Traditional hedge laying with modern equipment

Richard Fonge writes:

December is a month where the countryside is quiet, with only hedge trimming being done. An annual trim keeps them manageable, so they don’t shade the crops too much, whilst still retaining a field boundary that is environmentally friendly. The enclosure acts of the late eighteenth century brought us the hedge boundary.

The drovers road, called the Welsh lane, has small fields at intervals where stock was rested for the night, and one of those fields can be seen at the Magpie junction. The fields were always triangular, to make it easier to catch stock if need be. The drovers were paid with a promise note, so they didn’t spend their earnings before they got home to the Welsh borders or wherever. This system led to the cheque and the start of banks.

The oldest hedges were the Saxon double hedges, which marked out a Parish boundary. One I have mentioned before is the Stuchbury boundary hedge. Stuchbury is a parish in its own right, joined with Helmdon and Greatworth for administrative purposes. It is so sad that those responsible for HS2 seem to rip out hedges at will, including some of the Saxon hedges. Stuchbury was an Anglo Saxon settlement until it was destroyed by the Danes in the 11th century and became one of the many lost villages of Northamptonshire. Two of the farms, Stuchbury Hall and Stuchbury Lodge are off the Helmdon Rd. Stuchbury Manor has its entrance from the Welsh Lane, by Greatworth Park, whilst the Hall and Lodge are privately owned, Stuchbury Manor is part of the Marston St Lawrence estate, owned prior to 1968 by Balliol College Oxford. Oxford and Cambridge colleges own a lot of land still, with the land from the Moreton road across to Weston being an example.

Finally to return to hedges, that are a boundary, a wildlife habitat and corridor, a source of food and shelter and an obstacle to be jumped by horses, as can be seen on team chase day and hunting.

Richard Fonge.

Oak leaves in Autumn

Richard Fonge writes;

We are experiencing a very mild November, with the Autumn sown crops looking well along with the wonderful colours of the trees. The oak especially this year has a wonderful leaf colour, with no better example than those in Manor Rd.

Farmers have always tried new ideas of production providing it is based on sound husbandry and economic criteria. Today the challenge is to reduce carbon footprint, and around our area there are three examples in land cultivation to note. The ploughing of land has for centuries been the way to bury the the residue of the previous crop, but today minimum tillage and direct drilling are superseding the plough. Min till is practised up the concrete road, where the soil is moved by spring tine cultivators, whereas on Barrow hill and up the Helmdon Rd direct drilling is carried out. Ploughing and the subsequent cultivations use more machinery hours and fuel than the other two, with a reduction in yield in direct drilling often. Income may be less but if costs are down the profit margin may be better, with the added bonus of a reduced carbon footprint.

Beef in this country is mostly reared by the grazing of grass and the feeding of it in winter in the form of silage. The Emission figures quoted for beef are based on the feedlots of  the U.S.A. A British grass based system is half of that, so locally produced meat with a short journey from field to plate, is environmentally sound and keeps our pastures as they have been for many years a feature of our countryside.

With the mutilation of our countryside by HS2 works to the west of Sulgrave, it makes one more appreciative of the lovely walks still to be had on the other sides of the village. Whilst a railway was built through that land at the end of the nineteenth century, the landscape remains very much the same, created and cared for by those that farmed it, along with the country sports of hunting and shooting.

 Characters of the villages are fewer these days, but I remember Ernie Bayliss, who farmed with three brothers. His tweed cap was worn backwards to milk the cows, and then swivelled round with the peak forward for market days and best.

Richard Fonge.

Texel Ram

Richard Fonge writes:

The wonderful Autumn weather of the last few weeks has not only been good for us all to enjoy, but has allowed the Autumn sowing of crops to be completed in good time. With the soil moisture and temperature as they are, it has seen quick germination and establishment of the crops. A prime example being the barley sown on Barrow Hill and on the Moreton Rd, whilst nearer the village the oil seed rape sown in August is nearly too far forward. All seasons have their special aspects, but to me a misty autumnal morning takes some beating. 

The Texel Rams on the Stuchbury footpath have nearly completed their line of duty and lambs will be due in late February onwards.

A crop not grown a lot in this country is Lucerne or alfalfa as it is more commonly called across the world. It is a high protein crop, that like white clover makes its own nitrogen, through nodules on the roots. Multiple cuts can be taken through the growing season of either silage or hay. It is the main winter feed for cattle in the U.S.A after maize. In America maize is called corn, whereas here corn is wheat, barley etc. Can be confusing when with the Americans! I note this because a field of Lucerne has been planted on the right hand side up the Helmdon Road.

One of my first monthly notes nearly four years ago concerned ridge and furrow and I will return to the subject. The Saxons who were here for some six centuries until King Harold didn’t see eye to eye with William the Conqueror in 1066, were good farmers and cleared the land of forest, to grow their crops. A ridge and furrow are 220 yards long and it was thought the length one man could clear in a year. The width was a perch which was 5.5 yards. So the width of four ridges was 22 yards, therefore 220 x 22 = 4840 sq yards or an acre. 220 yards is a furlong, with eight of them making a mile. All horse races are measured in furlongs. 22 yards is a chain and the length of a cricket pitch. We may be officially metric, but land is still advertised and sold in acres. So from the Saxons came a lot of our measurements. The reason for the ridge and furrow was a ridge to grow the crop on and a dry area for the stock to lie on, with the shallow furrow to take the water.

