Over the Farmer's Gate (18 page)

Autumn

THE ONSET of autumn brings a different look to the countryside. Having taken 90 acres of third-cut silage, and with all neighbouring corn crops now cleared, the land is in a way denuded, all the wrapping has been taken off and the wildlife is there for all to see.

As we’ve taken previous silage crops there has always been a crop of some sort adjacent to it that was convenient as a cover for disturbed wildlife. The only cover now are the blocks planted to provide food for wildlife in the winter.

My top land is splendidly isolated, but the autumn brings more visitors to it than at any other time of the year. Mainly they are contractors who arrive to do the silage. First up is the man who cuts all the grass. A former national ploughing champion, he does, as you would expect, a very tidy job.

I stop him for a chat; we talk about the crop and then he says: ‘Boy, you’ve got some hares up here. I haven’t seen so many hares for a long time.’ It’s inevitable that he should see them; the man with the mower does most of the ‘disturbing’ that goes on. When the gang arrives the next day to pick the grass up, I get similar comments from them.

The comments about the hares make me proud and pleased, almost like a parent at speech day. Not that I’ve done anything to help them to multiply but then, again, I’ve done nothing to hinder them either and, as you well know, I always keep a watchful eye over them.

My wife occasionally accompanies me around the fields in the evening and warns me of trouble to come if the hares eat her blackberries. It’s not long before she will come up here on her own to pick them.

I sometimes think she is a humanoid squirrel and hoards them, because very few end up on any plate that I see. She must have a freezer full of them by now. Bare fields show me what the birds of prey are up to as well. Yesterday there was a buzzard as big as a turkey dining on a full-grown rabbit in the middle of a field.

On Sunday, there were two walkers on the footpath on the very top field. I always drive over to pass the time of day; this comes as a surprise to some, who see the approach of a farmer as a prelude to a ticking-off. They turn out to be Americans: ‘Boy, you sure do have some big rabbits around here.’ My hares are a bit of a focal point at the moment.

We’re just about coming to the end of our harvesting. There’s a scraggy field of maize to take home and we might have a bit of fourth-cut silage at the end of September, but we’re on the last field of straw bales, and that seems to be coming to an end. I’m with my young assistant, I’m driving the loader, and he’s supposed to be moving the trailer about the field from bale to bale.

It’s normally him on the loader and me on the trailer, but we have a role-reversal because he says he’s too tired to drive the loader today. This, as I load the bales, is a source of some reflection.

I must be 50 years older than him; I work much longer hours, yet he’s tired. What really surprises me is the fact that he would
admit to someone my age that he was too tired to do what he expects me to do. As I load the bales, there’s not much movement of tractor and trailer to make my job any easier.

The field we are in is quite steep in places and it’s not that easy to put a load on tidily. When we pull the full load on to a flat bit, it isn’t tidy at all. It’s 5.30pm by now, it’s Friday evening, and my assistant is ready to go.

I won’t let him go until we strap the load on further. I know from past experience that annoyance equals very fast tractor driving and we have to take this load through the village.

I’m not about to entertain the farming folk of the area by shedding a load of bales in the middle of the village, just as some of them are making their way to the pub, so we decide to leave the load in the field for the night. I drive the loader slowly home, but the other tractor is long gone in a cloud of black smoke.

SLOWLY, AND not very surely, because of the wet August, and thus far September, the combines are picking away at the harvest and oh-so-slowly, the fields become cleared.

This is an important time for the wildlife that was born this spring – in theory, birds and animals should be big enough by now to take care of themselves, although yesterday, when I got out of the truck to open a gate, I found the tiniest of leverets tucked away in the grass. It didn’t move so I could see clearly that it would have nested comfortably in the palm of my hand.

We have several fields of third-cut silage to do at any time but, because we have refused to buy any more fertiliser at its present price, it’s a fairly sparse crop. It provides cover of a sort but hares don’t take much spotting in there and neither do the skylarks.

Skylarks concern me. Next to my passion for the brown hare, skylarks were the species I was most proud of, because there were
lots and lots on our top land. But I would guess that there are less than half there now compared with three years ago, which is actually disgraceful because there must be 40 acres up there that are designated every year to wild birds. I don’t know how much it costs because it’s the landlord’s stewardship scheme, but if it was working then birds should be increasing, especially skylarks, and not actually be in decline.

To my mind the reason is plain to see: buzzard numbers have trebled, in addition to the ravens and kites that we now see every day. All of these wreak havoc with songbirds, especially those that nest on the ground.

When did you last see a hedgehog? Badgers love hedgehogs – they roll them over and eat all the best bits in no time at all. Hedgehogs are predicted to be extinct in this country in 20 or 30 years but not to worry; someone will reintroduce them in 50 years’ time.

The fact that we could intervene, but will never be allowed to, makes it all the more shameful. Not while we can always blame the farmers for everything.

AS I FOLLOW the daily routine of winter feeding, a routine that takes me mostly from one set of buildings to another (we just have a very few cattle out and they are on fields that we will need to plough in the spring, so it doesn’t really matter if they do any damage to the sward), the fields are still littered with pheasants. But they are very different pheasants to those that were about a few months ago. Those pheasants roamed the fields like flocks of tame poultry, which in a way is exactly what they were.

Today’s pheasant is on full alert. As you drive by on the tractor, their heads all go up. Those that are in the bottom of hedgerows scatter in panic as they seek to find a way through the hedge to
safety. They know full well that whereas a few months ago the arrival of ‘man’ invariably meant more food, today it could be a signal that your backside is about to be peppered with shot. Especially if man turns up in numbers with spaniels and the like and you and your friends are encouraged to fly over men with guns. You also know that some of your friends and neighbours don’t come back from this exercise.

Pheasants seem to take shooting in their stride better than partridge. Pheasants seem to settle back into their routine very quickly. They usually make their way back to where they were reared and continue feeding normally. True, they are on a very high alert status, but life goes on. Your partridge seems to me to be very different. True, there are far fewer of them but they always seem to live in clearly defined coveys within clearly defined territories. Often, I will disturb a covey in a particular place and know instinctively that that’s the ‘15’ covey, automatically count them and be correct. Shooting activity often breaks up a covey and drives them from their territory and, the day after the shoot, I often come across groups of partridge on the lanes and roads that seem totally disorientated and bewildered. Give them a couple of days and they seem to have settled down again.

I like partridge. I like to see them about, especially greys. I suppose this is another example of my species partiality. I also suppose that deep down I don’t like to see them shot. I look forward to seeing them about with their young in the summer. But they do taste nice, don’t they?

I WAS talking to a friend about harvests and combining in particular. Like most farming activities, there are anecdotes to remember. I was telling him about a contractor I once knew, who, at the completion of harvest, would park his combine in the
middle of the yard and leave it there, out in all weathers, until just about a day before he needed it again.

The seeds would germinate and grow, cows would rub up against it, sheep would shelter underneath it and his poultry would explore its depths looking for grain.

When harvest-time came he would change the battery and fire it up, to see if it was all still working, once he had the threshing mechanism into gear.

I was there to witness this on one occasion. His hens had been laying inside all winter. Out of the back came dozens of smashed eggs and the foul smell was not far behind – among the debris of rotten eggs was the straw that had been used to make nests and two or three hens that had just had the fright of their lives.

ONE OF my granddaughter’s pullets disappeared. I’d bought her three pullets and she had firm orders for 12 eggs a day from various teachers and family friends.