<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/23/natures-ghosts-excerpt-sophie-yeo-the-vile-national-trust-aoe>
"The Vile clings on to the edge of the Gower peninsula. Its fields are lined up
like strips of carpet, together leading to the edge of the cliff that drops
into the sea. Each one is tiny, around 1-2 acres. From the sky, they look like
airport runways, although this comparison would have seemed nonsensical to
those who tended them for most of their existence.
That is because the Vile is special: a working example of how much of Britain
would have been farmed during the middle ages. Farmers have most likely been
trying to tame this promontory since before the Norman conquest.
The fields have retained their old names, speaking to a long history of
struggle against the soil. Stoneyland. Sandyland. Bramble Bush. Mounds of soil
known as “baulks” separate one strip from the next. During the summer months,
linseed and sweet clover paint the landscape with stripes of bright yellow and
cotton-blue, recreating a scene that had occurred here for many of the last
thousand summers. On the edge of the promontory were the hay meadows, almost
ready to burst with pollen and petals.
The Vile is a rare example of the open-field system: a method of communal
agriculture once practised across Europe. Under this system, each farmer
attended his own strip of land, with the members of the village coming together
more widely to cooperate and plan a healthy harvest. Remnants of such farms
survive as shadows and undulations across the countryside today, showing the
paths of ox-drawn ploughs as they moved up and down the fields, pushing the
soil to the side as they went.
Farming is often seen as inimical to biodiversity, but these thin strips of
land tell a more complex story. In the nooks and crannies of medieval farms,
like the Vile, a wide range of plants and animals would have found the
conditions they needed to survive. Ground-nesting birds could find cover and
camouflage in the fields left fallow – something that was done every few years
to allow the soil to recover. Baulks offered safe passage to small mammals as
they navigated the cultivated land. The naturalist Colin Tubbs, in a survey of
Hampshire, found that only a third of the county’s birds were adapted to
woodland, with the rest preferring open, marsh, coastal or riverine habitats.
Farmers “inherited the flora and fauna of the more ancient habitats, and
indeed, in modifying the landscapes from which they derived, they may have
increased plant and animal diversity,” he wrote."
Via
Positive.News
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
