Just before the land turns green in the chalky downlands, it goes as pale as it gets. As the earth warms and dries, the seed-drilled arable fields look as if they are spread with fresh breadcrumbs. The ruts harden and the rain-dark mud down the centre and the sides of the lanes greys and lightens to a crumbly, scuffable chalk dust that drifts in eddies and whitens everything further.
The pasture has a thatch of winter-weathered grass, and its split-wood colour is taken up by the raffia ribbons of spent bryony laced through the hedges, and the needle-fine forest of cleaver stems reaching up from the bottom. All is accented by a bleached-out leaching of colour before the green fuse of spring ignites and rushes through everything. It’s time to harrow and roll.
Pasture management is under way on the horse and hay meadows across from our cottage and the cattle and sheep fields beyond. They are being rolled, harrowed or spread with a winter’s worth of manure from muck heaps and middens. The order in which those first two tasks are done varies with each field’s needs, but the timing of rolling – to press a field smooth of winter’s divots, dips, boot marks and ruts, is crucial. Too wet and the roller’s weight compacts the soil; too dry and the field resists.
The moment is right when the mud stops sticking to your boots – though it’s easily missed, and the window of opportunity is brief. Not to roll a heavily poached field or gateway risks a spring and summer of twisted ankles and fetlocks, and curses at unpushable wheelbarrows. A well-timed roll is a pleasure, allowing the pressed grass to tiller and spread.
Chain harrows are dragged across the surface of the ground, loosening the thatch, scattering dung and opening the sward to air, light and growth – a mechanical raking, with something like a heavy-duty chainlink fence.
The jingling of studded chain mail, bouncing behind the tractor’s jogging pace, carries through the village, and heralds spring as much as the first washing on the line, the newborn bleat of lambs, or the increasingly rarer swooping, yodelling cry of a lapwing.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
