{"id":26546,"date":"2017-10-07T10:30:12","date_gmt":"2017-10-07T15:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26546"},"modified":"2017-10-07T10:30:12","modified_gmt":"2017-10-07T15:30:12","slug":"the-empty-countryside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26546","title":{"rendered":"The Empty Countryside"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE EMPTY COUNTRYSIDE<\/a><\/h3>\n
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I thought the sheep was dead. It was lying in the middle of a big grass field with its legs in the air. I wasn\u2019t surprised;<\/span> those fields are rented by a farmer <\/span>who can\u2019t afford<\/span> to run his business in the way<\/span> <\/span>modern farming demands. He doesn\u2019t own enough land to scale up his production by borrowing against its value. The result is not too many beasts on the farm<\/span>,<\/span>but too few: <\/span>in this case <\/span>six<\/span> scraggy<\/span> ewes roaming 15 acres.<\/span> As I walked by<\/span>,<\/span> the dead <\/span>one <\/span>waved her legs. Alive then, but stuck on her back<\/span> by her weight of wool<\/span>. I trudged <\/span>across <\/span>to her, put my foot on her side and pushed her over<\/span> away from me<\/span>. She scrambled to her feet and ran off, fleece bouncing<\/span>, bleating confusedly<\/span>. If I hadn\u2019t rescued her she probably would have died. No one would have noticed in time because no one passes this way.<\/span><\/p>\n

For thousands of years, the English countryside has never been so empty<\/span> of people and animals<\/span> as it is now<\/span>. <\/span><\/p>\n

T<\/span>he<\/span> part of West Dorset<\/span> where I live<\/span> was <\/span>once <\/span>a <\/span>busy <\/span>network of small farmsteads, most with fewer than 100 acres, keeping Red Devon cattle f<\/span>or meat and milk. Today, the<\/span> old farm <\/span>names <\/span>on the Ordnance Survey map <\/span>are a roll<\/span> call<\/span> of lost activity: Prime,<\/span> <\/span>Oselhay<\/span>, <\/span>Middlebrook<\/span>, <\/span>Taphouse<\/span>, Lower <\/span>Park, <\/span>Purcombe<\/span>, <\/span>and Higher<\/span> <\/span>Sminhay<\/span>. Their land has been sold and consolidated into bigger <\/span>agricultural <\/span>landholdings. Some of the farmhouses are second homes or holiday lets. Many more settlements have simply disappeared. The <\/span>186<\/span>1 census lists<\/span> <\/span>Dodseye<\/span>, <\/span>Brickhouse<\/span>, Poor House, <\/span>Froghouse<\/span> and <\/span>Duckpool<\/span> \u2013 all<\/span> gone<\/span>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE EMPTY COUNTRYSIDE I thought the sheep was dead. It was lying in the middle of a big grass field with its legs in the air. I wasn\u2019t surprised; those fields are rented by a farmer who can\u2019t afford to run his business in the way modern farming demands. He doesn\u2019t own enough land to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[15872,3324,299,16339,16340],"class_list":["post-26546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-dark-mountain-project","tag-england","tag-farming","tag-sara-hudston","tag-west-dorset"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26547,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26546\/revisions\/26547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}