When the big winds blew, phantoms chased through the barley. Strong air currents bowed a million heads in south-westerly supplication, sending wave after lapping wave off on a roll, a tide sweeping from left to right towards a hedgerow shoreline that it would never reach. The whole crop spoke as one voice, countering the blustery buffeting at my shoulder with a united “shh”.
But barley has its rebellious streaks. Every so often, a gap appeared out of nothing, as if someone had stood up to run through the field, an invisible Moses parting the grass sea, in a “make way, room for one only” sprint. Each dash through the crop left no path, no trace.
In the field next door, wheat had no truck with the fairies. If the well-spaced barley was free-ranging, then here was a battery-farmed phalanx. The seeds had been sown so close together, almost lawn-dense, that each plant’s splayed leaves jostled and buttressed those of its neighbour while the stems stood stalk-still. When a gust came to strike, the wheat heads shivered and bobbed in discrete huddles, as if the probing wind were testing each part of the field in turn. The leaves beneath the agitated crowns made rasping complaints as they clashed. However, the centre held, withstanding the incursion of any intruder, corporeal or spiritual.
The wind has stilled in the barley. Mounting an earth bank for a vantage point, I look over a field of furry tops, a shagpile carpet. Coming down to kneel before it, I marvel at this plant whose taming over tens of thousands of years into domesticity has not bred out its extravagant flourish. The stem and packed seedhead are conventional cereal, but the tip is topped with an outrageous decoration, a cluster of antennae-like spikes called awns that spear out 10cm or more beyond the necessary. The upper parts are top-heavy, the nodding head swollen with ripening seed.
The grasses are more yellow than green and, in a few more weeks, the suppleness of youth will be traded for golden maturity. Age will bring a stiffening of stems, soft whispers will turn to dry crackling, and the ghosts in the barley will run no more.
