The countryside awakens
The hope of spring and the call to walk together in the light
John Wibberley
Peering over the old wall nearby where a spring-water stream passes under through a culvert, I see a pair of swans quenching their thirst with the sweet water before it enters the salty estuary. They look up at me and carry on drinking repeatedly. On the edge of the nearby woodland, where a woodpecker drums periodically, a wood pigeon and a grey squirrel eye each other quizzically, and then carry on sunning themselves on this bright frosty early spring morning. Both of them are harmless to each other, but damaging in numbers to crops and young trees, respectively, if not controlled.
Up the hill, recently-moved ewes and lambs bleat identifying messages to each other in their newly-assigned pasture. Autumn-sown cereals are actively starting spring growth; hedgerows are bursting with new shoots. Spring is in the air. In the bright, chilly days of early spring, cheery older villagers emerge to greet each other having long kept at home by their firesides. In the grass banks beside hedgerows, clumps of violets and primroses push upwards towards the light.
I always liked chain harrowing. I guess this was because it was an easy tractor job to give a youngster, but also because, as this year, using chain harrows symbolises expectation of growth as it gently aerates the surface and removes some old leaves. I photograph it as a signal of tidy and caring farming, with its alternate striping of long-established grass fields!
When soil temperatures reach 10ºC at 10 cm depth, sowing of maize for silage can begin and will hopefully be completed during April. Choice of suitable fields for maize is with the aim of avoiding soil erosion later on.
As the countryside awakens in a concerted way, there is expectation and hope, despite considerable policy challenges facing farmers and land managers. Meeting with other farmers is very important. Let us not neglect to join and so help support our local farming group, or, if one is not there, consider forming one. Farming Community Network in Devon once started many FARMS (Farm Asset Resource Management Study) groups; is it time to revive some of those or to start new ones?
A farmer friend in Oxfordshire once suggested to me that I read through the book of Ephesians and underline every time these words occur: us, together, we. Of course, it depends on which Bible translation you use as to precisely how many of those words appear. But the principle is clear. We are designed to need each other and to work together, and the Church is intended to operate as Christ’s Body on earth. Paul puts it like this in his prayer for the Ephesians.
That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him: the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, and what are the riches of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power towards us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come: and has put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the Head over all things to the church, which is His Body, the fullness of Him that fills all in all. (Ephesians 1:17-23)
Living under such an ultimate boss gives great hope, assurance and inspiration to carry on even ‘when you pass through the waters’ of trouble, as we all do at times (Isaiah 43:1-3). Jesus said, beside a well of sweet water: “whoever drinks of this water will thirst again but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give, will never thirst” (John 4:13-14). Having drunk such water, we are to “walk in the light” (John 12:35-36).