Ten men went to mow

Hay-time will soon be upon us. I wrote this for my Ranger's blog.

At Paxton Pits Nature Reserve we always plan for as late a cut as we can in order to allow most of the flowers set seed. If we leave it too late, the hay turns brown and loses all of its food value. It's a tricky balancing act.

Chris Alderson, Jim Stevenson,
Alex Stevenson and Arnold Alderson
Ivelet 1956

Hay was always a vital crop to keep livestock fed in winter. In my childhood, I often walked with my grandmother through the buttercups in Swaledale, which is limestone country. Each hay-meadow had a name and was surrounded by a dry-stone wall. Every field contained a stone cow-byre with a midden of manure outside it.

A network of narrow footpaths led through all of the fields, but woe betide anyone who took a detour through the flowers. Many a wandering townie has had his day ruined by an encounter with an angry Dalesman yelling words that children should never hear and that most adults would need a translator to understand, all because he wandered off the straight-and-narrow and flattened the hay.

"Git thesel owt o't fog and back on't path" would be a polite request in Dale-speak. (Fog means any grass but "Yorkshire Fog" is a particular species of grass, Holcus lanatus.)

Good drying weather is essential for hay-making, so it's important not to cut the crop if it is going to rain. Ideally you need three dry days but four would be better. We used to cut the hay with a horse-drawn cutting bar but by the end of the 1950's most farmers had little grey "Fergies", blue Ford tractors or orange-red Fordson Majors. Because the hay was so valuable, every awkward corner and every steep slope was cut either using a scythe or a two-wheeled Allen mower.

Once cut, the hay needs to be turned repeatedly to dry it out. We used wooden hay-rakes and pitch forks to turn the hay and that required a lot of people. I remember hay-making in a field called "Robin" with perhaps a dozen other folks that included "Mosser" Alderson, his wife, two sons, a couple of neighbours and several elderly relatives from "up-dale" as well as a us little'uns. On bigger farms they would hire in a team of roving "hay-time-men" who were mostly Irish.

Ferguson tractor

When the hay had been turned a few times most of the seed had fallen out and that's why a good hay meadow gets progressively more rich in wild flowers over time.

The finished hay was pitchforked onto a horse-drawn sled. My job as a three year-old was just to sit on the horse, but when I was five I drove the tractor instead. Of course I ciould not reach the pedals but I sat at the steering wheel and worked the hand throttle. We chugged around the field very slowly in low gear as the hay was piled high on the sled and then we led it to the byre where it was pitched into the hay-loft above the cattle stalls where the short-horn cows would spend the winter.

The farm's sheep were kept on the high pasture and the moors while the cattle that were not being milked were on open pastures or commons. Only the ten or twelve milk-cows were kept near to home, but not on the best hay fields.

Today at Paxton Pits we have two proper hay meadows that I call the Home Meadow and the Lower Meadow near to the visitor's centre. We also have a long, narrow riverside field called "The Great Meadow" where we don't cut hay. They are all quite new but we want to make them as good as any historic meadow. How do we do that?

Yellow rattle. When the seed-pods rattle, it's hay time.

It is possible to simply plant a meadow. In Lincolnshire a lot of meadows have been created by drilling rows of local wild flower seeds into the grass sward. The result looks like a stripy, corduroy cloth with narrow yellow rows of cowslips, buttercups and yellow rattle. Over time the stripes merge and you have what looks like an ancient meadow.

Our two home meadows were created as part of the restoration of the quarry that created Rudd Pit and Cloudy Pit. Grass was sown, but most of the other plants came in on their own. Some, such as yellow rattle and meadow cranesbill, had a little help. When a cable was laid under the meadow a few more plants arrived in the bare soil, including knapweed. You could say that we just managed our fields as though they were already proper hay-meadows, and that's what they became.

A restored baler.

Every year, the management is the same. We let the flowers grow until early July and then we make hay using our tractors to mow, turn and bale the crop. Most of the seed falls out during this process, but there is always some left in the hay. The hay-bales are stored in our barn ready to feed our highland cattle in winter.

We leave a margin of several meters around the hay-cut and keep a few of the best floral bits just for looking at and for the insects that we have just made homeless. Those margins show up all year round because that is where the coarser grasses and the late flowering plants survive.

Grasses are specially adapted to being grazed and so they quickly bounce back after the hay is cut. If we do not have a drought, after only a few weeks we could take a second crop of hay or silage but we don't. Instead we borrow about ten gentle, friendly cows and calves from a neighbour. The cattle munch their way through the regrowth and the marginal coarse bits. The are picky-eaters so that the resulting sward is patchy. They also make fabulous "meadow muffins" that attract invertebrates. Badgers come and turn the cow-pats over to find worms.

Loading hay bales at Paxton Pits.

If we get a wet winter, the lower meadow becomes quite boggy. I have seen quite a selection of waders and water birds there over the years, including snipe, woodcock and redshanks. The drier top meadow often attracts fieldfares and redwings that feed on worms after all the berries have gone from the hedgerows.

Before Christmas, the cattle have run out of food and so the farmer takes them home. Unfortunately, they don't eat everything and so we have to take out invading willows and cut back the edges in places where we expect orchids in spring. Even in March we should see a few flowers popping up.

The Great Meadow is managed as a wet meadow, the difference being that we graze it lightly in summer and remove the cattle before the winter floods. This is typically how flood-meadows are managed, but we are a bit disappointed in our progress so far. The meadow is just too dry and we are not seeing a lot of wildflowers except in the ditches.

Stampede.

The Great Meadow was never part of the quarry but it was ploughed for growing peas until the 1990s so the soil has no "memory" or wildflower seed bank. We tried gathering seed from our older meadow and scattered it on a lowish bit of the Great meadow near our wind pump. A spotted orchid appeared and some yellow rattle, so it did work, at least a bit.

