Polo Pony

Richard Fonge writes:

July is the month which sees the start of the corn harvest. The field of oil seed rape off Park Lane will soon be ready, but it will be some time before the other crops around the parish are ready, as they were Spring sown, and therefore later ripening.

The lambs have been weaned from their mothers. Within three days they have forgotten about each other, and if re-united would not bond back. At four months of age the ewe is ready to be weaned from her lamb if it has not been sold already for meat. The exception are the later lambing Romney Marsh breed, seen in the fields behind Wemyss Farm.

The horse is an ever present animal seen in the fields and being exercised around and through our village daily. These horses, depending on their type have various uses. We have point to pointers, who race over fences and are ridden by amateurs and they are thoroughbreds. The hunter is a thicker set horse, ridden for pleasure and following hounds in winter. These horses usually stand between fifteen and seventeen hands tall. A hand being four inches, and the measurement from ground to the top of the withers. We have polo ponies, a smaller horse as the name implies, used for that summer sport. A quick and nimble animal, often imported from Argentina. And of course the every day hack and pony ridden purely for pleasure.

Together they are a vital cog in the rural economy, bringing much employment, as they have done over the centuries. As a youngster I can remember bringing my pony to be shod by George Gascoigne at the forge in Church Street. With no traffic so to speak, he did his shoeing on the road outside the forge door, or if wet in the trap shed opposite. He was another village character of his day, who had no idea of time, and was upset when the street light went out at midnight, on one occasion, when he was still milking his cow by hand beneath it.

Click here to visit the website page with photographs of the old forge and George shoeing horses.

The past months have been challenging for us all, but here in Sulgrave we have blessed ourselves in the fact that we have a rural setting. It seems that many more people are thinking of moving from an urban to a rural location. In doing so they must embrace the country way of life. Agriculture is the prime industry, shaping the countryside, followed by the horse in many areas and they along with the footpaths and woodland enable us to walk and observe our surroundings, at our leisure as we go about our daily tasks.

Richard Fonge

Pale blue flax (linseed) flowers contrast with a solitary poppy

Richard Fonge writes:

The consequences of a very wet Autumn/Winter, followed by two exceptionally dry months in April and May, can be seen in the crops around the parish and further afield. As you walk the path to Barrow Hill, the two fields of wild flowers are full of butterflies and insects, having gone through the wood you come to a field mostly bare with a few clumps of wheat. This field was sown wheat in October and the water-logging of the soil over the winter has killed it all except for those small clumps.

Up the gated road the spring wheat is coming into ear, and do take note how the green the leaves are and free from disease. This means a fungicide has been applied at the right time, so that the leaf can maximise the sunlight for photosynthesis to take place, thereby improving the quality and quantity of the grain. The beans up the Moreton road are in flower and like the other crops need some more rain.

On the Stuchbury path fodder turnips have been planted above the electric fence for the sheep to graze at a later date. The yellow flowers are those of charlock weed.

The other crop widely grown this spring is the linseed plant, now in flower creating a sea of blue. Linseed seeds are crushed for their oils, being used in paints and oiling of certain woods, and the oil has medicinal uses. The fibres of the plant were once used extensively to make linen, in particular bedding and tablecloths. But why are we seeing so much planted this year? Two reasons I would suggest. Weather and agronomic. For some years now an invasive grass weed, called black grass has been difficult to control in cereal crops, and by planting linseed, beans and turnips in late spring the black grass can be killed with a herbicide prior to sowing making control more effective, and hopefully making a serious problem less so.

Today our villages have changed so much from the time I grew up in the fifties. Back then most villagers either worked on the land, or had a close connection to it. I recall some of those characters:

Reg Isham who worked for my father at Stuchbury, who thought this new thing called an electric fence was useless, touched it wearing his hob nail boots, leapt into the air a foot and never went near it again! His brother was known as Samson. He had as a boy been asked to help push a thrashing machine that was stuck and when he did, it came out. Hence the nickname. He was waiting in Greatworth shop once to be served with his baccy, and was asked by the shopkeeper if he had planted his broad beans. The instant retort “The b—–s will be up before I get served!”

Finally a smallholder farmer in Marston St Lawrence said to a friend of mine he would pay him two shillings to pick his windfall apples up. He did so with the help of another boy, and when he went for his money, he gave them a shilling each!

Richard Fonge

January 2020

May 2020

During the “lockdown”, the swamp that was Footpath AN6, alongside the double hedge near Stuchbury, has become a desert!

Richard Fonge writes:

With all the concerns of living through a pandemic, what a delight it has been to hear the cuckoo. It’s arrival every year with its distinctive song was once taken for granted, but sadly we haven’t heard him for some four years, but on the 15th and 16th of this month he was in great song. Just like the return of the swallows in April, it is one of those events that always raises the spirits.

The natural world has great powers of recovery and the ability to regenerate. Two examples of this in our parish are the old railway line, where since its closure some fifty plus years ago vegetation has grown up naturally along that old line, a lot of it being the hawthorn or whitethorn now in full blossom and referred to as may blossom. The hawthorn and the blackthorn are members of the rose family. The fruit of the hawthorn are the haws, the Wild Rose the hip and the blackthorn the sloe.

The second example is on the Moreton Road or the gated road as it is more commonly referred to. Here the verges were not cut back to the hedge last winter, and as a consequence the field maple is already thriving and some three feet in height. Hedge maple like the ash grows very quickly and soon re-populates a barren area.

Lanes with grass verges like the Moreton Road were once used to graze cows, when there were smallholding farmers in the villages. It was my privilege to know a very successful farmer who died at the age of 101 in the early 1990s, who had started his farming career just before the First Wold War by milking half a dozen cows. His main source of summer grazing were the lanes around Berkswell village where he lived. Being free, it helped he and his young wife whose task it was to watch over them to get a foothold on the farming ladder. This was not an uncommon practice.

He also recalled to me that his grandmother who had died aged ninety at around the turn of the century, had told him as a young child how she remembered the victory at Waterloo in 1815.

Since the end of the wet weather, we have had a very dry April/May. This has resulted in a spring of slow growth, with a lot of land not being planted and left fallow to be planted this Autumn. Some fields have been sown to linseed as on the path to Stuchbury, others up Barrow Hill to what is called a cover crop. At the top of the Moreton Road can be seen beans on the left, being grown for animal feed, and on the right fallow land which has been sub-soiled. With this very dry spring and so much land not being planted after one of the wettest winters on record the harvest prospects do not look good. As I said in an earlier piece do not be surprised to see some foods cost more. I said earlier that nature soon takes back and thrives again, and after this year I am sure next will repay with a bumper harvest.

Richard Fonge