I am sitting in the gathering dark. Over the shoulder of the hill the sun sets. There is time. Dusk is a slow thing in July.
This is the cousin field to Hawthorn Hill, the field our farm is named for. It sits across the lee of the hill separated by a bed of rushes, grass and perfumed wild mint that crunches beneath my boots and fills the air with itself as I walk.
There is an old green road here. Two tumbled down lines of hand raised stones, their limestone lines still peeping out amidst the mosses and grass. It brought the farm people from beyond the hill down to our stone barn to dance or to the church and the world beyond. The farms and their families long gone. Spruce only here now in a plantation that rings the farm. It is another, different kind of farm. The ruins of the old farmhouses from last century amongst the spruce. Roofless and thick stone walls made soft with time and growing things.
The forest has been clearfelled. It is a place as dead as the life it replaced. But not soft with growing things. It is scarred. Rutted. Pitted. Spilling carbon and fertility into the air and drains. Earth, trees, moss all scraped back in a factory process. The deer still pick amongst it. But it is quiet. Even the crows have no time for it. My small farm an oasis of green and yellow and blue amongst the slate grey clay.
I pick my way across the half wild hill to the field. It is glorious. There is stitchwort, some little ragwort. Bugle still. Thistle. Ragged robin a little. Buttercups by the thousand. Spotted orchids grow here. Small frogs hide amongst the rushes. There is cranes foot. White and red clover. A dead ash stands in the corner and we will let it be. Home and food to a world of things. There is Celandine. Marsh Marigolds in Spring. Hawthorn. Blackthorn. Primrose. Pignut. Bluebells. Angelica. Wild mint. Some little sprigs of Birdsfoot trefoil.
The pine marten might hung here but I do not see her. The fox does. Badgers too I think. The grass and rush are dense and tall. Above the field hunt some twenty swallows. As the light declines their hunt becomes the province of the farms bats as dusk draws in. In amongst the hot air the moths fly. The dragonflies dance. Meadow Brown butterflies flit. Small whites. Solitary and honey bees.
And at my back, in the wild heat of hot July, my hive of bees sits. It’s honey a condensation of the farms wildflower and forest wealth. The hazel and the willow and the alder with their spilling clouds of early pollen. The rich bounty of late springs Hawthorn blossom. The orchard they sit in a store cupboard for them. The thick carpet of bluebells. The Arbutus. The densely humming beech trees hosting bees by the honeydew hunting thousand. I see and feel my whole farm in the work of the bees. They are here only because I feel we farm in a way that supports them and their wild cousins. Each of these things a part and parcel of what we will harvest. Each a taste on the tongue of honey if we could but discern them.
The air shimmers with swallows and insects. The birds trace a path above me as my passing sends up insects for their hunt. The ash and sycamore trees creak and scritch in the breeze. The alder that rings the field, the poplar, the ragged hawthorn tree, the spurs of blackthorn that pierce the fenceline and the bramble all have a place here.
You can only take from land what it can give you. And you only should take from land what will not subtract from it in the taking. I farm wild things well, I hope, so the less wild things I make my living from can thrive, while giving back to the land enough to support us both. I am at peace here. For, though you can always do a thing better, here, I feel, I can be proud of what I do well enough for now, and will do better in time.
In time there will be more hawthorn here, there will be wild plum and cherry in new hedgerows too, more hazel, whitebeam, wild crab apple and pear. Swallows will arc. Poplar will have a home, and the first oaks will break through and become a thing once more. Linden trees will blossom with bees. We will interplant the pasture with silvopasture trees. Fruit and nut trees. Mulberry trees. Native trees. Food trees. Sheep and pigs will fertilise them, and their fruit will feed both us and the animals. With the wild world taking its share.
