Proper rain and subsequent drizzly weather have reinstated familiar shades of green across the landscape. From a vantage point above Harrowbarrow, St Dominic’s church tower stands prominent among undulating fields interspersed with the dark crowns of hedgerow trees and steep woodland. The smoothest, brightest greens indicate grass recently cut and baled for haylage, already regrowing in the humid warmth. Farmers anticipate more cuts, but hay, silage and straw will be at a premium this winter.
The few non-green enclosures include stubble, some spring barley, and cultivated earth sown with kale for sheep keep. Immature maize grown for fodder has still to increase in bulk before harvesting and hauling away by specialist contractors. From this distance few animals are visible apart from horses at livery in the nearest rough pastures.
There are now no dairy farmers in the parish. Pensingers Lane, edged in bushy growth interwoven with juicy blackberries, purple sloes, and the flowers and shiny scarlet berries of honeysuckle, is no longer trampled twice daily by cows passing between pastures and milking parlour. This afternoon a roe deer bounds downhill towards cover in Nanie Rowe’s Wood and a herd of bullocks lie about on the airy top fields of Baber. From there views extend all around – to mud banks off Halton Quay, towards sunlit Dartmoor beyond the gloom of Morwell Woods, to tree-shrouded mine ruins beneath Kit Hill and Hingston Down, and to Caradon peeping above Viverdon Down in the west.
Half a mile away, fields opposite home have greened up and the South Devon suckler herd with this year’s calves rest content before another stint of grazing. During the drought, some of last year’s young stock were moved back to base and fed on silage so as not to lose condition. We miss those long summer evenings when the lowering sun lit the flanks of the brown cattle and cast their shadows across this north-facing land. Young buzzards still call plaintively and the swallows swoop low and fast after insects for their second brood. Silver-washed fritillary butterflies have deserted the buddleias – hopefully they have laid eggs near violet plants, secreted beneath ivy in my overgrown garden.
