On one side of a straight farm track, winter held about 2.5m plants in a state of suspense. The land had been tilled and drilled in November, and vestigial warmth in the soil had tempted the first narrow leaves to rise 10cm high in a matter of days. Two months – and numerous visits– later, there was still a green baize, but the leaves stood no taller.
My Scots-Irish ancestor was a coulter, a maker of plough blades. He might have marvelled at the idea of winter wheat. Here was a crop that sprouted in autumn, then needed months in the outdoor fridge to trigger further growth. And it would have its heads up even before spring arrived. I had paced out the length and breadth of this field to estimate this colossal number of plants. Surely here was a miracle – a plant that could grow, slow, then throw out ears of corn under the warming sun of spring?
Perhaps the dog walker a little ahead of me on this winter’s afternoon saw only grass, and thinly seeded grass at that, more strips than sward. And who would bother trying to count the blades of grass on a lawn? She let her charge run through the crop without issuing restraining orders.
The facing field appeared not so much dormant as dead. It had been shaved last harvest time, leaving a stubble of skeleton stems also 10cm high. Nothing seemed to have changed here in months, and I thought I knew this scene. But then the low sun slanted across the full width of the field. All of a sudden, the raking light found spiders’ webs linking every single stalk to every one of its neighbours and it rendered the whole field as a sheet of silver silk. A light breeze swept in, took hold of the cloth and shook it, creating a mass of ripples. The whole field was transformed into an upland river, hundreds of metres wide.
The vision died behind a cloud, the so-familiar army of bare stalks returned. Nothing and everything had changed.
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