Tag: agriculture

July 26th – It’s not often I do reader requests on 365daysofbiking, but here goes. Reader @hapdaniel asked the other day on twatter about sweetcorn being grown locally, and if it was likely. I opined that sweetcorn wasn’t, as we don’t really get enough sun for it to be produced on an agricultural scale, but lots of maize is grown, mainly for animal fodder. The two plants look pretty similar.

Sweetcorn is a genetic mutation of maize that results in an elevated sugar level, but needs lots of sun to ripen properly, and late in the season, so we don’t really get the conditions. But this field of maize on the corner of Lynne and Wallheath lanes in Stonnall is verdant, tall and healthy, and looks set to produce a good yield.

July 21st – At Farewell, the advancing season is indicated in the landscape. Fields of very nearly ripe wheat, oilseed rape and barley stretch for miles. They aren’t quite ready yet, but are not far off, and even in this misty-grey humid evening, they were beautiful.

July 18th – Heading to work through the backlanes of Little Aston, I spotted these to lovely carpets of colour in the same field. They’re beautiful – one purple, one white. I had thought at first from a distance that they might be flax, but as soon as i got close I realised they were spuds.

There are a good few chips in that there field…

July 12th – Spinning out through Brownhills to Stonnall for tea, I crested Springhill on Barracks Lane on a languid, hot Friday evening. Even at 7pm there was little traffic, and few folk about. I noticed that a week or so of hot summer weather, and the colours of the season had changed. The bright, vivid, verdant greens have faded to more of a faded emerald jacket, and reds, golds and sandy yellows are creeping in to the landscape, colouring the fields shades of ripeness and fulfilment.

At Springhill, a field of gently ripening, plump wheat caught my eye, and at Cartersfield Lane, a healthy field of Barley.

A fine sight, but poignant too, as it indicates the seasons’ progression.

July 2nd – Today, summer faded to grey and the rain returned. I cycled home in steady rain, but it wasn’t unpleasant. Coming down Green Lane, Walsall Wood, I noticed what had been a lush field of beans last year had been left fallow this year. There is is immense pile of manure at one end of the field, and wonder if the growing of legumes and subsequent fallow period are part of a natural ground management system.

No such concern in the water meadow the other side of the road; untroubled by livestock other than deer, the grass there is lush, colourful and a couple of feet high now. It’s absolutely beautiful.

May 24th – After a spin around Stonnall and Shenstone in a rather grim wind, the sunset was nice. Sweeping past hedgerows glowing with cow parsley, bluebells and fields full of oilseed rape, the sky set it all off beautifully. A lovely end to a day of awful weather.
At Sandhills, the polythene covered field has had the plastic removed, and each sheet was nurturing four rows of seedlings beneath. I don’t know what they are, they look a bit like peas. It’ll be fun to watch and see what grows.

April 15th  – the gorgeous sandy soil of the north east side of Shire Oak’s bunter sandstone ridge gives Stonnall its charm and character. This light, thin and variably fertile soil shows off it’s characteristics best when ploughed and harrowed, as this field has been south of Mill Lane. The colour – somewhere between chocolate and ochre, varies across the contours. Last week, there was snow lying in the lee of that spinal hedgerow. Now it’s spring.

What this does demonstrate well is that the old boys who planted these hedgerows – miles of which were grubbed up hereabouts in the post war decades – really knew their stuff. Note the step from one field to the next; that’s caused by centuries of wind erosion. The hedges – by virtue of clutching roots and obstructive foliage – break the wind, and act like groynes. This effect can also be seen on Grove Hill and many local ridge boundaries.

The landscape reads like a great book, sometimes.

April 11th – In the fields just outside Shenstone, one might be forgiven for thinking there was a frost. However, it was too warm for that today, and this looks more like a dusting of icing sugar. It’s actually a freshly ploughed field, dusted by nitrate fertiliser. Soon, a crop will be planted here, and the growing will start over again.

The only trouble with dusting fields in this way is that even in still conditions, everything around gets dusted too, like the holly in the hedgerow…

February 23rd – There’s been a lot of work going on in the fields of Home Farm, at Sandhills, as seen from the canal at Catshill. Trenches have been dug along the fields a few metres apart, and pipes buried there. It’s either an irrigation or drainage system going in – it’ll be interesting to see what’s planted here. The machinery doing the job is fascinating.