Letters from Hillside
WHEN we arrived here 10 summers ago, the land felt very different. Grazed hard by the cattle, the pasture ran up to the hedges in an uninterrupted velvety sward. The fields lay open, quietened and empty, with a shadow of the diversity they support today.
Over the course of that first winter in 2011, I combed the land, looking into the knit of the turf to see what it might tell me. The grasses ran thickly where the ground was rich, but, on the thin soils of the higher ground, a more diverse weave of perennials pointed to their potential for meadows. The next summer, we struck a deal with a local farmer and put three-quarters of the land back to meadow. He would have the hay and the grazing in exchange for two loads of ‘black gold’. I was happy to have the manure in
