Photograph: Jo Powell

Richard Fonge writes:

At the start of June our rainfall for the year was in deficit but the last week has certainly redressed the balance. Farmers are often criticised for always moaning about the weather, and at times they should keep their thoughts to themselves, but their livelihood as food producers does depend greatly on the weather. They take pride in their work and how the crops they grow and the livestock they rear look, so when the weather interferes to their detriment it hurts not only that pride but the financial return on that enterprise.

This is the time of the year when bees are at their busiest pollinating the crops and all flora. There are other insects that pollinate but none as efficient as the bee. In Sulgrave we have four bee keepers, so plenty of honey being produced. All arable farmers have to record the name of a local beekeeper for their crop assurance scheme and keep them informed of any field operations that may affect the hives.

I mentioned in my May notes the parish of Stuchbury. Many of you will have seen the sign to Stuchbury on the way to Helmdon and heard it spoken of. It is a parish of just over 1,000 acres with Sulgrave to the north, Greatworth to the south, Marston St Lawrence to the west and Helmdon to the east. It is one of the lost villages of Northamptonshire, now made up of three farms, two of whom exit onto the Helmdon road and the third onto the Welsh lane opposite Greatworth Park.

It was an Anglo Saxon settlement of around 700 formed by a man called Stut. A burh was the name for a manor and so the land was Stut manor. Therefore you can see how Stutburh evolved into Stuchbury over the centuries. The Danes wiped out the substantial village or town around 1000. Another point of interest was that the Saxons defined their boundaries with what we call a double hedge. That is two hedges planted with a bank in between, and this can still be clearly seen along the northern boundary adjoining the Sulgrave parish. Other pieces still remain in small segments.

I am indebted to my late Mother for these historical facts, as she did a great deal of research into the history of Stuchbury, when we farmed Stuchbury Manor Farm.

Richard Fonge

Maize planted in the fields to the south of the Parish boundary

Richard Fonge writes:

As I write these notes the May weather is showing our countryside at its best. The crops up the concrete road are looking superb with the oil seed rape just beginning to lose its flowers, and the seed pods can be seen forming. The winter wheat after the bridge will come into ear at the end of the month. Winter barley off Park Lane is now in ear.

As you take the footpath to Stuchbury from the Helmdon Road you will have seen the two horses in the first field. The grey is a long since retired racehorse with many wins to his name and the bay is a point to pointer having a Summer rest. Nearly all the lambs in the next field are singles. The majority of these breeds of sheep have twin lambs, and these are grazing elsewhere with the singles in this field being aimed at an earlier market. Further on we have a field of winter wheat, but why has an area at the top of the field been mown when it looks such a healthy crop? I suspect it is because an infestation of black grass has been found, a grass that is very invasive and greatly reduces yield and is difficult to control. By mowing you cut the grass before it comes into seed, so reducing the seed bank and thereby controlling the weed. Going through the gate and into Stuchbury parish which is coupled with Helmdon, all the ploughed land has now been planted maize, to be harvested in October for the anaerobic digester seen in the distance with its green dome. (See here for details of the maize harvest in Richard’s notes for September 2018)

This year has seen very few swallows returning to Sulgrave, as is the case elsewhere. I have been told that last year was a bad breeding season by a Naturalist friend of mine, plus it could be couple with some disaster on their migration.

There has been quite a kerfuffle recently with the proposal to limit the control of corvids, pigeons etc. The pigeon as anyone knows who has a vegetable plot is very destructive, with its favourite the cabbage plant, so a field of oil seed rape another member of the brassica family is heaven sent for it. They descend in flocks of hundreds and can soon do real harm to the crop if not controlled. The rook and the crow are very different. The rook nests high up in the trees in a rookery and while at times destructive to young seedlings, it also feeds off slugs and leather jackets. Crows a larger bird with thicker beak and all black as opposed to the grey head of the rook, are cruel scavangers, and need keeping under control. If they see a weak lamb for example they will attack as will the magpie. So a balance must be kept.

Richard Fonge

Pictures of some of the many things described by Richard can be seen on the next page. Click on “Read the rest of this entry”.

