Farming News – November 2021

By its very nature, November is a month of remembrance. As the days grow shorter we remember the summer now past, which was good in parts and better than the cold, dark spring.

My potatoes are harvested and, as expected, yields are about one third of those that I would normally anticipate. The good weather of the past few weeks has enabled a late silage crop to be taken and it provided almost perfect conditions for sowing winter cereals. Several years have past since I have seen the fields look this green as we slide into winter. Fodder beet is the only crop left to harvest by the contractor.

During my lifetime I have known many wonderful people in Scruton but I often think of those who lived and worked in the village in bygone times. The ditches were dug with primitive tools during the Saxon period and the rigs and furrows are the remnants of medieval farming; our hedges date back to the time of enclosures and the stone walls were built to provide work for villagers during the Great Depression of the 1920s.