This Evening's Shire Diary.

I was wrong when I said that Stan the Beef Man would have to wait until late summer to get his hay crop in. I saw from a distance this evening that he did it today. That surprised me, but maybe it shouldn’t. It has been notable this year that everything from the gardens to the crops to the wild plants on the verges and field margins has run riot. I assume it’s because, although the spring was cool, there was plenty of sunshine and just the right amount of rain. I’ve noticed that hemlock, for example, is going to seed earlier than usual. And I saw the first willowherb this evening, which I always regard as the marker of the start of high summer. It’s when willowherb turns feathery that you know summer is coming to an end.

Unfortunately, the Shire was a noisy place this evening. There was a hell of a lot of banging and clanging coming from a field near La Maison de Mlle Sarah, evidently caused by something being towed by a tractor. I don’t remember ever having heard the like, except from those big static baling machines that were used during the first half of the twentieth century. It wasn’t one of those, so I don’t know what it was.

I’ve saved the big thrill ’til last. As I was leaning on a farm gate in Church Lane, a badger ran past me along the edge of the field, just a few feet away. I’ve spent a quarter of a century of my life living in, or on the edge of, the countryside, and I’ve never seen a live badger before. Initial shock and delight turned to sadness, however, when I remembered that the government is starting a culling programme just about now in selected areas of the country. Badgers have been implicated in the spread of Bovine TB, and the government has decided that the best way to beat the problem is to shoot every badger that raises its head above ground. I can’t offer informed comment on the matter since I’m not sufficiently apprised of the facts, but I certainly don’t like the idea of armed men roaming the countryside at night shooting beautiful animals. And it saddens me that, having seen my first badger, I might never see another one alive. Maybe some experiences are meant to be strictly one-offs.