(more…)

“….many different shades of green…”

Richard Fonge writes:

True to form as the blackthorn blossom dies away the temperature warms up. We are in serious need of rain for the crops and ourselves. After a pretty dry winter we could be in for a shortage by the Summer’s end if our reservoir stocks aren’t soon replenished.

Whilst we can’t control the weather, those that farm the land and manage it have a huge impact on how our landscape is shaped. The views around our parish and the crops and woods within it are there because of the way it is farmed and managed for country sports. Government also plays its part with its agriculture and environmental policies.

Whilst we have grass margins around fields for environmental reasons and wildlife bird mixtures on the Stuchbury to Greatworth footpath and up Barrow hill, the biggest wildlife corridor is of course the disused railway line. The trains once visible from the village before its closure in the mix-sixties have been replaced by the natural re-generation of the banks, soon to be a mass of May blossom, the flower of the white thorn.

The lambs are growing a pace with the dry weather to their advantage. Lamb is a meat produced from grass and their mothers milk with some added supplementary feed in some management systems. 40% of all lamb produced in this country is exported in carcass form, most of it to the Paris wholesale market. As I have mentioned before sheep are so vital to the countryside both as a grazer of our less favoured areas and the keeping of old pastures. The Oilseed Rape is now in full flower, but this year the crop is very variable due to the withdrawal of a pesticide that controlled the cabbage stem flea beetle, and the lack of a suitable alternative to combat this voracious insect, making the viability of this crop a possible doubt for the future.

One of the delights of this time of year are the many different shades of green as the crops grow and the hedges and trees come into leaf. Just stand on Castle Green to appreciate the village and countryside around you. It is a privilege to live in such a place.

Richard Fonge

Richard Fonge writes:

March has so far given us its usual mix of weather. So having come in like a lion, let us hope it goes out like a lamb. This is an old country adage that is normally right, as is the saying that when the blackthorn is out, we will have a blackthorn winter. And as long as the blackthorn remains in flower, you will find that there is always a chill in the air. One saying that I have never known to come true, is “The oak before the ash and we will have a splash. The ash before the oak and we will have a soak.” Because the oak always precedes the Ash in coming into leaf, whether we have a dry or wet summer.

Many of us walk the footpaths regularly and now we have a walking group who will be walking each footpath on a weekly basis. By doing this they can see the development of each crop they walk through. So on the Barrow hill lookout for the emergence of beans planted after the green crop. Up the gated road the flowering of the oil seed rape. The field called the big green off Little Street with the path down the centre will have cattle in it from late April, and the ewes and lambs are already in the fields up to the railway line.

Note the difference in the breeds of sheep behind Wemyss Farm when they arrive and those that are in the field by the Helmdon Road.

On the road to Halse from Greatworth there are two very large heaps of a white material (See photo above). What are they? They are piles of gypsum, which will be spread onto the land after harvest, as a fertiliser and conditioner. We normally associate gypsum as a building product, in the manufacture of plasterboard, but it is mined for agriculture purposes. By applying quite a large quantity per acre, it becomes beneficial to the heavy clay soils, as it sticks to the clay particles, making the soil more friable and helping in better infiltration of water, and helps to break up compaction, thereby making the soil easier to cultivate and the establishment of a crop. A natural product being put to good use.

Finally, I farmed for twenty years on the urban fringe which had some interesting challenges, but the great contrast to Sulgrave was the night sky. We had light pollution to such an extent that I had forgotten what a star lit night was like. I now appreciate those stars, and have on occasion been drawn to a particular Star!

Richard Fonge

Great Spotted Woodpecker
Photograph: John Sheppard

Richard Fonge writes:

It certainly feels very springlike as I write these notes. One of the first sounds of Spring is the noise of the woodpecker tapping away at his tree trunk. I first heard him this year on the 12th of February up the gated road to Weston. Farming wise all is still very quiet, but with this mild spell and dry ground to travel on tractors will soon be seen apply nitrogen to the oil seed rape up the concrete road, where considerable damage has been done to the crop in certain areas by pigeons. This will enable the crop to grow away from them. When they descend in their hundreds onto the oil seed rape they can soon do irreparable damage, resulting in substantial loss of yield.

