This Green and Pleasant Land: More from My Time at Home In England

Footpaths and Bridle Ways

Footpaths and Bridle Ways

Welsh Road Block

Fred and the Shadows

The days lengthen fast here. It is easy to overlook how much further north the middle of

England is than Bangor. (A little Google Maps time tells me that Bangor is on about the same

latitude as Bordeaux, and a trip due west from mid Shropshire could land you way up north in Labrador City. The effect of the Gulf Stream is profound!) So time has to hustle to get from very long nights to very long days, and the progress has been noticeable. The very least amount of sun has the grass growing and the earliest daffs coming into bloom.

I have braved mud and downed trees - the product of Storm Darragh last December - to

follow footpaths and bridleways around farm fields and woods. This sent me back to Google to try to understand where England is on sustainable farming methods. From my privileged

position as an organic farm inspector in Maine I see the best farm practices. I may have a badly skewed view of the world but what I see here is making me wince. Runoff from land - plowed up and down steep slopes - creates deep erosion trenches and streams that look like chocolate milk. The use of underplanting arable crops, rotation, cover crops and integrated systems seems to be absent, as is the drive to support local producers of fresh vegetables. I wonder how big a part land ownership patterns plays in this. So back to Google. This tells me that the vast majority of commercial agricultural land in England held by the aristocracy - and, I suppose, some big agri-conglomerates - and farmed by tenant farmers. Quite how this affects farming practices needs more thought, but one thing is true. What we have in Maine is a real blessing and needs our constant a fervent support. To buy locally grown, sustainably produced food from small farmers is a powerful political act.

I abandon this line of study and allow Fred - my sister’s gentlemanly mannered beast -

to take me and our shadows for a ride on the common.

And then to Wales - to more family. Things are different there. Traditionally, small family farms have just produced uncountable numbers of sheep, for export od Welsh Lamb to England and beyond. Entrenched habits and generous farm subsidies are barriers to change but there are farmers - the thin end of the (cheese?) wedge - bringing change and making me feel I am back in Maine 30 years ago when farmers’ markets and local production were just gathering steam.

I spend time with a great niece (age 6) as she composes her first novel - “The Haunted

Toilet.” Spelling is a challenge for her as she lives a bilingual life - English at home but Welsh at school, and letters have a way or arranging themselves differently in two languages, so she accepts my offer to be her scribe. The book made a promising start, proving that the need to tell stories is as old as language itself.