Shire Diary July '26.

The barley crop is now all harvested and the stalks bailed up neatly and awaiting collection. The wheat looks just about ready to me, and so the majority of fields will soon be laid to waste and awaiting the muck spreading, the tilling, and the sowing of winter wheat and barley. And so the changing colours of a mostly arable farming area will go through their annual transformation, from gold to brown and back to green. The cycle continues as it has done on these very fields for more than a thousand years.

Several of the fields here are owned by the Church rather than the estate, and on those the crop is maize. Maize is sown later than the cereal crops for harvesting in the autumn or even early winter. It’s growing rapidly through the warm weather, though, and the tallest patch on one side of Church Lane is now up to around seven feet in height and flowering well.

So tall is this forest that the view from Church Lane to the Lady B’s erstwhile abode is now completely blocked. Usually at this time of year the top of the chimney pots and TV aerial are still visible, but not this time. Too tall for a person of my height. People often smile and gaze at the forest of maize, you know. ‘Just like Lord of the Rings,’ they enthuse. Several early scenes in the Jackson film version show the intrepid four hiding and getting into mischief in just such a location.

As for the wild flowers, the persistently warm weather has sent most of them to bed early. There’s a premature brown and shrivelled look about the embankments, the verges, and the hedge bottoms this year. And the elder bushes which showed promise of a fine berry harvest are further casualties. Such berries as a forming are tiny, I suppose for lack of water to plump them.

And here’s the sad story: I’ve mentioned the flock of sheep which now occupies the big sloping field behind my house. I often watch them going about their lives slowly and peacefully, but this morning I saw them being driven en masse down towards the bottom of the field where it abuts Bag Lane. When I walked that way later I saw a large transport vehicle standing by the gate, and presumed that a journey of some sort was imminent.

When I returned from my walk I heard much bleating as I walked up my garden. It was more plaintive than usual; it had a hint of desperation about it. And then I realised that all the bleats were adult ones. No kiddie bleats; no question and answer sessions between mama sheep and baby sheep. The impassioned bleats, it seemed, were the sounds of mother sheep either calling for their now absent kiddies, or simply vocalising a sense of sorrow for their loss.

The final sentence would have sounded like vegetarian propaganda, so I omitted it.