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Agriculture & Livestock
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With the exception of trails in the National Parks, most walking routes in
Britain will traverse agricultural or productive forest lands. As in the U.S., small
family farms have largely been supplanted by larger, modern fields, orchards, and pasture
land, though much remains of an earlier heritage. There are substantial efforts to
preserve some of this agricultural heritage including the traditional hedgerow as a field
border. The picture to the left is a recent planting of various species that will
eventually grow to form a virtually impenatrable thicket around this field. We also
saw many mature hedgerows, which typically contain many species of woody trees and shrubs,
notably blackthorn (a hawthorn), beech and holly. |
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Here the footpath actually runs between two hedgerows, suggesting perhaps that
the property on either side is in different ownership, or that the owner did not want the
public right of way to run through the fields so a double hedgerow was built. This
one was quite tall, and served as a windbreak as well as a phyical barrier. Most
others were shorter. |
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Quite often, public footpaths go right through the fields. This picture
shows a field of young rapeseed plant. The oil of this plant is used for cooking oil
(known as canola oil in North America). Some varieties also yield industrial oils,
and the fiber remaining after extraction of the oil is used for livestock feed. This
was the most common crops we saw on our trip through Kent. The rapeseed oil plant is
seen in full bloom in the large picture above. By law, the landowner must keep the
public right of way accessible; often we saw well worn (or even mowed) paths leading
through the field. This is particularly noticeable in the photo at the top of this
page. |
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There was a time when hops, used in the making of beer, were a major cash crop
in England; however, this is less so today. A few hop fields are still seen,
depicted here before the vines have emerged to climb up the pole and trellis structures. |
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The North Downs Way traverses a vegetable farm operation near Wye (Perry Court
Farm). This was the most unsightly property on our entire trip, with debris from the
farming operation strewn all about the fields. Plastic mulch material was being
allowed to blow around and it was a real mess. Maybe someone from that company will
Google us and learn what passers-by think of this operation. By contrast, nearly all
other agricultural land was neat and well maintained. |
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Some row crop fields were immense, such as this one. We didn't recognize this crop,
but a visitor to our web site suggested it is probably lavender This field, like
most, was being worked by very large farm machinery. |
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Here we see one of the "monster" tractors spraying insecticides (no
organic produce here!). It was our misfortune to be walking along the field while
this was going on, so we were de-bugged along with the crops. The widespread use of
insecticides is harmful to the ecology of the area as beneficial insects are killed --
including many that are food sources for wild birds. |
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We saw no large-scale chicken raising operations, but occasionally came across
farms that had chickens either running loose (here seen guarding the stile that we were
approaching) or in small enclosures. Some farms advertised free-range eggs for sale. |
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By far the most common livestock seen in southeast England were sheep. We
were there during the lambing season, so there were lambs of all ages and some
still-pregnant ewes. They were wary but not terrified of walkers passing through
their fields, which we did on a nearly daily basis. Only once did we see a person
tending the sheep and never any dogs. The sheep were all kept in securely fenced
fields, and were rotated from one pasture to another to allow grass to recover from their
grazing. |
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Most of one day was spent walking through a forested area. This land was
being intensely managed for production of timber (beech). This picture shows a
recent clear-cut. After being cut to the ground like this, the beech sprouts new
growth from the roots. We saw many ages of trees in this forest, in pure even-aged
stands of beech. This is not really a forest, but rather a tree farm. |
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