Sunday 15 July 2012

Weather

I've been finding all this rain a little tedious and inconvenient for obvious reasons, but I'd forgotten to think of it more broadly until I was talking to a farmer after church today. I wish I could have recorded what he said, Devon accent included. Basically the farmers are at their wits' end. His potatoes are rotting in their banked-up rows, with standing water as high as the base of the mounds -- expect potato prices to rise. And there will be almost no millable British wheat to make bread unless we get some proper sunshine. Every possible shed is full of livestock which should not be indoors at this time of year, and you can't take tractors out because they just sink in the muddy fields, even if you only half-load them, so lots of jobs are having to be done laboriously by hand. No hay can be made, though some people have managed to get some silage done. Today's St Swithun's day so let's hope the old saying doesn't hold this year. Right now it's actually rather pleasant here in Devon.

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