Coronavirus Lockdown: my home patch

For almost a month now, during the coronavirus lockdown, I've been taking early morning exercise walks around the same three and a half mile route near my home, on the edge of  this small North Pennine market town, Crook in County Durham. I've known this area of land for 45 years, but have never walked around it so frequently or so regularly. By the time the current emergency ends, maybe in early autumn, I will have known this home patch very well indeed.

Above, the view back down the road, from the beginning of the walk, close to home. Crook, a former mining centre, lies in the bottom of the valley beyond the trees. Rumby hill, to the east of the town, is just visible in the mist.

Further up the hill now, looking back eastwards. This lane is lined with old hawthorns, some old hedges and wide grassy verges that escaped damage from opencast coal mining, which finished here about 25 years ago. After opencasting, the old field pattern was restored, new hedges were planted, dry stone walls built, conifer plantations established and some new mixed hardwood copses planted. 

Fortunately, there is a network of footpaths and bridle tracks across the fields, a legacy of the days when people were employed in local agriculture and mining and they walked to work, or travelled between farms on horseback

There are low hills surrounding, to the east and to the north. This is the view northwards, towards the village of Billy Row. Some of the conifer plantations, like that in the middle distance, were established on old colliery spoil tips - a legacy of the days in the first half of the twentieth when there  were deep coal mines in the valley.

To the west lies Weardale, and the High Pennines. The walls of the barn in the foreground are built entirely from old railway sleepers, another legacy of the days when this valley was full of coal mines, served by a network of railways.

This is an area of relatively low intensity, mixed farming and small holdings, although one of the larger farms on restored opencast land grows some arable crops. This is oilseed rape, known as canola in North America, coming into flower in mid-April, and already attracting a lot of bees.

Most of the farms here are quite small and predominantly grazing pasture for sheep, or sometimes cut for silage in summer.

Red barns, a landmark at the beginning of the walk that has become very familiar over the last few weeks

The world may be in crisis, but the seasons turn and farming goes on. Here pastures are being rolled in late March, to encourage tillering in the grass and to flatten out the uneven surface left my animal hooves on soft ground in winter, which might otherwise damage mowing machinery. Opinions in the farming community differ on how beneficial this is - some say the soil compaction negates any benefits.

A  newly-ploughed field in early April, harrowed a week later and sown. Not sure whether this is resown pasture or an arable crop. Three weeks of dry weather have been helpful for this kind of operation.

It seems to have been a very successful lambing season, with dry and increasingly warm weather.

This is an areas of very mixed livestock farming, with chickens, ducks, alpacas, cattle, donkeys, horses and sheep, especially on the smallholdings.

Over the coming months, walking these footpaths and lanes between 6.30 am and 8.30 am. every day, I'll be watching the seasons unfold over these edgelands, between town and open country.

Who ate all the grass?

Today's Guardian Country Diary describes a walk along the old railway line from Romaldkirk to Middleton-in-Teesdale. This was the scene when we were outward bound, crossing the viaduct over the river Lune, with a farmer hurrying to collect grass for silage before the next rain storm arrived.

Here's the scene an hour later, when we were making our way back. Notice the small brown speck in the middle of the mown field, which turned out to be ........

.......... a roe deer, apparently bewildered because all they grass that was there on the last occasion it had passed this way was gone.

It hung around for several minutes, having a good look around and an occasional nibble, before ambling off into the shadows.

The Bells! The Bells!

There are two Campanula species that flower around haymaking time in Weardale. This is giant bellflower C.latifolia, which favours shady verges and - in this case - a permanently moist corner of a field near Stanhope Dene.

Harebell C. rotundifolia is characteristic of dry grassland, where its slender stems mean that the bells constantly dance in the wind, and there are some lovely patches of it around some Weardale haymeadows where ...

.... farmers have been turning the new-mown hay, hoping that it will dry in the sun before wet weather arrives.

The Scent of New-Mown Hay

Large swathes of North Pennine landscape have been converted into green corduroy over the last week, with hay-making in full swing and long windrows of hay drying in the sunshine. It’s been pretty good haymaking weather. Gone are the days of turning hay by hand but one thing never changes – the fabulous sweet smell of new-mown hay drying in the sun.

Harvest Approaching

Cereal grains swelling in a ripening field of barley in Teesdale, under a thundery summer sky. Ten thousand years ago our Neolithic ancestors first cultivated cereal crops in the Fertile Crescent in the Near East, paving the way for farming systems where the many would come to depend for their staple food on the efforts of a few. A ripening wheat or barley field is such a familar sight that we tend to take the skills of the plant breeders, agronomists and farmers for granted - even though most of us are totally dependent on them.