It's been a hectic few weeks and looking back it is almost a month since I posted anything. In that time I've been to Devon to walk alpaca, Somerset to ride on a steam train, Wiltshire Archives to look through some of the Richard Jefferies archive held there. Then trips to London to view two excellent art exhibitions, at Buckingham Palace (Georgian clothing) and the Tate Britain (The Rossetti's), I had new windows installed at home, spent a glorious evening watching nightjar on the Quantocks for the last time this year, and in-between this tried to hold down a full time job while the rain lashed down every weekend.
Time to put this absence of wordsmithing to one side and recall two lovely events this weekend.
Firstly The Stogumber Wildflower Meadow.
To be truthful and accurate this isn't a wildflower meadow. It is an arable field which has had annual wildflowers like field poppy, cornflower, corn marigold and linseed sown each year, but not this year. More of that later. This sowing began around eight years ago in the corner of a much larger arable field between the villages of Stogumber and Monksilver. I've known about it for a while and tried to visit before but always thwarted by time or an excuse. A friend of Mrs Wessex Reiver visited on the previous Wednesday and sent some images saying it was still beautiful. Checking it was still open this Saturday we made a bee-line to discover for ourselves on its penultimate day of 2023. And what turned out probably to be its final year.
We arrived the same time as what turned out to be the farmer who began all this (seated in the top image). Chatting to him he said it first came about as slugs devastated a crop he'd sown. So to not leave the field empty he sowed some wildflower seed opened up the field for charity and that first year having been very successful, he had repeated this event every year, raising money for a different charity, until this year. However he has now retired and his nephew runs the farm. His nephew has a different philosophy (the nephew thinks these flowers are weeds the farmer said) and this year ploughed and sowed a single crop of linseed. However what happened was the seedbank in the soil had other ideas and this corner of the field once again erupted into bloom and outcompeted the linseed. However in 2024 the field will be under barley and probably that'll be it. But there's still hope given the 2023 bloom wasn't meant to happen - will the wildflowers return in 2024 anyway.
I absolutely understand both land uses and the changing of the guard. The older farmer said he has received great joy from sowing the seed to opening up the field for visitors, making me think is that an age thing? As we age we look on life in a different way to when we were young. I appreciate too the nephew wanting to farm and maximise his business. All things are born, mature and then wither away, making this experiment and labour of love no different. If this field had been a traditional hay-meadow this would have been a different story. But it is an arable field which through work, time and of course money has been sown and nurtured for nearly a decade.
And it worked, it was stunning, and has raised money for charity. Not large, maybe a hectare possibly two, but alive with honeybees. The drone-noise of their activity was everywhere. I learnt that there are hives all around that area and the keepers know their bees head for this field. Oddly though I discovered very little other insect life, albeit without really looking. Large white butterflies were everywhere but the farmer said only 6 species of butterfly have been recorded over the years (he didn't name them), a few dragonflies but mainly bees of various forms. The ecologist in me thinking that is probably due to this being a mono-crop of sorts, admittedly a stunning one, but simply a handful of annual flowers.
As I write this the field is now closed to visitors. Chatting to the farmer before we left I asked what happens next. In previous years they've left the seed heads to ripen then cut them down, ploughed and re-sown with fresh seed. This is why the residual seedbank over seven years of sowings has taken over this year. But this autumn the crop will be ploughed in and winter barley sown. That got me thinking. If it was simply left to grass over, all of these annual arable flowers would die out, though of course they'd be replaced by perennial meadow species. Now that would make an interesting experiment, botanical succession from a ploughed field, through annual botany, then to perennial plants and all that associated species abundance and biodiversity. Could take twenty years maybe?
I'm glad I made the effort to go and visit this field even on a blustery grey moody day in August. A patch of vibrant colour in a beautiful, but predominantly green landscape. And we never know what may happen in 2024.
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