A lone tractor crawls below Roseberry Topping, spreading muck across an upland field. The scent hits you before the sight does. This, believe it or not, is what civilisation smells like.
That machine is just the latest chapter in a very old and very smelly story. Centuries of farmers knew something we have mostly forgotten: the soil is not a given. It must be fed.
No artificial fertiliser required. Just cows and sheep, doing what cows and sheep do. The ancient rules hold firm — keep the plough in the shed, keep the livestock on the land, and the soil looks after itself. It turns out the finest modern technology for rescuing exhausted ground is a cow. Nature set that one up long before any chemist did.
The uplands were always the nursery. Vast flocks and herds were raised here on the rough margins, then sent south to make arable farming possible on the better land. The bleakest hills earned their keep.
18th-century landlords left nothing to chance. Tenants were legally forbidden from selling muck off the farm. A man could call his house his castle, but the dung belonged to the landlord. The lease said it plainly:
“not to sell, carry away, or dispose of any of the manure, dung, or compost… but shall make use of the same upon his lands”1Tuke, Mr., Junior. General View of the Agriculture of the North Riding of Yorkshire. London: W. Bulmer and Co., 1794..
Kildale farmers were even required to buy in and spread what the records call “Town Waste.”2Anthony, Cedric. “Glimpses of Kildale History”. Geni Printing. 2012. Best not to dwell on that.
The shrewder farmers used sheep as walking fertiliser machines. Turned out onto the turnip fields, the sheep ate on the spot, carried nothing, wasted nothing. The muck stayed exactly where it was needed. Simple. Brilliant. Free.
The artificial fertilisers we now depend on travel through the Strait of Hormuz. The Iran War has put that supply in doubt. We pay a fortune to replace what we used to produce for nothing, then pay again to dispose of what we once hoarded by law.
If we lose the wit to value our own waste, perhaps we have simply become the most expensive generation of fools yet.
- 1Tuke, Mr., Junior. General View of the Agriculture of the North Riding of Yorkshire. London: W. Bulmer and Co., 1794.
- 2Anthony, Cedric. “Glimpses of Kildale History”. Geni Printing. 2012.
Leave a Reply