Monthly Update - March 2025
For those old enough to remember, Flanders and Swan wrote the “Hippopotamus Song” with the haunting refrain:
“Mud, mud, glorious mud
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood
So follow me, follow down to the hollow
And there let us wallow in glorious mud”
Before coming to Rushall Farm I looked after a 250 sow herd of outside pigs on top of the Downs at Blewbury. There was nothing a big, heavily pregnant sow liked more than to wallow. Much to our frustration she would turn the low, heavy drinking trough over with her powerful snout and dig out a suitable hollow with what was now a sludge of sticky chalk and soil. Then, joy of joys, she would flop over one side then the other, eventually emerging caked beautifully with MUD. When we moved the pigs off their 40 acres we spent days with a digger levelling out the field ready for ploughing and planting winter wheat.
Mud has been the theme of the last few days of February here, and sums up the conditions of fields, roads, tracks, and footpaths. This week we had 60 9-10year old children on a soils visit. The rain was forecast to be heavy, and heavy it was. Nearly three quarters of an inch fell in just 2 hours. So children and staff were soaked from the start, with mud and puddles becoming the main feature of their studies, and they got back on the coach with clothing and footwear all one colour. There was not a moan or complaint throughout the day, and nobody noticed that it was also very cold, so there must be some truth in the therapeutic features of MUD.
Not so easy for the farmers though. Time to sow spring barley was when the soil was warm, and dry enough to get on the land without getting machinery stuck. Our neighbours Robin and Jem Plank, who plant several thousand acres each spring, were bemoaning the fact that they couldn’t recall a warm, dry spring in recent years. Robin was despairing again at the prospect of damaging the soil and consequently the yield by using tractors and machinery in difficult conditions.
As a youngster I loved spending time with my friends, damming streams, returning home covered in mud. I guess that is what drew me to farming. It was probably the same for Robin and Jem and, let’s be honest, most farmers?
John Bishop