I’m in love! Yes, head over heels in love with the countryside! These few weeks in late April early May are stunning. Not only are they beautiful to look at but to smell and listen to as well. Probably it’s special because it’s so fleeting. And the icing on the cake has been this glorious weather.
But something very strange has happened…
… as I grin from ear to ear gushing with nonsense about the gorgeousness of it all I’m met with long miserable faces about drought and the lack of rain, disaster – total doom and gloom. Come on! Yes, of course climate change is an issue, yes, of course we have to do things to stop it and pretty quickly, but does this mean that we are no longer allowed to enjoy, appreciate or celebrate a fantastic spring? We’ve just come through one of the wettest winters for a long time (I’m also fed up of hearing ‘it’s the driest, wettest, hottest, coldest, longest, shortest whatever since records began’), so I’ll just stick to ‘long time’. I know the day it started raining in early November to the day it stopped in late April with a reprieve of ten days from 23 January. I know! We had lakes forming in the dips in fields. Mud, feet deep, washed away to the bed rock below. Rivers and springs popping up in surprising places. As for the garden…well, it was one big water feature. My pup (the one with the characteristics of a wolf) didn’t realise that other types of weather existed and has become a kind of aqua-hound just to add to her problems. Lambing was fraught as ewes succumbed to mastitis in the driving wind and rain and lambs, mud-brown and hunched, cowered beside their mothers for shelter. It was bad.
As I write this I’m listening to the bird song of early evening, I have the windows of my office open and I can smell the apple-greenness of new leaves, the addictive warm scent of sweet vernal grass, delicate evasive blossom, bluebells and our first rose. The baby owls have just woken in the oak tree outside my window and are wooing and chittering. One of the ewes calls her lamb and a couple of my down calving heifers cough, belch and rumble contentedly.
So, please, enjoy this fabulous spring and smile!
6 comments
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May 15, 2007 at 10:49 am
Pete Smith
I’d say, enjoy it while it lasts. The kind of waterlogging and erosion you describe will probably have serious and lasting effects on your farmland if they become the rule rather than the exception.
Predictions for the South-West are for winters to be up to 15% wetter, with heavy rainfall becoming more common. This is offset by much drier summers.
http://www.swenvo.org.uk/environment/climate_change.asp
What your beautiful meadow will look like after a few years of that sort of treatment is anyone’s guess.
May 17, 2007 at 9:08 am
paula
Yup - I will. And thanks for your comments and taking time to read this blog.
Our meadows, though, thrive on waterlogged conditions. The farmer and stock don’t. Scuba diving kit is standard issue for the sheep at the start of winter!
Seriously, this is not a ‘tender’ part of Devon this is the true grit - the extremely wet, cold, clay Culm measures. My cattle are winter housed for 6-7 months to prevent poaching of said ‘beautiful meadows’. It has a reputation locally and other farmland is disparagingly refered to as ‘boy’s land’.
Howerever we are blessed with an extraorinary variety of plants and wildlife.
Having an environmentalist/conservationist for a husband and reserch scientist for one of my sons - supper conversations are full of very lively debate on the future of the earth.
May 17, 2007 at 9:35 am
Sara
The photograph of your meadow is quite lovely and you do right to enjoy the sights and sounds of Spring because we just never know what it will be like next Spring!
Sara from farmingfriends in Yorkshire
May 17, 2007 at 1:13 pm
paula
Thanks Sara. And how right you are!
May 17, 2007 at 4:10 pm
matt
Hi paula,
You’re very lucky to live within such a beautiful area. I can well imagine the conversations around the kitchen table; real, intense, emotional and full of laughter as well. We city folk don’t know what we’re missing.
May 31, 2007 at 8:23 am
paula
I am lucky Matt, you’re quite right. I’m sure that city folk have just as stimulating conversations, though probably not quite so filled with the internal workings of animals!