Canary Seed (Photo: Tony Keatley
Richard Fonge writes:
This month is turning out to be wet and chilly. The crops everywhere now need sun and warmth to swell the grain to produce a good harvest.
Two crops of a difference being grown are linseed now in full flower on the Moreton Road, a crop we have seen before with its bright blue flowers. The seed when ripe is crushed for its oil and used in many products, most notably paints and as a wood preservative. The second crop is canary seed being grown in a large field on the left as you go to the Magpie junction, which is showing its seed pods. The seed here will be used for medical purposes and for bird seed mixtures. Two other crops that fall into this category are field lupins, another source of oil and borage which is used in the drug industry. Hormone replacement therapy being a primary use.
All landowners have a duty to keep their land free of certain weeds, chief amongst them spear thistle, creeping thistle, ragwort and hemlock. Ragwort with its bright yellow flowers is poisonous and deadly to livestock, more especially when dried in the form of hay. The poisons destroy the liver, so whilst those yellow flowers are seen along our roadsides and on waste land we don’t want them seeding on our pastures. Public authorities have given up trying to control it seems. Hemlock is extremely poisonous to both animals and humans and needs to be kept under control. It mostly grows in damp areas and can be found near the stream up the Moreton Rd. Because its smell is very noxious it does deter people from going near it. Even touching its leaves can bring out a rash. Shakespeare mentions the poisonous hemlock in both Hamlet and Macbeth.
It may have been noticed by some that the young steers in the big green, the field off Little Street with the two horses and those behind the Manor cottages, disappeared for a week in the middle of the month. Here is why. They have had to go back to the farm to be tuberculin tested. This entails taking a skin measurement off the neck and an injection, followed three days later by the skin measurements being taken again. Those readings tell the vet if there has been a reaction, and if any animal has reacted it has to be isolated and sent for slaughter whatever its age and in the case of breeding cows its state of pregnancy. A stressful time for all concerned.!
Old countryman of the past were often brief and succinct in their observations. Percy Barratt of Marston st Lawrence was asked by his landlord what it was like to farm in the 1920s. Reply. “Us ad to scrat”!
Benny Barratt of Greatworth used to watch the village cricket team play and would shout out “ Hot the thing!”
Richard Fonge