The continuation of traditional crofting methods ensures that the island’s machair is still celebrated for the spectacular profusion of wildflowers that occurs in the summer. Yellows, whites, purples and blues are all present, though the dominant hue will change gradually, as first one then another species comes to the fore on the land left to lie fallow. But where, after their period of rest, different areas are put back under cultivation, there are other changes in colour.
This spring the grassland down at the end of the track that reaches the sea came under the plough, its green replaced by an expanse of pale open ground. Stretches of machair ready for planting are nothing like prepared fields seen elsewhere in Britain.
In colour the soil here is neither reddish nor richly brown but looks – unsurprisingly, given that the land is often separated from the beach by nothing more than a wall of dunes – like little more than unpromising areas of sand.
And indeed this calcareous material, the remains of uncountable shells, makes up a high proportion of the soil’s composition. Yet, with copious amounts of well-rotted seaweed ploughed in to enrich and bind the soil, it is extremely fertile.
Already the land at the end of the track is showing the first hints of growth. This has been sown with the mix of rye, oats and barley that is often referred to just as “corn”, and as the grain ripens to gold, a host of wildflowers will appear: white ox-eye daisies, scarlet poppies and the magnificent and joyous yellow of corn marigolds, a once common plant now in decline in many parts of Britain.
But that is all for later in the year. For now, the bare patches of sandy ground between the first shoots have become the haunt of ringed plovers. The nesting birds blend so well with their surroundings that they are almost invisible; even when a plaintive two-note call betrays their presence, it takes a little time to spot them as they scuttle surreptitiously away from their chosen spot.
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