Tag: rape
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Mayday, Mayday, Mayday
And we’re into May. From the Latin ‘Maius’, the Italic goddess, daughter of Faunus and wife of Vulcan. Mayday was a traditional day in Yorkshire farming practices when agricultural tenancies were changed, “the spring crops being likewise sown by the outgoing tenant, and valued with the wheat“, and “stock are turned into pasture grounds ……
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Wood Field, Great Ayton
In the early 17th-century, agriculture in Great Ayton followed the ancient open-field system where the cultivated land of the parish was divided into many long narrow furlongs and sub-divided again into strips. This was all manorial land and those villagers who were tenants or serfs farmed several dozen of these unfenced strips scattered throughout the…
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Easby Moor
It’s that mellow time of the year with every other field growing rapeseed. Used for animal feeds, vegetable oil and biodiesel. Easby Moor in the distance with Captain Cook’s monument. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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View from The Wainstones
As the early morning clouds swirled around the tops of the Cleveland Hills the ubiquitous yellow fields of rapeseed dominated the view onto the plain below. Rapeseed was originally only grown for machine oil as it was too bitter for human consumption but new strains developed in the 70s made the oil more palatable. In…
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Yellow is the color of my true love’s hair …
… so sang Donovan way back in 1965 when fields of yellow rapeseed was almost unheard of in the UK. In 2012 the UK produced 2.6m tonnes of the seeds; worldwide production has increased over 12 fold in the same period. Its seeds are used extensively in animal feed, vegetable oil and bio-diesel. I wonder…