Nature’s seasonal cycle is well underway again. In garden and field there is ample evidence of growth and regeneration. For sometime now the ground between the drilled rows of winter wheat has been covered by the welcome greenery of growth. It looks like being a bad season for damage to crops by the ever hungry slugs.The worry is when they chew off the stems below ground level. This will much reduce the plant population per acre, and obviously the subsequent yield.

It is not too late to encourage birds to nest in your garden by siting some suitable accommodation in well chosen places. As well as the familiar blue tit style nest box, why not try making, from an old piece of wire netting, a “dish” like shape. The size of a cereal or soup bowl would do.  Placed in a climbing honeysuckle or Russian vine such assistance towards a nest would more than likely be appreciated by a song thrush or blackbird. Open fronted nest boxes are popular with robins. If you enjoy making things the RSPB have drawings of various styles of boxes to work from. Nest boxes used last year should really by now be cleaned out and boiling water poured in to destroy any parasites that would infect the new chicks.

Fungi add much interest and colour to decaying tree stumps but certain varieties are far from “good news”.  I hope your garden is not playing host to the dreaded honey fungus. More likely to be found in the autumn, its black threads will invade and destroy neighbouring trees.  Once established a concerted attack by fungicide and digging out might win the day.           

Roger Sykes

We are sure to have in January a few cold and bright sunny days. We need them to remind us that what can be a cold and cheerless period in the countryside is only temporary. It is, nevertheless, important for winter wheat drilled in the Autumn to have a period of low soil temperatures to ensure the seed will flower in due course. This is referred to as “vernalisation”.

In this modern age farming practice does not require the same sort of skills the old farm workers had. There was a day when it was necessary for the wheat to be drilled in perfectly straight lines, no mean accomplishment to control two horses pulling the drill and steering it at the same time.  Horse hoeing between the rows was thus made possible without cutting up the crop. With the advent of spray chemicals soon after WWII to kill weeds, ie herbicides, priorities changed. Acres drilled in a day was the main concern, providing the machine didn’t block, and no ground was left undrilled. Curves and swerves could be ignored. All the same it was still pleasing to the eye and satisfying for the man on the job to “line it up” nicely.  Such skilled work can still be seen by taking a stroll along Church Lane, Earl Soham. Looking to the left you will see a good example of that old drilling skill.

Many bird lovers are conscientiously providing food for our winter residents. The reward in entertainment is great, especially by the tit family. A net of peanuts seems to last them no time at all. If you begin to feel they seem to be living more extravagantly than you, why not try offering them dripping instead of nuts. It is a much cheaper and equally attractive alternative. Water of course should always be available for them too. When you watch them drinking you may care to reflect, that unlike ourselves, birds cannot “swallow”. It is gravity, not an epiglottis, that gets the liquid to the right place.  

Roger Sykes

We humans are very much out of step with the timetable decreed by nature. We think of December as the closing down month of another year. January is the month of new beginnings and fresh resolves. In nature and agricultural this part of the year has few “alpha’s” or “omega’s”. Spring and autumn are the great celebrations. with December but days to routinely work or watch pass by. If sharp frosts or a covering of snow feature, so much the better. However, the winter months are little different to the summer months in the time taken to care for farm livestock.  Pigs and poultry are housed all the year round. It is the dairy herd that reaches its peak work demand during the winter. In December there is much forward planning to ensure that those caring for stock on Christmas and Boxing Day can have a few extra hours free to enjoy the festivities.  The twice daily milking ritual must be relentlessly obeyed, and even nowadays in some herds cows are milked 3 times in 24 hours! Demanding as tending to livestock can be, there is something special on Christmas morning about a newly strawed yard of contented cattle, quietly pulling out hay from freshly filled racks. It is well worth a lean on the gate for a few moments to savour their contentment, before coming indoors. One is met by the delicious aromas coming from the kitchen and family and friends celebrating this special day in the Christian calendar.

Gardeners will be turning over the pages of seedsmen’s catalogues wondering if the perfect specimens colourfully illustrated  or claims made for some exotic new variety  will live up to its description. There is much to be  said for remaining faithful to varieties that have proved satisfactory over the years. Perhaps the occasional foray into the exotic could be excused. The “Flak” giant carrots from Holland which I grew  for the first time were certainly enormous when mature, but what they gained in size they lost, in my view, in flavour.  However, I shall certainly be ordering in good time the early potato “Foremost”. The combination of shape, taste and readiness for the saucepan in early June provide all I ask for in any humble spud. 

  

In years past, the traditional place for the exchange of village “news” was the blacksmith’s or farrier’s forge. Every village had one, and Earl Soham was no exception. We know it now as a disused petrol filling station, by the green.  A farrier in the next village told me, as I stood talking to him recently in a smoky cloud of pungent burning hoof, that he had shod oxen there some sixty years ago. His memory bridged the decades more vividly than any written word in a history book could, as he recalled those years long ago.                                 

Roger Sykes

Recent years have allowed autumn to drift well into November. In fact winter often remains in the “wings” until January has arrived. Will you recall this autumn as I do, as a season of “drunken” like crane flies, hedgerows with cascades of blackberries and large gatherings of caterpillars on the winter cabbage plants? The crane flies or daddy long legs were especially numerous. Their larvae called leather jackets are particularly tasty to rooks and starlings.  You probably saw flocks of these birds industriously feeding on the leather jackets on your lawn.  Caterpillars of the common cabbage-white butterfly quickly munch through what should be eventually yours!  If you are reluctant to use a chemical spray you have little choice but to hand pick them from the leaves, or possibly hose them off with a jet of water.

