Sloes (Fruit of the Blackthorn). Photo: Colin Wootton

Richard Fonge writes:

The month of August is the main harvest month, and this year like many in the past it has been so far a month of poor weather for both farmers and holiday makers. When there are short spells of fine sunny days it is essential to be able to harvest as much as possible, but it also means that the Farmer cannot wait for the grain to dry naturally to the 14% required for storage, hence it has to be dried artificially, increasing the cost of production, not cheap at today’s energy prices, unless solar panels have been installed on the grain store.

August 1st is Lamass day in the Church calendar. On Lamass day in years gone by when a village like Sulgrave was very dependant on a good harvest, a loaf of bread was blessed in the Church as a prelude to the harvest. This ritual is still observed by a friend of mine at her Church in Warwickshire.

Observing the crops around the village, the wheat looks as if it will yield well, as has the barley this year. The spring barley up the concrete road which has suffered from the heavy storms more than most, now needs fair weather to ripen off and yield well.

A comparison. Sixty years ago wheat yielded 1.5 tonnes /acre on average and ten acres a day could be harvested. 15 tonnes a day. Today 3.5 tonnes and eighty acres a day harvested. 275 tonnes a day.

Last month I referred to Banbury Market and how it was a stockyard of England. It seems incredible to think today but stock was driven through the streets of Grimsbury to grazing on the fields up Overthorpe hill. Once a month there would be a consignment of cattle from Ireland, which would come by train from Holyhead straight to the market and then to those fields, before their sale to local farmers. Markets provided not only a place for farmers to do business, but also a place to share experiences and socialise. So important when often living on a lone holding. Today so few are involved in the industry, due to the great advances in technology and specialisation that loneliness is a problem.

People used to whistle when working, a sound not often heard now. Indeed, those of us of a certain age can remember a radio programme on the Light Wave called “Whistle while you work”. The light wave became radio 2 in the late sixties.

Looking forward rather than back, the hedgerow harvest looks promising, with plenty of blackberries ripening, crab apple trees laden to the limit, and plenty of sloes for the gin, particularly along the old railway line.

Richard Fonge

Banbury Livestock Market in 1906

Richard Fonge writes:

This month sees the start of harvest, with the winter barley likely to be ready first in the field off Park Lane. The oilseed rape crop follows and then the wheat, and spring sown crops.

Most grain is sold to a merchant, unless it’s been grown for home use where the Farmer has stock. Selling is now done mostly over the phone with a Merchant and a price per tonne agreed dependant on quality and month of collection or it goes into a Farmers’ co-operative for storage and is then marketed from there.

Up until the mid sixties there were four grain merchants in Banbury, where you could take a sample of barley, wheat etc, and agree a price. Lampreys had a mill by the canal, which is now the Arts centre and Clark’s who were taken over by Lampreys in the ‘60s had a mill as you went to the railway station. Watts and Goodenough were the others. In those days there was also a corn exchange at the Banbury Livestock market, where you could take your grain sample on market days .Midland Marts.

The original livestock market was in the town centre as it was in most towns, but in 1925 Mr Mcdougal set up the market in Grimsbury off Bridge St, and by the 50s it had become the biggest market in this country, if not in Europe and was to remain so until it closed 25 years ago in 1998. Also during these times there were five agricultural engineers in the town. A market town that changed so much after the M40 was built and the market closed. At the same time agriculture made great advances in modernisation, through science and technology.

An interesting footnote is that Mr Mcdougal became the father in law of The Right Hon Richard Crossman M.P., a fellow of New College Oxford and a prominent Cabinet Minister in the Labour government of the 60s, but perhaps most noted for his diaries revealing the inner workings of Government.

Many of you have heard of Stuchbury. Where is it? Stuchbury is one of the lost villages of Northamptonshire and was once a parish in its own right, but now in the Greatworth  Parish. Today it has three farms and two cottages. Two farms Stuchbury Hall and Stuchbury Lodge are accessed from the Sulgrave Helmdon Rd and the old Parish boundary runs along to Peter’s bridge on the south side of the road and then south to the Welsh lane. Stuchbury Manor is now part of the Marston Estate and is accessed from the Welsh lane or B5425.

See here for more about this lost village.

We have many good footpaths in our area but please remember that the concrete road leading eastwards from Rectory Farm, is not one of them. We walk and ride it with bikes and horses by the kind permission of the farming tenant.

Richard Fonge.

Dog rose in a Moreton Road Hedge

Richard Fonge writes;

The buttercups in Madam’s Close were quite an astounding sight this year. A real centre piece to the village. The two other pastures to admire are on the Barrow hill footpath, where a wild flower mixture was planted many years ago and are now a blaze of flower. Walking along the railway line are more wild flowers. As you climb the recently made path to the old line there are broom bushes with their lovely yellow flowers. Broom has a smooth stem, gorse has spines. Dog daisies or oxeyes are abundant, and the dog rose with its white or pink flower can be seen intermittently. The dog rose is often found in our field hedges, with it’s vicious thorns. The fruit of this rose is called the hip, a red oval fruit full of vitamin C with noted herbal cures for many ailments when cured into a syrup. Another delicacy is rose hip tea.

Wild flower names were once used as names for milking cows when herds were small and milked in cowsheds, so buttercup, daisy, dandelion, cowslip were the favourites. I named a cow Up and Downer as a boy after her horn got caught in my trouser pocket and she tossed me up and down a few times when I was untying her chain!

The many flocks of sheep have now been shorn, and this hard, back bending job is often done by young New Zealanders who come over for the season. Wool is not of great value with the shearing cost hardly covered by its sale price. Man made fibres have seen to that. Sheep shear best when the grease is rising, the grease being Lanolin which when extracted is used in many ointments and creams. Go handling fleeces for a day and you will come away with soft hands. 

Of course it was wool that made the Washington family of Sulgrave Manor fame great wealth in the Middle Ages as it did many other families, with the Cotswolds in particular thriving on the wool, with towns such as Chipping Norton and Chipping Camden becoming centres of the trade. Chipping meaning market of course.

The recent storms will be most welcome to the crops, especially the late sown maize and barley up the concrete road. A late lamb has been born to one of the young sheep on Castle Mound. They are called cuckoo lambs (although we sadly don’t hear the cuckoo now). This sheep has “stolen the ram” as we say. Rather like a teenage pregnancy with Father unknown!

Richard Fonge.