Fields of gold

One of the joys of living close to fields is being able to watch them change as the seasons turn.  Winwick and the neighbouring villages are surrounded by fields which grow a variety of crops, and in the fields where the dog and I like to walk, it’s usually barley and wheat (although we did have blue flax one year).  The weather does play a part but generally, whatever is going on in the world, the crops in the fields grow to their own pattern and follow their own timescale.  I’ve been taking photos all year as we’ve been walking through the fields and I thought you would like to see as well – it’s a photo-heavy post so get yourself a brew!

Last autumn, a new farmer took over the fields where we walk.  I was a bit sad as my farmer friend and her husband had looked after the fields for a long time and I liked being able to ask her questions and give her a wave if I saw her out in the tractor, but farming is business and it was how it was.  The new farmer didn’t put in an appearance for quite some time but in October, we spotted a tractor.

There was quite a bit of local upset as the farmer ripped out trees to make new boundary lines which removed a footpath and church boundary and so you had to walk carefully across the ploughed furrows (the farmer eventually reinstated the path line in a half-hearted kind of way but he did it), and the path was a mess of waterlogged clay and ankle-deep mud for a long time over the winter.

Seeds were sown and by the end of October, there was a fuzz of green despite what had felt like weeks of rain.

I thought it was incredible that those tiny seeds had been able to grow in what looked like most inhospitable conditions, but they did, and even at the end of the year when you might expect the fields to be empty and bare, there were green shoots appearing.

And then the spring arrived and almost overnight, it seemed, the fields started to burst into life.

At first, you can’t tell (or at least, I can’t!) whether it’s going to be barley or wheat as the grass-like leaves look the same , but barley has the tall stalks on the top of the seeds – they’re usually sticky so I think that’s where the pollen sits, although you may know differently and can tell me!

This year, I’ve been switching our dog walks around and often we’ll go out later rather than first thing in the morning so that the dog gets a different view and different smells.  He’s quite happy to do this (he doesn’t seem to mind spending the day snoring at all!) and it means we got to see the sunsets as it stayed light for longer.

By the end of May, the barley was fully grown and now it was just a case of waiting for it to ripen.  You would think with these glorious sunsets that it wouldn’t take long …

Oh, but we had plenty of rain!

This photo is taken walking towards the barley fields … I was sorry I hadn’t taken my coat!

Gradually, though, the barley turned to gold and the stalks became brittle and I knew that it wouldn’t be long before the combine harvester would be in the fields.  You know when barley is ripe because those tall heads bend over – they remind me of prawns!  I found this one on the path, it’s a bit broken but you can see the stalks.

This year, there was a flock of jackdaws that took up residence at one of the field and would fly into the air with a huge burst of noise when you approached.  The collective name for a group of jackdaws is a “clattering” and think that is a very apt name for the chack-chack sound they make.  When I was looking for a link so that I could add in the sound, the jackdaws that were recorded sounded very laid back – the ones around here are much more talkative and when there’s about a hundred of them launching into the air in front of you, all sounding the alarm, there’s nothing laid back about that sound! 🤣

I can imagine that the farmer wasn’t very pleased that they had moved in as they had completely squashed the barley on both sides of the path …

The dog was very interested in the smells in this particular patch of the field but I kept him on his lead around here as nobody wants my big black dog squashing even more of the barley!

I didn’t see the combine harvester this year but I did see the rows of stalks left behind to be turned into straw bales for the winter.

I don’t know if the dog thought I was going to try to make him jump all those lines of straw, but he doesn’t look very happy!  You can see that the footpath is back now; there were enough pairs of feet to flatten the clay into a path, but clearly the path was in the way of the tractor!

The next day, the tractors were out again to bale the straw whilst it was still dry.  We’ve had a lovely couple of weeks but it wasn’t forecast to last much longer.

And now we’re full circle.  The tractor was back in the field today ploughing the stubble ready for a new crop …

And the footpath has gone again.  Time to get the wellies out!