The grass is greener

The nearest town to my childhood home was Nuneaton. I once spoke to a local historian who (for his own reasons) was trying to follow part of my family tree, which took him to the town, trying to find details of someone called Clay. He said that Nuneaton had a history as a brick-making town, and that every second family was called Clay!

A little hyperbolic, but  there was certainly a large Clay family at my primary school, and it is true that the area is known for its bricks and, therefore, for its heavy, grey Midlands-clay soils. That was the sort of land that my family tried to farm, including creating seedbeds to grow both spring and autumn-sown wheat, barley and oats 

If a good seedbed can be created and, therefore, good germination achieved, the water-retention and nutrient-binding properties of clay minerals can make clay soils very productive. But that is a big "if"; the prior management of the soil, and the water content when cultivation is carried out, have to be just right, or the result can be either sour porridge or a hedge-to-hedge landscape of intractable boulders. As the unskilled hand, I have spent many dull hours dragging a heavy roll over such ceramic blocks, hoping to chip off at least enough crumbs to induce a wheat grain to make an attempt at growing roots

There was a perverse kind of pride in working with such problematic substrate. They would look with some contempt at farmers on the free-draining Cotswold limestone, such as around me here, and declare it to be "boys' land". They considered that very little expertise was needed to farm it and that it only needed half a day of dry weather to be ready for a tractor and plough or cultivator. Young as I was, I couldn't help but detect an undertone of envy!

There is probably surface water now on some of those old fields I remember. But here on this free-draining hillside, this farmer is happy to send out the plough, and that looks like fine, friable soil to me. If they are planning a somewhat late-planted cereal crop, I think they might get away with it. I'm grateful for the added texture and focus point of primary colour in the picture