Saturday 27 March 2010

Green and Yellow (with a bit of history thown in!)

When it was still dry, and we hadn't had rain until last week for some time; the farmers were busy spreading muck on the fields to fertilise them in readiness for silaging and summer grazing. It was a bit smelly but you get used to these things. Until the rains came, the fields were very brown and dry and the mud was cracking...now the fields are green again and you can tell which ones have been fertilised and which ones haven't, there are definitely different 'greens' out there. (The field in the the background of this picture has been 'mucked' the field in the foreground hasn't)

An interesting story about this part of the world and relating to fertilising the fields is that centuries ago this area; from Hartland across to Bideford and down to Launceston (Lanson) and back across to about Wadebridge; was very rough ground and mostly heath and moor land, you can still see it today in fields which have not been managed. The land was pretty much unusable (probably why this area is still relatively 'remote') and the only way the farmers could make it productive was of course to use fertiliser. The best fertiliser for this land was sand, so farmers would go down to the beaches in their carts along the dirt tracks to get the sand, you can only imagine how much work this was. Then in the early 1800's someone had an idea to create a canal that would bring sand in from the coast to the inland farms. This eventually (after alot of work, planning and trying to find funds) resulted in the Bude canal, a small part of which can still be seen at Bude. Tamar lakes near to Kilkhampton were created as feeder lakes for the canal. Sadly when the railways came (and of course round here went; they had a shorter life here than the canal did) the canal was no longer financially viable. If you are interested in the Bude canal and its history, I can recommend 'The Bude Canal' by Helen Harris and Monica Ellis (1972!). Fascinating reading, the feats of engineering are quite amazing. The map above shows the route of the canal in red (taken from the internet), the picuture to hte left shows the remaining part of the canal by the sea at Bude Also interesting (and equally sad in its way) are histories of the railway in this Bude/Holsworthy area. Just a note to say, that generally this land is used for stock rather than arable farming, and you can see the moorland trying to take over in places still. If the farmers stopped grazing the land and fertilising it, it would soon revert to how it was 200 years ago.

OK, so enough history and 'green', what about the yellow. Well the spring flowers are now making a real effort, thanks to the rain and the odd bit of sun. I just hope that with the forthcoming cold spell over next week, it doesn't put everything back again (apparently Spring flowers are late this year). We would normally have planted our runner bean seeds (under cover) by now, but we will wait until it gets warmer again. Have been busy digging though and the veggie beds are looking good and all will be ready when it is time to plant out.

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