You may have noticed the hedge along Little Street has had its gaps planted with new thorn plants. These are replacing the elderberry bushes which have been sprayed out. Elder is not a plant you want in a field hedge, as it dominates and is in no way a deterrent to stock. Whilst you need a field hedge made up of a variety of species, elder is not one of them. A hedge is a wildlife corridor as well as a boundary.

The lambing season will soon be in full swing, and ewes and their lambs will be re-stocking the grass fields around the village. A true sign of Spring, so make sure all dogs are on leads and under control when walking through them. These permanent pasture fields in our parish are so important for lamb production and keeping the balance between livestock and corn. 

These are interesting and challenging times for us all with a great deal of uncertainty, none more so than the Farmer with pressure from many lobbying groups. But one thing is definite and that is we all have to be fed, and that food is produced from the land.

Richard Fonge.

Photograph by Colin Wootton from the early 1960s,  when villagers’ muscle power was needed in the fields (and steam powered trains still ran over the distant embankment!)

Richard Fonge writes:

January so far has been mild, with the winter crops around the village looking very forward, but there is plenty of time before spring for some proper winter weather of hard frosts and snow.

I mentioned last month the Food from our own resources White Paper of 1971. The sixties had seen great strides in the modernisation of Agriculture and the incentives laid down in this paper to produce healthy and plentiful food for the nation were taken up by the industry as a whole, so that within a dozen years or so we had milk lakes and grain mountains, which was to result in land being taken out of production and the introduction of environmental schemes. Milk yields from the dairy cow were improved by better understanding of nutrition and enhanced genetics with the importation of bull semen from North America. Crop yields improved dramatically by the scientists invention of the fungicide chemical in particular.

By applying this chemical twice during the growing season we were able to keep the leaf of the plant free of disease and therefore green allowing photosynthesis ( the action of sunlight on the green leaf) to take place more efficiently. We know this by keeping our roses free of disease how much better the blooms are for example. These and many other factors too numerous to mention in these brief notes, resulted in an Agriculture industry becoming more efficient in its use of land and labour, with farms becoming bigger and specialising more, which saw the demise of the smaller mixed farm.

These developments have made great changes in the make up of villages like Sulgrave. Forty years ago some 75% of our population were indigenous, with most families having a close connection to the land . Today that is nearer 5%. Although the make up of our community has changed so much, the sense of community is still as strong and vibrant. You could say we have gone from curing our own hams and growing our vegetables on the allotments, to croissants ,canapés and Chardonnay.

Richard Fonge

Loading milk churns from a stand to a lorry

Richard Fonge writes:

December is the quietest month of the year on the land, with hedge cutting the only real activity going on. The one Farm enterprise that is very intensive this time of year is dairying, with all the cows inside . Have you ever wondered on your walks or travels around the area that a dairy cow is not to be seen. There are very few dairy herds left now in Northants, with the nearest to us at Stuchbury Manor Farm, my old home until the mid- seventies.
Up until the sixties most villages had two or three small herds of milking cows, and there is remaining evidence of them in Sulgrave. The old broken down cowshed at Rectory Farm. The concrete raised block opposite Fleet farm in Little street where the ten gallon milk churns would have been placed for collection. The remains of an old sliding door in Stockwell Lane opposite the Shop, which would have been the entrance to the dairy there. But the largest dairy herd was at Wemyss Farm off Park lane owned and run by the Cave family.
By the sixties it was no longer viable to milk a few cows along with other enterprises on a farm, and so we saw specialisation taking place in all forms of agriculture, encouraged by a Government white paper of 1971 which predicted a shortage of food by 1996. Larger dairy herds of at least eighty became the norm, and by the turn of the century this number had doubled and milk production was centred predominately in the western part of the country where the climate with its better grass growth in particular,made it more economical in what were very hard financial times.

With my very best wishes for the New Year.

Richard Fonge.

Richard Fonge writes:

This years harvest, turned out to be far better than expected. After such a wet, cold spring, and a long hot summer. Whilst some of the spring sown crops suffered from late sowing and the long hot summer those sown in the autumn favoured much better, with the slight drop in yield offset by an increase in price per tonne and no costs for drying the grain. Wheat, Barley etc has to be below 14% dry matter for storage and selling. Oilseed rape 8%. This year the long summer days did the drying, whereas in more normal years you are harvesting between dry and wet spells, and although the grain is ripe it often has to be cut before the next spell of rain. Hence the higher moisture content.

