State and Condition
There is no doubt that twentieth century wars, mechanization, the landlord and tenant system and subsidies have got us into a real mess. Cheap diesel fuel meant water being pumped from deep underground. Of course, dairy cows need a huge amount of water, more than could be collected at the springs and from the roofs, which is what used to happen. The labour force went off to towns and wars and so nobody spent the winter months quietly mending the walls and laying the hedges.
Horses went too, and ever more powerful tractors had to be bought, to power the big machines which knocked and broke the old stone gateposts, which were left lying in the grass!
Mixed grazing and rotations were abandoned. Walls and fences fell into decay. The house was given an oil boiler, so the trees were not pollarded, but were left to get overgrown or their boughs break in storms.
Images
The overgrown area behind the barns, in 2001.
The yard.
Gable end of cart shed with farming mess.
Calf Kennels
Now, a great deal of food is imported or transported many miles. The consumer has lost touch with seasons and wants anything at any time. The government imposes endless red tape and regulation and wants the land looking nice for townsfolk to come and play about in. And yet, with food as the new religion, there is huge interest in high quality, traceable, local organic meat! These are our opportunities.
Images:
Our lambs (fully organic from February 2007)
A pile of DEFRA guidance books
Water:
High Leas has no permanent streams or springs. There are remains of brick and stone reservoirs, fed from springs and building roofs. Several fields had spring-fed ponds, and the old title deeds conferred rights to water cattle at neighbouring springs, lower down and in Littlemoor Wood.
The gutters that carried rainwater from the roofs now lie broken, and the 5000 gallon stone-vaulted reservoir beneath our garden would no longer hold water. The springs in the fields are a memory, just funny holes that get wet sometimes.
We now use a deep borehole pump, run from a generator in the wood. And yet water comes out from underneath our big barn every winter, so perhaps a spring has been covered by the concrete surface nearby.
Images:
Inside vaulted reservoir under garden
Spring-fed trough in Happy Valley
Coming Soon - Abandoned dew-pond in Sound of Music field
The wood:
Littlemoor Wood has fallen into great neglect. R.M.Beaumont leased almost the whole wood to a syndicate on a 199 year lease, which I must say was a mistake. The syndicate was really only interested in tax relief. Planting was carried out (financed by the taxpayer, via grants) but the trees were not cared for, and almost all of them died, leaving the wood in a “semi-natural” state, which means that as the old trees die, the bracken spreads and prevents regeneration!
The lease passed from the syndicate to an investor, and Edward was lucky in being able to negotiate a surrender of the lease. Littlemoor Wood now belongs to Richard.
Recently, some small scale planting experiments have been carried out, and these have failed, except in terms of teaching us about the nature and extent of the problems. As with so many things, we should learn from the past. The wood was a resource for the farm: it provided timber for fencing and for building. Stone was quarried there for our barns and house, and for making millstones. It was a place for pigs and sometimes even cattle to forage. The trees were managed on long cycles, perhaps seven years for hazel rods for fencing and hedgelaying, but 50 years or more for big oak timbers.
Most important, the wood was used. But in the twentieth century it was decided that forestry and farming should be separate activities. The farmer was shut out of the wood, which was managed by agents for a distant investor. And we can see what happened.
Pictures:
Millstone lying in wood.
