• Wheat harvest

    Last Saturday lunch time the Combine Harvester arrived in the village in order to cut the wheat on the 26 acre Town Field. By eight o’clock that evening, not only had the crop had been fully harvested but the straw had been completely baled. All done in roughly 6 hours. By my calculation the wheat crop would produce enough flour on that one field to produce 210,000 large loaves of bread. Incidentally, a quantity which would only be sufficient for 4 minutes worth of the national demand for bread (roughly 12 million loaves per day).

    This made me think. At the outbreak if the First World War, crop yields were less than a quarter of those which are attained now. In fact, the yield was probably only enough to provide for 53,000 large loaves. It would have taken nearly three days to harvest the wheat on that same field, and then only if they had the benefit of a modern reaper/binder. Before such machinery was available, three experienced farm workers, along with their families to help gather the sheaves and “shock” the crop would take nearly three weeks to cut the wheat. In all likelihood more than three worker’s families from the village would be involved. No wonder harvest was such an important event. An event which now is limited to a Saturday afternoon. A sad comparison in so many ways, but at least we have enough to eat.

  • Muntjac frolics

     

    Muntjac Deer are a regular sight on the Common. This does cause some slight anxiety among tots the allotment gardeners. A serious amount of damage to your spring veg is a real possibility. But so far so good. Whilst wandering back from the Church with the dogs this evening there was a real racket emanating from the scrub land between Low Farm and the Common. The barks were almost fox-like, but to a Muntjac they must be their version of love duets. So, more deer on the way, no doubt.

  • Cuckoo arrival

    Cuckoo arrives then silence ensues for a few days. It seems to happen every year. We patiently wait for the first announcement of arrival within the village. This year it was Sue’s turn; a lunchtime stint in the allotment on 21st April was rewarded with the first calls of the newly arrived Cuckoo. Then all goes quiet, whilst we wonder if “our” Cuckoo was just passing through. Then the calls start again as the Brampton Cuckoo calls her way from Burgh, along the river Oxnead and back again. The same trees are favoured as the are very year – the Ash on the grazing meadows, the Poplars near Oxnead Bridge and the old Oak on the Brampton hill. Sumer is icumen in.

  • Surrounded by Swallows

    A warm Sunday morning in Spring and we are surrounded by Swallows. Walking through the Long Meadow amongst grazing horses, the Swallows swoop and hawk for insects around us. Skimming along just above ground level, their blue-black backs looking polished and glistening in the early sunshine. Their beaks close with an audible snap as they scoop insects. We stand and watch, almost mesmerised.

  • Buzzard over the high wood

    Over the last five years or so Buzzards have been busily colonising North Norfolk. The hawks have bred in various local woods – copses with tall trees, preferably those mixed between conifer and broad leaved tree species – but this year they have moved into the parish. On this warm Spring morning we watched one lazily breast the treetops over Keeper’s Wood before settling on the tallest conifer. It ducked as three crows swooped and mobbed it. It then sat hunched as if waiting for the thermals to rise. We left it to it.

    The word Buzzard is a satisfying one to say. I assume that is why it has stuck. As you might expect, it has a falconry connection. Apparently derogatory as derived from the almost untranslatable Old French word for “waster”, “carrion-eater” or something along those lines. The implication being that it was not a great falconer’s hawk, although in truth it was used to hunt rabbits although it apparently wouldn’t catch very many. I will look forward to the mewing calls, which I expect to drift across the valley on hot July days.

  • Spring arrival

    Until this morning the dawn chorus came courtesy of resident songbirds. Until today the chorus has been delivered by the Blackbirds, Robins and Wrens. All of whom have hung about all Winter and have been defending their individual territories in song since February. But this morning a Summer visitor arrived and added to the soundscape. Admittedly not a great song, its monotonous Chiff-Chaff call does not conjure up the rapturous enjoyment that results from hearing a Nightingale, but it is an early Spring song with a flavour of Summer mixed in. Each year their arrival seems to coincide with the emergence of the first fresh green Hawthorn leaves, the Wild Daffodils and Primroses. The Chiff Chaff is a greenish, relatively nondescript member of the Warbler family. Now we wait for the related Warblers, the Blackcaps and Garden Warblers, both of which are more melodious songsters but not so early to arrive.

  • The arrival of Brampton spring

    The arrival of Spring in Brampton was heralded by the emerging display in the church yard. The first to appear were the Snowdrops. These were following in a somewhat unseemly rush by the Aconites and the first Daffodils. In the railway cutting the last of a once much larger population of Primroses cling on to the lower slopes. A few warm days this week and the Wild Cherries are all in blossom as the Snowdrop petals slowly senesce.
    Native birds are making the most of the brief period before the Summer visitors arrive. At the old Stag-headed Oak at the top of the hill past our cottage, a Great Spotted Woodpecker drums on the highest resonant dead limb. His rapid morse code answered by a rival on another old tree. Blue Tits are paired up and nestbuilding and a Collared Dove is sitting precariously but tight on a ramshackle nest of sticks in the garden Birch. The grass is growing.

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