Flindt on Friday: To baldly go where sown barley was before

One thing we love about farming: it’s always throwing up something new.

“Is that a drill miss in your winter barley, down near Dark Lane?” asked a new neighbour who is worryingly well-informed about farming.

She’s so well-informed that I could hardly launch into my “quite impossible” routine – not least because it had been some weeks since I walked that bit of the farm. So there was obviously something amiss, if not a miss.

See also: 4 slug pellet myths busted for better control

About the author

Charlie Flindt

Charlie Flindt is a National Trust tenant in Hampshire, now farming 40ha of recently “de-arabled” land with his wife Hazel – who still runs a livestock enterprise. He also writes books and plays in two local bands.

Read more articles by Charlie Flindt

Could I claim it was a crop circle? Hardly; wrong time of year, of course, and we’re alien-free (no main roads for easy spaceship access).

We did have a shoddy one in the 80s, but we found a set of Vauxhall keys in the middle of it.

I finally got out there to inspect whatever it was on the next shoot, but time was limited.

I was in the UTV with a very posh guest gun, hurrying to the next drive, and the crack team of beaters were running out of willy jokes while waiting for us to arrive. (Not a bad thing of course; I wasn’t sure if posh guest gun did willy jokes.)

I managed a loop around what was indeed a bare patch in the barley, and hastened on, pondering what had happened.

Bare facts

It was the top of one of our aged bowl barrows, rendered bare as a monk’s head. It certainly wasn’t a drill miss.

That I could be sure of, because it was round. But further investigation would have to wait; I had an appointment with a new Rizzini to keep.

© Charlie Flindt

The best time to ponder such things is, of course, at two o’clock on a Wednesday morning, as the mice scurry round the attic and the previous evening’s beer and peanuts are sitting rather too heavily.

Slugs? Possibly, but why only there? We’d lost 10 or so acres down at the SE corner of that field, but it’s a notorious slug corner, and a different type of soil altogether. (Everyone: “It’s a different type of soil!”)

The little valley where the mounds are has never had a slug problem.

Could it be the Horsch Sprinter ST4? Much as I love it, it does have a bit of a length issue. Manoeuvring it in and out of 60s-designed farmyards qualifies me as a ship’s pilot in the next life.

And there are times when man-made topography causes it a few problems.

I once got it stuck while crossing a raised bit of road, and all the chalk dells that Dad bulldozed in the 60s (leaving a 10-yard-wide dip) get “straddled”, with the tines several inches in the air.

Bump and grind

The opposite applies going over a bump, of course, The tines end up going in too deep, and the Deere has a bit of a grind for a few seconds. Had the seed failed to make it up from depth?

And then, just as the mice and the peanuts settled down for the night, another thought: nighthawkers.

Had these sods been out over Christmas, and raked and dug the whole surface in their quest for subterranean goodies?

I was out there unnaturally early the next day for a proper detailed check. It was, of course, slugs; the soil was undisturbed, and plants on the edge of the bare patch were showing the distinctive shredding.

It just so happened that this season the conditions have suited slugs on the hand-built mounds, but not on the lower land around it.

First time I’ve seen it. It may be due to work done 3,000 years ago, but it’s still new.