Tag: sandhills

January 5th – The antibiotics seem to be working, but it’s a slow recovery. After spending the morning pottering about feeling great, I spent an hour or so of the afternoon with stomach cramp. There seems to be some kind of battle raging in there between normal function and the infection. It’s kind of interesting in a geeky way. Modern drugs really are a wonderful thing.

I snuck out again just before sunset feeling a bit grim, but the fresh air and exercise soon picked me up. I headed up Brownhills and onto the canal, heading towards Wharf Lane. I was wondering if there would be much damage evident from the high winds, but thankfully, there was none. Stopping to survey the favoured view of Home Farm at Sandhills, I noted that the lone tree that stands where Brawn’s wind pump used to be is still standing. That’s a relief; I tell the seasons by that tree. It’s a fine specimen.

October 10th – by the time I reached the top of Shire Oak Hill, dusk had fallen and the lights were coming on. This was dismal, I loathe and detest the enforced loss of light. Yet, even so, balancing the camera on the quarry gates and taking a timed shot of the view to Lichfield made for a wistful, evocative view of the Old Lady of the Vale. I will get used to it, but for a few days at least, I will mourn the coming darkness. Was it really summer a week ago?

August 27th – A slightly windblown day of showers and patchy sun. The harvest now mostly complete, the fields have got their autumnal cloak on; bare earth, stubble and huge straw bales are the order of the day. Even the potatoes, formerly lush and verdant, are dying off and yellowing. Here at Home Farm, Sandhills, summer’s cauldron seems to be distinctly off the boil now.

July 31st – Harvesting of the oilseed rape crop was nearly complete at Home Farm, Sandhills, when I passed by on the canal. I watched for a while as the hugely sophisticated John Deere combine harvester neatly cut and threshed out the seed from the husks and chaff of the plant, spitting out the chopped remnants to be ploughed back into the soil. This is a very efficient machine and they are very expensive to buy. Note that the familiar comb wheel at the front isn’t used during the cutting of this crop, it’s neatly severed by a cutter at the front and falls onto a screw mechanism behind.  A work of engineering genius.

May 16th – another popular crop this year seems to be potatoes. A few weeks ago, I photographed this field belonging to Home Farm at Sandhills, freshly ploughed with Brownhills Church in clear view. The church is still visible, but the neat rows of spuds will soon be growing tall. I love the way the regimented green tramlines highlight the undulating contour of the field.

April 28th – The Sandhills Pumping Station – built by the private concern of The South Staffordshire Waterworks Company in 1935 – still pumps fresh water to this day from two 400 foot deep boreholes drilled into the bunter pebble beds under Springhill. This station – and others like it dotted throughout our area – are handsome period pieces of civic architecture that speak of a better, more socially aware time, when the supply of basic services like clean water was seen as a noble activity and not a purely profit driven enterprise.