An almost autumnal shot, since ploughing and sowing in spring is quite unusual around here. Last week the field behind our garden fence was ploughed, rotavated to break up the large clods of earth, and then drilled with seed, and this week the cultivation continued on the lower fields, now also prepared and drilled. Our friend who supplies our logs for the wood burner, is a small scale farmer, and he confirmed that the small white beans that we that we found at the edge of the field track, spilt from the seed drill, are cattle beans, which will grow on plants about three feet high on the other side of our garden fence. In the meantime we look over the garden fence to an expanse of brown earth, with a brown hedge separating it from another field of brown earth and a backdrop of brown trees. We wait with bated breath for the onset of a full Technicolor spring, which must happen at any time now.
Interesting that farmers are still ploughing by you - here they have given it up because it compresses the ground too much. Here now, they simply harrow the remains of the previous crop and then replant directly into the scarified soil.
It does look a lot like a shot I captured last fall. I will be so happy to see farmers working the ground again. We still have snow and have entered the dreaded "Mud season."
