges, stone walls, ditches etc it came into private ownership and the English country scene of today was born.

Lark Rise  to Candleford by Flora Thompson is a wonderful account of rural life in the late nineteenth century. Lark Rise is the village of Juniper, south of Brackley and Candleford is Cottisford, it is thought.

Richard Fonge