Modern hay making, with the hay being stored in plastic parcels as “haylage”.

Richard Fonge writes:

The wonder of nature. We have had one of the coldest and latest of springs, but following heavy rain, and a warm and sunny start to June all the crops have caught up in their growth and look promising for a good harvest. Nature soon takes back after being disturbed, a great example being the Moreton Road verges. Full once again of its natural grasses and wild flowers. The old railway line is another example of natural regeneration. At present there is a countrywide campaign to plant wildflowers where possible, and it should be encouraged, but in our own parish we have two fields of some twenty five acres planted as wild flower meadows many years ago and walked through on your way to Barrow Hill. Besides these fields we have within the parish other small areas not always adjacent to footpaths where wild bird mixtures have been sown as part of countryside stewardship schemes. Farmers take great pride in the stock and crops they rear and produce to feed us, but also in managing their land in sympathy with nature.

We have had much woodland planted over the past forty years on the farms and within the village. These woods and railway embankments are home to many species of wildlife and also provide a habitat along with he bird seed margins for pheasant shooting.

Late May early June is shearing time for the sheep, but this year it is later simply because the shearing gangs from New Zealand have not come over in their usual numbers, because of Covid restrictions and therefore a shortage of shearers. It needs to be warm to shear. When the lanolin has risen the wool falls off much easier. On the Stuchbury footpath you may have noticed a ewe with no fleece. Her wool has fallen off. This has been caused I suspect by a course of antibiotics at lambing time. Wool has among its many uses great insulating properties. A natural product sadly underused. A sheep farmer friend tried to sell fleeces to undertakers to line coffins, but with only limited success. The problem being he didn’t get any customer feedback!

Haymaking in Sulgrave in the 1920s (Bill Branson)

June was always hay making month, but nowadays silage is more likely to be made, or haylage where the grass is wrapped in plastic and preserved that way. To make hay is more labour intensive and at the mercy of the weather. Over the next weeks please look out for and take note of the grass mowing, the rapid growth of the maize at Stuchbury, and the flowering of the linseed at the top of Barrow Hill and at the Magpie junction. A wonderful blue flower.

Richard Fonge

Richard Fonge writes,

The adage of “Don’t cast a clout until May is out” is certainly true of this May. One of the wettest and coldest I can remember. The other farming saying is “A wet and windy May means plenty of grain and hay”. We shall see. The lambs grow a pace in all the fields around the Parish and on the Stuchbury footpath the sheep are now in the field nearest to the village and have been taken off the field above, which I suspect will now be cut for silage. Two grass fields but different grasses. Nearest the village is a permanent pasture, most like been there from time immemorial and made up of perennial, meadow, fescue, clover and other grasses such as cocksfoot. The top field was sown to grass two years ago, to a long term ley of perennial grasses, with I suspect some Timothy and Meadow fescue along with white clover, which is increasing each year with the tight sheep grazing. But what does the term ley mean? It is the word to explain the economic productive life of that seeding. So we have two, three, four long term leys etc. But whatever the length it still has to be managed, as do all crops. A similar long term ley was planted two fields across on the way back to the village.

Wheat is being grown above the electric fence, and on Barrow hill field linseed is just emerging.

In my farming career on more than one occasion I have been rung to say my cows were out, only to find they were someone else’s bullocks. So let me explain. The collective term for bovines is cattle. Cows are lactating females and therefore have an udder. A heifer is a female bovine until she gives birth, gives milk, and becomes a cow. The average age of the first calving is around 27 months. A male calf or bull calf, is castrated soon after birth and once relieved of this responsibility is known as a steer, stirk if you live in the north or as he gets older a bullock. The cattle in the fields in Sulgrave are all bullocks or steers. We have various beef bulls kept to breed with beef cows, and they are in general fairly placid but never to be trusted. The dairy cow producing the milk we require every day is bred by Artificial insemination, with North American genetics having a great influence over the past decades. Genetics have played a tremendous part in improving our livestock confirmation and performance and is a subject on its own. The inseminator was originally a Ministry of Agriculture employee back in the fifties. Arriving on the farm with his flask of semen straws, he was often greeted thus. “Here comes the bull in the bowler hat”

Richard Fonge