More Scenes from Wiltshire
Corn Stooks - Rushall Mill
For English folk the area of southern Britain now known as Wiltshire is historically called the "Cradle of Civilisation." Farming was carried out there several millennia before the birth of Christianity... and whilst modern farming methods on the rolling plains and downland will be as up to date as anywhere in Europe, old tradition lingers on.
Corn stooks are still an occasional sight at the end of summer in the fields alongside the minor roads between the old villages of Market Lavington, Easterton Sands, Urchfont and Rushall. There are three good reasons why this is so. Firstly, the narrow band of soil to the north of the Salisbury Plain escarpment is partly Upper Greensand, from the Cretaceous Period, which makes the ground too soft for modern combine harvesters to work on.
Secondly, the forward thinking landowner near Rushall has the largest organic farm in the country and, if typical of Wiltshire farmers, can't abide waste... so providing the third reason, long straw, the by-product of this method of reaping corn which partly satisfies the local need for roof thatching material.
Until the Second World War cereal crops would have usually been harvested in this fashion, for then there were only 150 combines to 60,000 tractors and 660,000 working horses in total on British farms. The corn would have been cut by a horse or tractor-drawn binder and the sheaves stacked by hand into stooks for drying. That it is economically viable to do this today says something about both the waste associated with modern farming methods and the good intent on using old-fashioned methods and manual labour where possible.
When living in the UK I could vouch that the organic stone-ground whole-wheat flour from Rushall Mill was one of the best in the land for bread and pastry making, and that their small but solid loaves, baked two or three times a week, were amongst the tastiest and most nourishing. However, the bread could not be used for toasting - the slices became rock-hard over a fire!
And one of the local thatchers who had work in his books for the next twenty years or so was happier using local straw rather than "imported" Norfolk reeds. Overall it could be said that the community benefited because of the upholding of these few truly rural outlooks - but how long these ideals will last is a moot point. Suffice it to say that perhaps when the next harvest time comes around there may still be at least one photographic opportunity here that has disappeared from almost everywhere else in the country... but only time will tell.
There are changes on the horizon noted on the Rushall Mill web site which sound ominous if relating to this year. I quote from one of their undated pages... "It is with great regret that the Farm Shop will be closing down at 5.00 pm on Thursday, October 26th. We have striven for some time to compete with the supermarkets but have finally given up the unequal struggle. We feel strongly that the Government has given no help to small farm businesses at a time when we have been urged to diversify, and we encourage everyone who cares about the countryside to write to their M.P. and complain about the total indifference of the Government towards all rural matters."
As Lord Byron wrote...
"For what were all these country patriots born?
To hunt, and vote, and raise the price of corn?"
11:15:56 PM 
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