The farming world allows for no let up in its labours, even though the combine harvester is under wraps until another harvest time. Seed beds are prepared and a good acreage of next year’s wheat and oil seed rape has already begun to appear where only a few short weeks ago there was stubble. Loads of sugar beet pass through our villages every day. It is interesting to reflect that when a 20 ton load of sugar beet  passes you by, 70  paper bags of  sugar will come back  to somebody’s shop and ultimately be consumed, one way or another, by all of us.

If the good number of the hornbeams, oaks and chestnut trees that have been planted along the roadside and in odd corners survive our drought like conditions, our parish roads and lanes will take on a pleasing aspect in a few years time. We shall owe a debt of gratitude to the volunteers who planted them.

Other far sighted folk are doing their bit to ensure that rare species of once familiar farm animals survive. Two sandy coloured Tamworth pigs have been acquired and now reside amongst us!      

Roger Sykes

One of the less agreeable indicators that the cereal harvest is “safely gathered in” are massive plumes of smoke hanging on our Suffolk horizons.  It is true a “good burn” made for a weed free beginning for the next crop, and, at the same time, removed, at little cost, unwanted straw. The benefits, as many arable farmers agreed, were rather negated by a variety of problems associated with smoke and fire. The upshot is that we wave a cheerful farewell to burning straw before next years harvest. The farmer, in most cases, already uses new cultivation machinery and techniques to bury the straw. The paper and building industry is also providing a limited demand for straw usage as an alternative to wood pulp.  On some fields big round netted bales, rather photogenically I think, reside on the stubble until shipped out for winter use.

August and early September is the silent period for our garden birds. Moulting is taking place, and I daresay, being partly feathered makes our normally bold blackbirds, thrushes and robins feel, if not ashamed, then somewhat vulnerable! By now, however, our garden birds should be much in evidence, especially if food is being put out for them. The best indication that fruit is ripe and ready for picking is the close attendance of our feathered friends. My modest grape vine is the “rendezvous”  for every  blackbird in the Parish.

It is good to see, in many gardens, well established or newly dug ponds. These provide not only a focal  point for the garden, but also a much needed “watering hole” for birds and small mammals alike. It is quite important, however, to ensure that some sort of incline plain enables easy access in and out of the water. Without this, a watery grave for a thirsty hedgehog might well be the result.

Roger Sykes

From around 1947, in our Parishes, as well as most other East Anglian rural districts, the noble cart horse began to be replaced by the much less peaceful tractor. The “clean legged” Suffolk Punch and the mighty Shires, (less suited to our boulder clay soils because of the “feather” or hair on their lower legs which collected the sticky clay) began to become much less important as a means of farm power. Slowly, but with certainty, the tractor with all its oily smells and noise proved so much more suitable.  At one time there were probably 4 horses on every 100 acres to cope with the toil of the farming year. It was a sad day in many a stable when “Whitefoot” or “Beauty” no longer stamped their great feet on the cobbles and silence replaced the munching and snorting which accompanied well earned “baits” after a days work. However, horses are still a common sight but not ploughing wheat stubbles or pulling beet drill in immaculate straight lines. Now we see the more slender variety, with a rider up. In our three Parishes which comprise our benefice,  it is possible to see everything from a rescued Dartmoor foal to a Shetland pony, to a Suffolk mare and even the occasional Shire.  Horse drawn traps and waggonettes feature especially in the summertime. The pair of Friesian black horses, originating from Friesland in  Holland,  have no rivals for grandeur as they are exercised along our roads. Just a parish “up the road” they even have the first ever Carmague horses in England. It is good that we have not lost man's oldest and most patient servant, but rather we have seen a sort of evolution, and might again when the oil runs dry!

Walking along a shady and dampish footpath recently, I was excited to see a metre plus of a harmless grass snake gracefully gliding across in front of me. It quickly vanished into the undergrowth. Its contrasting dark and light green colours were quite beautiful.  I wished it well.  

Roger Sykes

I rather suspect the “upside down” politics that now sadly go with our farming will, if only temporarily, be forgotten as once again harvest time gets well underway. The gathering in of crops be it rolling acres of wheat or buried acorns for winter use is a strong and basic instinct, obeyed by all levels of life,  from the smallest creatures of the fields and hedgerows to the pinnacle of it all, ourselves. We differ only in the harvesting techniques! Several decades have passed since the harvest wagons hauled the crops along white line free roads to stack yards. Now flashing amber lights precede green giants that harvest, at alarming rates, vast expanses of potential bread for us and feed for livestock.  Twenty   tons  of grain  passes you en route for the  grain stores,  in a discord of rattle and roar.  One man does the work it took 10 of our forefathers to accomplish.  Can you imagine their astonishment could they tread again our Parish roads this harvest time?

Yet, in spite of all the inevitable progress, much remains in our Suffolk fields and villages to keep our bond with those more peaceful years past.  Our roadsides seem to display a lot that would have coloured their journeys. Poppies, dog roses, purple vetch, yellow agrimony, bramble and thistles coloured our waysides then as now. I saw a “cloud” of small tortoiseshell butterflies making their erratic way over Saxtead Green, but you would not see them very well through the windscreen of your car travelling at 40 mph!

Have you ever considered replacing your bird table in the summertime, when birds are best left to fend for themselves, with a butterfly “table”?  Shallow containers of a sugary solution will attract a good variety of these ephemeral creatures and they will welcome your largesse.                                                                                              

 

Roger Sykes