Will’s World: More right-to-roam access a load of rubbish
Will Evans © Richard Stanton It was a Monday morning, and I was heading off to drill spring barley. The sun was shining, the temperature was unseasonably warm, and the ground conditions looked perfect.
I’d had a few days away from the farm for various meetings and events, and was finally getting caught up with things at home again. All in all, I was in an exceptionally good mood when I arrived in the field.
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It’s some land of ours that’s away from the farm and on the urban fringe and, for ease, we tend to grow crops there, not grass.
By ease, I mean that I don’t want to deal with the stress of livestock being repeatedly chased by dogs, or getting a phone call on a Sunday afternoon to say they’re on the main road because some lovely member of the public has taken it upon themselves to cut the wire for laughs.
This ain’t my first rodeo, as they say.
Direct-drilling disturbed
I was particularly excited about this, though, as I was direct-drilling into a sprayed-off cover crop, which in farming coolness terms practically makes me a chai-latté-sipping, skinny-jeans-wearing hipster.
We’ve focused hard on improving our soils in recent years, and I was basking in self-righteousness and daydreaming about winning a soil health award as I steadily worked my way across the first field, thinking about the speech I’d make on receiving the trophy.
Perhaps I’d get a feature in Direct Driller magazine, or, even better, maybe the grand wizard of the zero-till society would reveal themselves to me and teach me their secret handshake. It is surely only a matter of time, I told myself.
But my pleasant reverie was disturbed, as I started to notice things around me that shouldn’t have been there.
The first, a well-trodden path round both fields, several metres in from the hedge where someone has obviously been trespassing over winter and others have joined in.
Let me tell you, it’s amazing how much a lot of people walking on it can compact a strip of soil. The irritating thing, though, is they’ll undoubtedly keep on doing it and damage the new crop. What can we do?
I could put up shiny informative signs, but they’ll only get torn down or vandalised. I suppose I could dig a pitfall trap, which would give me much satisfaction, but that’s frowned upon these days.
About the only thing that would really keep them away is spreading sewage sludge there, but the last time I did that I got a hysterical phone call from a local resident who screamed at me that the smell was upsetting her Airbnb guests, bless them.
Gross margins
Next, I found two huge piles of glass cider bottles in and against a beautiful wide roadside hedge, with plenty of them broken. I suppose there have always been errant teenagers around.
I’m not usually the hanging and flogging type, but I must admit that for the briefest of moments I did imagine thrashing those responsible with a drain rod. I’ll still have to pick it all up, but the thought did make me feel slightly better.
But then, the pièce de résistance, that classic symbol of broken Britain: the dog-poo bag. Several of them, in fact, artfully hung on low tree branches like Christmas baubles from hell.
My good mood was finally shattered into more pieces than those bottles.
Increase access to the countryside with right to roam, they say. A fine idea in principle, but in practice? It’s a load of rubbish.