I drive past a sign sign saying “Well got hay for sale”. It has such quaint, bucolic charm that it invariably makes me smile.
Well got, the very
sound of it speaks of hay meadows and sun and cider with Rosie.
Another time. Well got hay is hay cut at its peak of growth and properly
dried, the sort of hay that smells sweet and summery.
Hay-making, so
dependent on the weather, seems to be in decline. Silage is easier
and not so reliant on the vagaries of the British summer. This year
has been different ... long sunny days and warm breezes.
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| The Dell |
I wandered up
through the Dell, one of my favourite places. A beech wood where
pig-nuts grow. Probably planted a century
ago with pigs in mind...pigs like beech-mast as well as pig-nuts... it is now the haunt
of roe deer and buzzards. It leads on to a small hay meadow that the
farmer cuts yearly but apart from that, because of its small acreage and the cost of
fencing it for stock, it is usually left alone.
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| The hay meadow above the Dell |
A hay meadow from the
past, it is a refuge for wild flowers long since banished to the
edges of farmland or worse, eliminated altogether. Orchids,
thistles, vetches, corn-mint, self-heal and wound-wort all jostling
for their place in the sun.
A meadow that may
possibly be, when he gets round to it, well got, but is also well left, thanks to the farmer.
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| How spectacular even the common dock can be when left to it s own devices |
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