Apologies for no posts over the last couple of days but Dafad here has had a bit of a bug and was definitely feeling under the weather, which has been mist laden and dank. The mist on the mountain has been so bad that the farmers are unable to do the last big gather of the year. That means getting all the commons roaming sheep off the mountain and in to the in bye fields ready for the "tupping season" where the rams have a busy job to do!
A friend recently asked me why I thought this Autumn would be a "A wash out." and would I explain more. So, I will try my uneducated best to answer that question.
It all started off earlier on in the year, just when a lot of our native species were coming into bloom ... it rained ... and rained again, often heavily and with strong winds. This meant several things. Not only were the delicate flowers of many local species knocked off by the incessant battering; it also meant that pollinating species were unable to fly. Now I know that for those who follow my posts on this blog, that all too often I mention the weather. This is not just a British obsession, it applies to farmers and growers all over the world, they all have a weather eye on the sky. We were lucky, that we weren't hit by tornado's or tsunami's that cause instant and devastating damage, though several areas of the British Isles were quite severely hit by almost instantaneous flooding. Ours was a slower day to day soaking. Readers of my blog will know how often I've mentioned the rain (probably to the point of repetitive boredom) but ... it has had a big effect on our life.
Skies such as these were a regular sight.
Now ... not easy to see in the photograph (taken in August) is the hawthorn boundary hedgerow. Today ...the whole stretch of hawthorn is almost totally bare of berries!
And, the same can be said for many fruiting species, the list is as long as my arm. All those trees and bushes, so normally fruit bearing had their blossoms battered by the weather.
Result ... no fruit ... and the list is long, apple, damson, elderberry, rose hip, rowanberry hazel, plum, pear, etc, etc. That means a harsh season ahead for many of our bird species.
Add to that, the fact that the weather prevented our local bees, moths and butterflies from pollinating and nectar gathering, it has been a damp and dismal year all round.
Yes, we were (only just) lucky to get our hay harvested, but even some of that had to be turned into silage. There were other knock on effects of the weather. Farmers had to cope with foot rot and fly strike. It has been an unusual and challenging year.
But now as I write, I'm looking back to Octobers past ... where normally my freezer would be filled with "free" harvested goodies. This year there have been very few additions. Also free fungi wise, I have eaten one small golf ball sized puffball this year ... pathetic!
Another thing in answer to my friends question, just recently the trees turned gold very quickly and just today I noticed the fall of so many species of leaves. Trees suddenly bare of their autumnal foliage, Beech, Ash, Hawthorn, Rowan berry, Sycamore, Birch, and more besides. Today I witnessed a sudden turning and shedding of leaves from the trees, to fall on the ground. Normally here, we are witness to a golden autumnal season full of colour that lasts for weeks, not so this year. In past years my freezer has been packed with free gatherings, not so this year! But, so far we have not been flooded out of our homes, so there are some things to be grateful for. But ... what does all this mean for next years seasons? Only time will tell, maybe ... next year will be better, but this year is not good. The arable farmers have seen a great reduction in yield per acre. Fruit and vegetable growers have been hard hit by the weather this year. Farming news has been full of early drought conditions with some reporting sowing a 20% less seed and having to artificially irrigate their crops, in many cases running their reservoirs dry and later then an overdose of rain later in the year, subsequently this has meant a poor harvest right across the whole spectrum of our food producers, which means of course that prices for local produce have been higher, and ... we've had to rely even more than we do already on imports from other countries, many of which have also suffered from strange unseasonal weather.
The knock on effects of this year could be drastic, but we shall see what happens.
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