Fields of gold

It is vital that we ensure the continued protection of our ancient and glorious meadowland, which is both precious and increasingly rare

The origin of our glorious hay meadows is almost lost in history, as it was not considered important enough at the time to record. But in today’s world we value them as highly as anything else in the uplands. A Pennine Dales hay meadow at the peak of its flowering capacity is a sight to behold. It is an assault on two senses for as well as seeing it, the scent from the scores of flowering plants is, if you do not suffer from hay fever, absolutely wonderful.

The formation of the hay meadow began from the time our ancestors settled down and began to “farm” animals for food and clothing. In the early days most animals were killed at the end of the growing season or the onset of winter, as there was not a sufficient food supply to see all but the basic breeding stock through until the next spring.

There would have been smallscale hay making with the aid of a scythe, and that would have been the initial steps in the production of what we now know as a hay meadow. Those flat, good productive areas may well have ended up as part of the enclosures that now comprise the numerous fields which make up the dales farms. Their heyday was during the height of the lead mining and quarrying era, when thousands of people moved into the dales in search of work.

Huge influx of people

For 150 years from 1700, thousands of small farms were created in the dales and, along with them, many more meadows. They were not the first farmers, of course; even as far back as the Viking era the dales were being farmed. But that huge influx

38 • SHOOTING TIMES & COUNTRY MAGAZINE of people and subsequent input into the land was the real stimulus.

In the past 50 years the “traditional” hay meadow has had a hard time of it, with input from artificial fertilisers reducing the diversity of species. The push for food production following World War II took a severe toll, many of the very small units from the lead mining era had already gone and mechanisation was in full swing with the Little Grey Ferguson tractor system. The grass was being cut earlier and earlier as

The traditional methods of making hay were made redundant by the arrival of the Ferguson tractor