Autumn sowing has now finished in conditions that could not have been bettered due to a lovely stretch of weather. The concrete road has O.S.R to the bridge and winter wheat after that. Barrow hill wheat after the beans, and a cover crop of mustard in the field before that. Remember the reason for the mustard from last year?

The cattle we have seen in various fields up the Weston road and around the village have now been housed and most will be finished for slaughter by the spring. Next spring we will see a fresh lot of young cattle in these same fields, and so the rich cycle of life goes on.

But where do these young animals come from? There are many breeds of beef cattle, but two different sources. Firstly by breeding from a beef cow who will rear her own calf to the age of eight to nine months. This is known as single suckling. The calf is then reared on to be finished for prime beef. Secondly from the dairy herds of the country. A good 50% of dairy cows are put to a beef sire through A.I. and these calves are then reared for beef along with the pure bred male calves. In these days of specialisation the calves are sold on at various ages to beef farmers and that is how we come to see them grazing in the fields in our parish. Agriculture is a diverse and inter dependent industry serving us all.

Richard Fonge

Texel Ram on Castle Hill

Richard Fonge writes:

This month I would like to write about the importance of sheep to our countryside. There are many breeds of sheep in this country, most of them named after the area they come from. Our mountains, moors and hills are dependent upon the sheep to maintain their beauty, we all so admire. I used to when farming run a flock of 350 Lleyn ewes originating from the peninsula of that name in north west Wales, and by crossing them with a Charolais ram from that region of France, they produced good meat lambs. The main breeding ewe in England is perhaps the mule ewe. A speckled face sheep of a taller stature than most. Some are in the field on the Stuchbury footpath. They are a cross between the Swaledale of Cumbria and the Blueface Leicester. The breeding of the mule is vital to the economy of North West and its landscape management. The female offspring of these sheep are sold at sales in places like Lazonby, Hawes, Penrith etc in the autumn and come south to form many farmers flocks. These sheep with their hybrid vigour, (and this also applies to many other breeds) are then crossed with a breed of ram to produce a good butchers lamb. The most popular Rams are the Suffolk, Charolais and the Texel originating from Holland. This breed can be seen on Castle Hill waiting to be called for duty by the Farmer and in the field to Stuchbury, where they are a work. I was given a sideways glance by one the other day, and I was reminded of Rumpole of the Bailey!

More on the next page – click on “read the rest of this entry”.

(more…)

Richard Fonge writes:

Whilst we look upon spring as the time of re-generation and new life, September, the first month of Autumn is the final month in so many ways of the agricultural year, and the natural world. Of the crops we have been following during the year, the beans on Barrow hill were the last crop to be harvested. Due to the vagaries of this years weather it was not conducive for the beans to grow and flower as they should, but that is the lot of any Farmer, who is always at the mercies of the climate, and we are fortunate in this country to farm in such an even climate. The wheat fields up the concrete road, have now been planted Oilseed Rape. This has been done by sowing direct into the stubble (remains of last crop). The plants have now germinated. O.S.R. needs to be established well before winter sets in. Pigeons are a great nuisance after Christmas, grazing the crop and causing damage. Hence the sound of timed gas bangers. Up the gated road can be seen a large heap of black material in a field. This is green compost from the plant along the Welsh Lane. The green waste from our bins is composted there and is returned to the land to increase its organic content. Similar to the sewerage waste I noted last month. Re-cycling with a positive impact on the soil. The maize to be seen off the Stuchbury footpaths will be cut by the months end, some to feed their dairy herd, the majority to go into the anaerobic digester. Finally our ewes I suspect will be returning with the Rams to the field near the village down Helmdon road, and the swallows will be off on their long journey to Africa. No sat navs needed there!! This will bring the year and my notes to a full circle. I have enjoyed the challenge of writing them each month, and will continue to do so if they are being found of interest.

Richard Fonge

Click on “see the rest of this entry” for some pictures of the maize harvest.

(more…)