- Location
- somerset
but was not bought in, as diesel is, i know many things have changed, just really wondering how much those 'old' pastures actually produced, we have all gone down the ryegrass route, and for years it's been mainly rg and clover, those old pastures were classed as 'rubbish' and reseeded. But the principles of grazing haven't, basically get as much as possible from it, and we have thrown away all those 'rubbish' plants, for a type that responds well to N, the future of 'bag' fert, looks to be curtailed, so, as we see, a lot of those old grasses are being 'upgraded', i can remember some of the old boys, calling an old pasture 'good herbage' and the response was 'bad weedage'. And now, in the 21st century we are using herbal leys (weedage), and experimenting with all sorts of grass mixtures, which are basically recreating those old mixed pastures, albeit with some new technology to help. The more i look at our farm, it seems apparent that the most important bit we have forgotten, is basic good husbandry, look after your farm, and it might look after you. Many new varieties of arable and grass, need weed killers, fungicides, insecticides to produce a crop, and resistance is becoming a huge problem, cousin has dropped rape out, he simply cannot get it to yield, slugs and beetles have finished it off. A favourite saying of said cousin, is the wheel always turns a full circle, and the way farming is looked at today, those 'old' ways, may teach us a lesson or two. People seem to have forgotten that they cannot survive with out us.One thing to bear in mind is that before mechanisation, all the workhorses would have needed fed off the land as well. A Clydesdale working hard will put away some amount of oats and hay!
they stayed here for a good 6 months, split between 2 summers, it was a fantastic thing, to be shown, how our farm had evolved over 3500 years, they could show you neolithic, bronze age, iron age, roman, right up to modern. I do know the worst thing they did, we had literally just finished laying a block of concrete, they drove straight through it, waving at us, they did apologise profusely, and dropped some beer in.I had a friend who had archaeologists at his farm and while walking a gully they were amazed at the trees & dated the gully at several hundred years old and wondered what the gully was used for.....friend said " you do realise there use to be a railway line through here and it closed over 40yrs ago"