This week we were checking on another field that we call Pumphouse Meadow, a mile north of the Reserve in the quarry. That's where our cows go in winter. By March they need a bit of feeding so we take them some of our hay which they absolutely love. They only have to hear a vehicle coming before they stampeded along the fence to be first in line. We tend to feed them along the fence because the access is good and we can check out the cows without getting a swipe from a stray horn.

What we noticed was that we now have a very nice buttercup meadow along the fence due to the seeds falling out of the hay. I'm guessing that this is the way we will seed the Great Meadow too.

Wadenhoe

 This week, we found Wadenhoe.

We live in, or very close to, six English counties (plus three vice-counties, Huntingdonshire, the Soke of Peterborogh, and Rutland). "So what?" you might ask.

Well, each county has its own strong charecteristics and looks to it's own historic county town for focus. That town is often a cathedral city too; think of Lincoln, Northampton, Norwich and Leicester. However, in my neck of the woods,  Cambridge is the county town but Ely and Peterborough have the cathedrals. Each county has its own local newspapers and radio stations, so it really is a revelation to visit another county to hear the local dialect and pick up some leaflets for the local attractions.

The six counties are all accessible for an afternoon out from our house. In fact, we can be in London or Birmingham in an hour; both several counties away. It all goes to show that England isn't very big really, but it is a very diverse place.

This week we "discovered" the little bit of Northamptonshire that is nearest to us, and we fell in love with it. Let me tell you why.

Imagine leaving our flat grid-iron of a fenland landsape behind and, after driving west for only a few minutes, turning off onto a single-track road  that winds between hedges and woods and climbs over actual hills that require you to change gear! The houses here are built from yellow stone and many of them have stone-tiled or thatched roofs. It's England as it used to be. There is no cell-phone reception and no traffic noise except mine. You drop into a shallow valley and cross (via an ancient, rickety bridge)  a clear winding river that meanders through water meadows, then rushes through mill races and sluices. Go on, scan the horizon for signs of industry. There are none. What you will see is rolling countryside, woods, hamlets and churches; lots of really old churches. You will also see birds of prey, especially kites, buzzards, hawks and kestrels. The sky is never empty.


On first acquaintance Wadenhoe is charming, but I want to know more. For instance, who owns that huge Tudor house with all the chimneys, by the river? Why is it so run-down?

The house turns out to be Lilford Hall and it is not open to the public.

Lilford Hall is a Tudor house that is stuffed with history. You can find out a lot from the splendid 500 page web-site that the owners have put together. www.lilfordhall.com  but I'll just give you a snippet or two here.

I'm always interested in any connections with America, and this house has at least two. One is Robert Brown (1550 -1633) and the other is the film-star Clarke Gable.


Robert Browne was the first separatist from the Church of England.  During the reign of James I (James the VI if you are Scottish) life became increasingly difficult for religious minorities and so, inspired by his teachings, the Pilgrim Fathers sailed on the Mayflower to found the Plymouth Colony in what is now Massachusetts. Many many more dissidents later set sail for America and established congregations in line with Brownist philosophy. Robert Browne has since been referred to as the Father of Congregationalism, Father of the Pilgrims and Grandfather of the Nation (USA). Sadly he died in prison after refusing to pay a parish tax. His crime was made more serious because he struck a police constable.
Clarke Gable was stationed at Lilford during WW 2 when the house also acted as a military hospital. He signed up to the USAAF and they capitalised on his fame by using him to make a recruitment film that was made on real sorties in the Flying Fortress bombers that flew from the airbases in Northamptonshire. You can watch the restored movie on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SJQYG_GskY

We also found a former owner of the house who was a serious bird-watcher.

The Powys family owned the hall from 1711 to 1949 and Thomas Powys (1833-1896) was the Fourth Baron Lilford. He was the first chairman of the British Ornithologists Union and also the man who introduced the little owl to the UK.

The house and estate are in need of quite a bit of restoration work. If you are interested, the estate is currently for sale. It could all be yours for only 50,000,000 Euros.

Wadenhoe itself is not much more than a stone hamlet with about 120 residents. In Saxon, a Wadden was a ford that youcould wade across. There is still a ford below the mill. A Hoe is a hill or spur, like the one on which the church stands.

Our first visit to the village was almost entirely spent in the Barn tea-room with our son Dan. We can recommend it is you want a snack and a friendly chat. On our second visit we had lunch in the pub, which was just as friendly and the hot food was really good. We stuffed ourselves with duck and pork, and deserts, and real ale before setting out on a hike up the hill and beyond.
I suspect that the place can be overwhelmed by walkers and dog owners on a good day, so I would book if I were you. On our late winter's afternoon we had the whole village more or less to ourselves.

Climbing up to the church, we noted two remarkable things:

The red kites that were whistling to each other sounded like shepherds calling their dogs. They were totally unfazed by us and, if the light had been better, I could have taken some cracking photos of them, both in flight and in the bare trees.

The church does not sit on the top of the hill, it is sunk into it so that as you enter through the porch andthe heavy wooden door, you are surprised to find that the floor inside is much lower than the outside. Entering the nave is like descending into a crypt. Why did they do that? Maybe they excavated the hill to get the stone for the church and then built it in the hole they had created. Certainly the hill is riddled with earthworks, presumably to quarry building stone. The mound is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, managed by Natural England as a mini-nature reserve. We loved it.

The village and the church-mound lie on the Nene Way and the Lyveden Way; both popular walking routes. You just have to try them both, or you could just enjoy a meal and pint at the pub, especially in summer when you could sit in the garden on the river bank and watch the world go by. I think I'll book Sunday lunch now.