Foxglove June 3 2009

SILAGE cutting is already nearly finished, in a weather system good enough to make hay. Agricultural vehicles are so complex nowadays, and it is fascinating to watch them, especially when you consider that haymaking with wooden forks is still within living memory.

But silage is not hay, and normally at this time of year the weather is unreliable enough to make silage a certainty, whereas hay never is until it is stacked under cover. It can still surprise you then, if it is not quite cured enough and has a try at spontaneous combustion.

Silage time is also the season for the roe to drop their fawns, usually twins, and unfortunately some does think that a silage field is a good place for this, not being aware of the agricultural calendar. We used to run dogs through the silage fields for a few days beforehand, which would bother the deer enough to take their young to a safer place before the tractors moved in.

Then came the change in the law that might have called this 'hunting'; we had to stop, and many more young roe were killed by the machinery. Foxes kill roe fawns too, so any rise in the fox population will impinge upon their numbers, and then the increase in fallow deer of late also affects them, for the fallow drive out the roe.

Deer management is more involved than most people think, if they think about it at all. But now we have had a legal ruling that searching for a wild animal is not 'hunting' it, so those of us who like to take this precaution - and not everybody has the time or the dog-power to do so - can work the dogs through the long grass again.

Of course they have to be trained not to touch the roe, so just any dog will not do. The idea is to create sufficient disturbance for the doe to move her little ones of her own volition. In so doing, other creatures will be disturbed as well, making their way to safety, while we can take a rustic census, seeing what has been hiding in the long grass and of those various, which may be given free passes and which need other attention.

Here we exchange greetings as we pass the land of a friend who has accidentally become a beekeeper. "A swarm in May is worth a load of hay: a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon".

Moving some derelict outbuildings unearthed a feral population of bees, which overwintered happily in new accommodation and, come the spring, have awarded their new keeper the equivalent of that load of hay. Now she has to supply another hive, and is on a steep learning curve.

Reading about the subject and going on a course, however good, does not quite prepare one for real bees which are excited and may be fretful. But this lady is committed to her bees, and I have every confidence that they will be content with each other. Bees are so very important, and, as with deer management, few people who are not directly involved ever give them a thought.

Dogs and bees do not mix, however, so we do not linger, making our way along the line of the brook that takes us to the old drovers' road, disgracefully no longer acknowledged on the map as a right of way, but well-known to the older locals. It runs right into the town, but few know that now.

The dogs and I are not bound for the town thank goodness, but back along the lane to the vehicle, and then home, where they will sleep the afternoon away while I get on with something else.