Farmer’s reality and bloody arisings

I thought I was going to fall at the first hurdle… and not manage to get my meadow cut for hay this year. Brand new land owner with stewardship responsibilities dropped, plonk.

Apparently the official definition of meadow is ‘area of grass that is cut in summer’.

The meadow began to look overblown, scraggy and unloved. According to the book on unimproved meadow management you are meant to cut after 15th July, not before and soonish afterwards. Once most flowers have set seed.

But I felt a small dose of what farmers live with…being at the mercy of the weather and this unprecedented wonky climate.  Rain, rain then more rain and then a break in the clouds and raging sun then rain again. One opportunity missed in late July and then wall to wall dreariness until suddenly a freak hot spell early September.

 

Our wonderful neighbour fired up his topper and turner (in fact it’s called a tedder) and carefully turned or ‘wuffled’ the cut grass in the early evenings, 4 times.  It’s a labour of love and you hope it will be beautifully dry before rain appears and above all not go mouldy and even worse self combust in the hay barn.

The pure joy of a freshly mown meadow 

But it’s done and Phil left the margins long as I requested, as refuges for later butterflies, allowing their eggs to hatch and pupa to overwinter at the roots. I’ve discovered the blues are later and Gate keepers. 

Though just as I was beginning to develop a sense of calm, warm satisfaction in the knowledge my meadow was happy, ready to begin its next cycle of species rich rejuvenation…my sense of calm was replaced with swirling (and potentially crazed) anxiety.

I discover that Dominik on the ride on mower (borrowed from the same kind neighbour) had cut the margins and left the bloody arisings, mulched and ready to fester and enrich … and savaged my butterfly home.

Nothing seems to get me quite as upset as arising left uncollected. ‘Arisings’ is a very silly name for  grass cuttings. But when In the wrong place a silly name underlines how unwanted it is. 

So now the labour of love continues and I must rake and collect these nuisance clippings but there’s nothing I can do about my worries about butterflies except hope they hid in the Woodland margin aware that there were mad mowing novices at large…

That’s a pile of arisings and when lifted they are already mouldering releasing unwanted nutrients… enriching unnecessarily 

Once butterfly margins, now cut and LEFT!

My developing case of meadow madness deepens…