Having just completed four years of these notes, I would like to thank all the landowners for keeping their footpaths in good order, as my regular walks along them give me the basic material for these notes.

Richard Fonge

More information on medieval land measurements can be found in an extract from the 1086 Domesday Book for Sulgrave posted on this website.

Haws. (The fruit of the whitethorn).

Richard Fonge writes:

September the beginning of Autumn and therefore the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness . With harvest behind us, the land is being cultivated for next years crops, with Oil seed rape growing vigorously up the Moreton road. To survive the winter the crop needs sowing in August . The flea beetle poses a major challenge right now, followed by pigeons later on in the winter. Gas bangers are used to scare them away, but  a hide, decoys and a gun can be very effective also, and pigeon is very tasty in a pie.

The fruits of the hedgerow are in abundance in late September. The blackthorn for the sloes to make gin. Crab apples for its jelly. Blackberries to go with cooking apples. Then there are the hips and haws. The hips are the fruit of the Wild rose from which can be made a syrup, the haws the fruit of the whitethorn and a winter feed for the birds. Whilst mentioning hedgerow species, an unwanted one is the elderberry as it is inclined to dominate and is useless in a stock fence, but from its flowers wine is made and my late mother used to make an ointment, which was marvellous for soothing chilblains and putting on chapped hands, an occupational hazard when you worked out in all weathers and milked cows.

This time of year brings the regular invasion of crane fly or daddy long legs . They can be seen in the grasses, and it’s grub called the leather jacket causes damage to newly sown crops and lawns in the autumn. Rooks feed off the leather jacket and we have plenty of rooks around the village, because of all the permanent pasture and the woods for them to make their rookeries in. You only see rooks where there is grassland to feed off. Therefore you have a small example of natures interdependence. Woods and spinneys provide a habitat for many species, with the rooks nests high up in the canopy. The pasture grazed by cattle and sheep provides us with beef and lamb, their dung feeds the rooks, who feed off the leather jacket and other pests such as wire worm.

There is much talk of living off the land, something that most rural villagers did till the modernisation of agriculture after the Second World War and the exodus of labour into the towns. The Church harvest festival meant so much then, because of this close connection to our food , and whether a Farmer or allotment holder, a poor harvest had consequences for the family budget.

Richard Fonge.

Badger seen recently in the local area and photographed by John Sheppard.

Richard Fonge writes:

August is the main harvest month, and this year with the variable weather, it could be September when it is completed. The harvesting of the various crops is the culmination of a years work, and the quality and quantity of those crops, despite the many technical and mechanical advances is still influenced by the weather. In farming to harvest a good crop of any corn brings great job satisfaction, and an example of a fine crop of wheat can be seen in the field off Park lane.

In the first field on the Stuchbury footpath are thirty new sheep, with an orangery tinged fleece. They are mule sheep, a cross of the blue faced Leicester and Swaledale ewe. They are bred in the north of the country and sold on for breeding as yearlings, having their first lambs next spring at two years old. Hill farmers from across the north sell these sheep at the big sales held at, Penrith, Lazonby, High Bentham, Brough etc at this time of year, where they are bought to replenish flocks further south. They are the hill and moorland farmer’s harvest, and to present their stock at auction they are bloomed dipped, to show them at their best so as to achieve the best price. These sheep so vital to the management of the hills and dales of the north, are also responsible for much of the lamb production on the pastures of further south. As these are mainly permanent pasture as can be seen around our village, the carbon footprint is very low.

One crop to be harvested in late September is the maize at Stuchbury, to be used for the anaerobic digester. Now the cobs have been formed and the “maize is as high as an elephants eye” the badgers have moved in. Their tracks can be seen from hedge to maize in different places, along with their latrines. They push the plant down with their large paws to feed off the cobs. Easy feeding. The badger with paws made for digging, soon makes a new sett, when the family increases or it is disturbed for any reason. HS2 is making setts for them, where they are in the way at great expense. You can re house a human but a badger will go where he wants.!

Finally, living in the country makes you appreciate fully the four seasons and what they bring, and as summer draws to an end the first signs of Autumn are here. The blackberries ripening in Little street, the odd conker falling, swallows starting to collect on the telephone lines and soon field mushrooms hopefully. No better breakfast, than mushrooms picked when getting the cows in for milking and then fried with bacon and egg for breakfast after milking.

Richard Fonge.

Richard Fonge writes:

Last month I said look out for the blue of the linseed crops. Well the one on Barrow Hill came out white but just as attractive to look at. The seed of the linseed is crushed for its oil, and used for medicinal purposes as well as industrial such as in paints. The stems of the straw have in the past been used to make linen, but not so much now having been superseded by synthetic fibres. The straw with its high calorific value is a great source of heat and is used in industrial heating systems.

