Comments: webmaster
CATTLE it is said, according to a fascinating book on country wisdom gathered together by Gail Duff, 'love dried nettles - although they will not eat fresh ones - and will give more milk if they eat them than they will if only fed on hay.'
Driving through our lush fields it's not hard to see what a cushy life a cow can have, knee deep in food. And when all that runs out as the season advances, crisp sweet hay is the main attraction, and later on the delights of special nuts to get crunching when the weather turns colder and wetter.
When you come to think about it, nothing quite paints a better picture of summer than a field of cows, and books like this one serve to illustrate how the science of farming a 100 or more years ago was still as serious as it is today.
But this time of the year there is something sinister on hand - the highly poisonous ragwort.
There was a time when farmers could be fined if they allowed it to proliferate on their land, but a softening of attitutudes and the prevalence of a certain stripey catterpillar for its sweet blooms means that today, you cannot fail to see it.
Particularly badly hit are roadside verges, and when you consider the fact that the seed can lie dormant for 20 years, and that one head of bloom can provide tens of thousands of seeds, the potential disaster looming is obvious.
This summer the growth of weeds in particular has been particularly marked. Even in the world of the townies with a few square yards of lawn to cut, the moans have been loud and long, as grass grows at twice its normal speed.
And it seems that ragwort, if you forgive the phrase 'is having a field day'.
The irony is that it's not really our weed, it came in from Sicily a very long time ago. How it did is another matter. It's interesting that another plant valerian was brought in by the Romans - 'introduced' is the nice phrase - so it didn't sneak in the way the ragwort must have done.
Valerian is that common pink or dark red flower with fleshy stalks which likes walls and soon makes them crumbling walls since its vigorous roots gain a foothold only too soon and expand as they grow.
It has been said that those beautiful painted lady butterflies, the big orange ones which come all the way from North Africa each year, just love valerian. But, like ragwort it's a menace and hard to wipe out once it has gained a foothold.
Anyone who has stock will appreciate the damage ragwort can do, and even dried - when it sneaks into a bale of hay - it can be equally disastrous.
Take a wander over any field in high summer and the world of information at your feet is amazing. Yet 100 or more years ago, we depended on our knowledge of weeds for not only safeguarding our stock, but also healing assorted ailments.
Today we just nip into the chemist and weeds are just weeds. We have come a long way from the days when we believed if you kept all the doors and windows tightly shut throughout the month of March you wouldn't have any fleas, but by the same token some people believed you could keep out the devil (or Dracula) by hanging up garlic around the house.
How times have changed. Yet the serious side of it all is that chemists and those researching into formulae which might keep us, and our stock, healthier, have gone back to many of the old ideas for inspiration.
Many of the new drugs coming onto the market have been 'discovered' in the jungles of South America where people have been using them successfully for generations.
Ragwort is a menace and a danger, no matter how many catterpillars it hides, yet we are in danger of romanticising the countryside while hazards of this kind lurk in it. And while farmers can take responsibility for their own land, a lot of local council have a lot of explaining to do.
By Anda Kanca (Putnini CEO)