A Garden Full of Twittering

 One day the garden was full of puffball baby Bluetits, little things shouting for food which the parents were giving them from the sunflower heart feeder. I couldn't get a photo as nothing sat still long enough.

A week or so later it was the twittering of baby Goldfinches and parents, the babies were being fed from the Niger seed feeder. Neither birds had nests in the garden but they seem to have brought the fledglings here for their meals.

Thank you to everyone for comments yesterday  about the nearby growing crops and vegetarian/ omnivore. My diet includes very little meat now - definitely no beef, but it's good to have a choice. I've lived all my life among fields and farms so grown up knowing about all sorts of crops and how things work.

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Field Crops 2025

 I took a walk up the lane with the camera to see what crops were growing this year. No sugar beet this year but field beans on one side, barley on the other and further up the lane some very tall oil seed rape.

 

Field beans are an important part of many livestock feeds, being high in protein. 

Barley for malting and brewing or for animal feed. In some parts of the country it might be used for human consumption  but here we have one of the main maltings companies not far away and Green King Brewery too. Barley straw was the best for goat bedding. Wheat straw was tough and not so good.

Oil seed rape is grown for it's oil-rich seeds which are used for animal feed, bio-fuel or cooking oil.

The oil-seed rape seems extra tall, the flowers have finished and seed pods formed. The stalks after harvest might be baled and used as animal feed.  Other wise it seems a waste if only the seed pods are harvested, or maybe they'll be chopped and ploughed in.

Sometimes we had a bale of rape straw for our goats for a change but they preferred good hay.

It's no wonder really that some people say it would be better if we were all vegetarian, when so much land is used to produce food for animals that then in turn provide food for us. We could cut out the middle man  animal! The counter arguement is that lots of our land isn't suitable for crops anyway and it would be even more difficult to get anywhere close to national food self sufficiency and security if we were all vegetarian.

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St John's Eve and Midsummer's Day

If the first of June marks the first day of meteorological Summer, and astronomical summer starts on the Solstice on the 21st June how is it that Mid-summer was traditionally celebrated with festivals on the 24th?

It was connected to St John's Day, when to protect future crops and livestock  bonfires were lit to banish evil spirits and bring good weather. Midsummer fairs and midsummer markets were held with celebrations in many places. 

Today, St Johns Eve, it was thought that plants gathered for medicinal purposes had special powers. St John's Wort being very important. Other protective herbs including yarrow, mugwort - which protected against witches and thunder,  and chamomile, were also gathered and hung in the home and cowshed. 

 So tomorrow is St Johns Day with many associated weather sayings

 

Before St John's Day we pray for rain, after that we get it anyway

Cut your thistles before St John,

You will have two instead of one. 

Never rued the man who laid in his fuel before St John.

Here is what Thomas Tusser wrote in his Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry in 1557.

At Midsummer, downe with the brambles and brakes

and after, abrode with they forks and their rakes:

Set mowers a mowing, where meadow is grown,

the longer now standing the worse to be mowne.

(brakes are ferns or bracken)

Another old saying from history 

If Midsummer Day be never so little rainy, the hazel and walnut will be scarce, corn smitten in many places; but apples, pears and plums will not be hurt.

"Never so little rainy"? 

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