Reviving medieval farming offers wildlife an unexpected haven

July 2, 2024 7:49 AM

Nature’s ghosts: how reviving medieval farming offers wildlife an unexpected haven. Agriculture is often seen as the enemy of biodiversity, but in an excerpt from her new book Sophie Yeo explains how techniques from the middle ages allow plants and animals to flourish.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (6 comments total)

I have an eye on those oil beetles, waiting to mug bees….
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:40 AM on July 2

Note: the Wikipedia article on oil beetles is very disappointing. They exude a poisonous blistering chemical as a defense, but the males also give it to the females to coat the eggs? For defense? Fun? OK, following up on the compound, Cantharidin, reveals it’s for defense, but also reveals that the Great Bustard is immune to the poison and hunts the beetles because, for them, Cantharidin is an intoxicant and arousal aid for the males. So the next time someone tells you humans shouldn’t do some sex thing because “animals do/don’t” ask them if it’s ok to get f-ed up on sex drugs on Friday night because the Great Bustard says it’s “cool, man.”

Ahem, back to crop rotation.
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:51 AM on July 2 [12 favorites]

Sorry, people, it turns out that the Great Bustard was exterminated by hunting in the UK in the early 19th C. Maybe they could be reintroduced to allow these degenerate drug-seeking birds to eat oil beetles and protect bees and horses? That would no doubt improve the whole old-style field experience.
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:55 AM on July 2 [3 favorites]

I work with a birding guide who says that one of the best things Americans can do for native birds is to support grass-fed beef, because grassland habitats here are declining faster than any other type of habitat and cattle farms are great refuges for those species.
posted by showbiz_liz at 3:37 PM on July 2 [1 favorite]

Saw "sophie-yeo-the-vile-national-trust" in the URL; expected Culture Wars glad to be disappoint.

Since before I can remember, Irish grass-land policy [for grass-fed beef and Kerrygold dairy] has been sow as much perennial rye-grass Lolium perenne as possible and lurry on as much nitrate as you can afford. The latest agri-support policy scheme ACRES has wrong footed all the poor farmers by giving points and subsidy-cash for biodiversity. Owl boxes, bee-hotels, bat-roosts but also traditional hay meadow. The latter can be monetized by agreeing to get stock off the field by 15 April and delay mowing until 1st July.

As tree-hugging blow-ins we've been doing trad hay meadow for several years and the fields are a long way from a perennial ryegrass monoculture. Think Wyeth's Christina's World. From a distance yellow predominates but when you get down in the grass it is a riot of colour. Under ACRES we are getting top points for having fields full of "dirt" [local technical term for ungrass species]. We hosted a meeting in mid-June for a couple of advisors to show about 20 bemused farming neighbours what to look out for - hay-rattle; orchids; sorrel; vetches; bedstraws etc etc etc. One of the nicest learning experiences is that "wild-flower meadow" doesn't come out of a packet, it comes from a simple change in the mowing regime. TFA notes an opposite outcome from mowing policy.

Finally recommend The Worm Forgives the Plough by John Stewart Collis (1900-1984) When WWII broke out he turned down a commission in the Irish Guards and went to work as a farm labourer, first in Sussex and latterly at Tarrant Hilton near Baldford Forum in Dorset. He wrote up his experiences of the passing of 1,000 years of agricultural custom and experience. "When I was fairly high up I could see over the greater portion of the farm. And as I gazed across, I realised that I had had dealings with every field: there I had harrowed and rolled, there couched, there hoed, there made hay, there drilled, there ploughed - and here now were my ricks. I did not feel a beginner or an amateur any longer. I was well on the inside of the wall. I would no longer make idiotic mistakes: not now would I leave a prong lying on the ground, or throw it down the wrong way up from a rick, nor walk on the wrong side of a horse and take a gate-post away, nor fail to examine the plugs of a tractor that would not start, nor be absent-minded about implements I was using, nor drop things as I went across the farm, nor try and lift sacks in the wrong way and put them down untidily, nor start hiling up and down instead of round the field - nor wear shoes! Standing there with the straw water-fall well in hand, I could look down on the company below feeling very much part of the proceedings and no longer an outsider."
posted by BobTheScientist at 1:38 AM on July 3 [4 favorites]

One thing I dislike about this modern political landscape is that I can never quite tell from the outside when something that involves a "return to older traditions" like this (or the sailing thread just posted) falls into the bucket of "hey, there was something good and useful about the things we did before" vs the bucket of "the old days were better, *warble, warble, warble*, something not so vaguely racist, *warble, warble, warble*"

There's a youtuber, college educated history guy, who's been running a series of videos about setting up an Anglo Saxon farmstead, but I can't tell a thing if it's out of curiosity or about some sort of nationalist/white pride agenda since he's named it after the local tribe that controlled his home area.
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:32 AM on July 3 [1 favorite]