Ploughing on

Ploughing has, for millennia, been formative of the British landscape. I love spotting the ridge and furrow in fields of long abandoned villages, and I find the geometric patterns of modern farming equally fascinating.

And yet ploughing also remains a mystery to me. I understand the theory but somehow it doesn't seem to make practical sense - why should messing up the soil make things grow better next year? Plants are strange.

Animals less so - in the field next to this there were two roe deer (which always remind me of over-grown whippets) enjoying a Sunday morning breakfast. They let me get quite close while I walked along the edge of the field without paying attention to them, but when I stopped to take a photo, they had other ideas. Now that makes perfect sense to me.