The barley crop on the right of the Moreton Road will be ripe for harvesting at the month’s end, so please be aware of the combine when the time comes.  Farm machinery has got ever bigger as technology advances and more acres are farmed by a smaller workforce, and this brings its own problems to the farmer as the lanes are no wider and cars are a plenty, so harvest time in particular is a time to be patient when behind agricultural vehicles. Agriculture is the industry of the countryside, so whilst we take in stock and crops on our walks, we must also put up with a little inconvenience. 

The bridleway now sadly boarded up at the tunnel under the disused railway was once a lane to Northampton. The use of our footpaths has changed significantly since cars became more affordable in the sixties. They were once a path to walk to work on an outlying farm, such as Barrow Hill or in my recollection Stuchbury Manor. My father employed two men from Sulgrave in the fifties who walked that path, as we did as youngsters to go to the shop or Annie Berry’s post office in Church Street. These paths were used to walk to neighbouring villages to visit friends and relatives, and as it used to be said “do a bit of courting”.

Today the character of our villages has changed and they are lived in by a much wider cross section of society, so the paths are walked for leisure and exercise, with dog exercising very much to the fore. Dog ownership has grown tremendously over the last forty years or so, putting a smile on many a vet.

Richard Fonge.

See here for more details on footpaths in the parish (including maps).

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

Blackthorn Flowers

Richard Fonge writes:

This is one of the latest springs for sometime. A true blackthorn winter. When the blackthorn is out you always get some cold wintry weather, and a chill wind even with the sun out, and frosty nights .The hedges are very late in coming out in leaf, grass growth is slow and the spring sown crops are desperate for a rain to get germination and growth going. The blackthorn is just starting to go over, so the end of the month should see some rain. I always see the first swallow around the tenth of the month. This year the 18th.

The fields up the concrete road look a picture now they have been sown. Barley this side of the bridge, wheat the other side. Ewes and lambs surround us, but two flocks I would like to highlight . On The footpath from behind Wemyss farm, in the second field a flock of Romney Marsh have lambed outside, very successfully I should think. The Romney has a relatively small lamb, making it an easy lamber, and with the better weather and longer days it is much more beneficial for all concerned to lamb outside.
The second flock are up the Moreton road on the left as you climb the hill. If you look closely, it can be seen that each sheep has only one lamb. These are first time lambers or ewe lambs, and you will only get the odd set of twins. Sheep terminology is complicated and here are some terms explained: Ewe lamb a one year old. Theave a two year old female. Wether or hogget a castrated male over nine months. Ewe a three year old female. Tup an entire male used for breeding. These terms change from region to region.

It is twenty years ago that the foot and mouth outbreak brought such great carnage and distress to the countryside, with thousands of sheep and cattle slaughtered and many families seriously affected emotionally and financially. But out of it came the traceability of all livestock with micro chipping, and this in turn allows all consumers to trace their meat back to the farm it was reared on.

Finally young steers have today been turned out in the big close for the summer. So good to see cattle in the field again. A reminder to keep dogs on a lead when using the footpath.

PS. Great delight, heard the cuckoo at 8.30 a.m. (20th April), over towards Peter’s Bridge.

Richard Fonge

Spring is here! Hazel Catkins.

Richard Fonge writes:

With spring now with us, the land drying up, we are seeing more activity in the fields. Ewes and lambs arrive daily in the fields up the Moreton Road, where the spoil from the ditching earlier in the year will soon be spread now it is much drier. I said in my October notes that the greenness of the fields up the concrete road was a result of severe shedding of the previous crop of spring wheat and would be sprayed off in the spring. This has happened and I expect to see a crop of barley to be planted. A self sown crop such as that was, would not have yielded, but by leaving it over the winter, it created a cover crop.

Please take note when walking that way, of the sights and sounds. Skylarks are flying high in song. The skylark is a ground nesting bird and not as common as it once was. It likes bare ground to nest on, so please keep dogs on a lead or close to you because if they do disturb a nest it will be abandoned. Roe deer are often seen in this area too. Deer are becoming more and more common. At Stuchbury I have seen seven standing in line. The other quite common sight is the muntjac deer. Like the squirrel it is devastating to young trees if they haven’t been guarded. 

Farmers and countrymen know more than most how important it is to keep a balance of any one species. The health and well being of animals such as rabbits, foxes, deer, squirrels and badgers is to their advantage if the weaker are culled and a sensible sustainable level is maintained. The badger cull is an emotive one, but what is not in doubt is the distress it has caused livestock farmers. To have a reactor to the T.B. test, means the animal is culled and to see as I have, pregnant cows and cows with young calves being separated, causes a great deal of anguish, without the work of re testing every sixty days until clear of the disease. We have bovine T.B. in the area at present, so let us hope that it is an isolated case.

Spring brings re-generation of the natural world, so here’s hoping it is a good one, to bring cheer after this long winter.

Richard Fonge