The trees which shed their leaves are gorgeous with their autumn tints, and many kinds of them are graceful in the winter with bare boughs, especially just after snow. Writing at the window where I am writing now, my grandfather notes down, 3 January 1847, “Each flake takes up its position and there remains. I hope no wind will disturb it before I can go out and take a view of the country around: which I hope to do, even if it’s up to knees.” I feel that too; but bare boughs always remind me it is winter-time, and I might easily forget that dismal fact down here, if all the trees were green. If I were making a fresh start, I would surround myself with cedar and cypress, pine and fir, holly trees and bay trees, palm trees, yucca and New Zealand flax, Portugal laurel, arbutus, camellia, rhododendron, and other such trees and shrubs. The earliest kind of rhododendron (the Nobleanum) starts flowering here at Christmas. One of mine has nearly a hundred great red trusses of bloom now—January—and the red camellias are coming out. Sometimes on winter days the thermometer goes up to 90° in the sun; and there is seldom any great extremity of cold. My grandfather notes, 11 February 1855, “Thermometer at front door now 20°, such as I never remember seeing before.”
He noted thermometer, barometer, wind and weather, every day in books he kept for that, and every week he sent a copy to my father to compare with his own notes. But my father’s notes were very irregular, as he was often away, whereas my grandfather seldom stirred, at any rate in his later years (1840 to 1870) for which I have his notes. Also, my father met with difficulties that were unknown down here. Instead of the temperature on 11 September 1850 there is a note of “My thermometer stolen from the garden wall last night,” and no more temperatures for several days.
These notes, of course, were of no use except for forecasting in future years; and my grandfather at last perceived they were of very little use at all. He writes on 10 February 1860, “These phenomena used to indicate immediate storms, but really the weather has been such of late that all my old calculations and observations are gone to the winds, so now do not pretend to rely on any of them.”
Some of his prognostications had been lamentably wrong. He writes on 23 November 1851, “My mind tells me we shall have a deal of snow this winter,” and his record of the weather shows that there was practically none. As he says that his mind told him so, I suppose he was not consciously relying on his observations or his calculations here, though he could hardly have dismissed them from his mind. I think it came of the hereditary wisdom of old countryfolk. Their observations may be less exact, but there have been many generations of observers; and thus they form opinions that come true in nine years out of ten.
Mild winters often end with falls of snow in March or April—at any rate, it is so here—and this must be the basis of the saw, “A green Christmas, a white Easter.” My Grandfather quotes it on 28 December 1857 as “an old adage—I fear it may be too true.” On 12 January 1862 he writes, “How mild it is. Well, this verifies the saying of old that if the hawthorn and holly berries are plenty, be sure of a hard winter, but if none, a mild one; and there is scarcely a berry to be seen, even on our hollies which are generally so thick. When I was young these sayings were more general than now; and it is considered that the alwise Providence is mindful of the birds as well as man.”
The birds come down here from the bleaker country round the moor as soon as wintry weather sets in, and the ground below the hollies is red with berries that the birds have dropped. But this last winter (1922, 23) was so mild that no birds came, though berries were more abundant than ever was known before. In another such winter my grandfather writes, 25 January 1846, “I cannot find any of the old men I meet can ever recollect such a mild winter, so far. I have not yet seen a winter’s bird, not a fieldfare or starling or even a whindle [redwing] nor a covey of birds of any description: neither the linnet nor finch nor yellowhammer have congregated together as heretofore: they are all about singly as in summer. They do not appear to want the food of the barn’s door, the cornricks, or stable court, so far. Hope it is all for a wise purpose.”
Of course, there sometimes are hard winters here, as in 1907, 8 when almost all the birds were killed; and he writes, 14 May 1855, “Birds of all sorts are very scarce, the winter made great havoc of them: not a thrush to be heard nor a blackbird to be seen. I have not a robin in the garden.” But winters of that kind are rare.
With this climate and rich soil there is abundant produce from the land, but very little profit—on agricultural land of mine (apart from buildings) I have been paying close upon £3 an acre in rates and tithe and taxes. During the War the Food Controller found that milk could be produced for two pence a gallon less in the four Western counties than in the rest of England; so he imposed a duty of two pence a gallon on all milk sent out of these four counties, and thereby collected about £250,000. But the Law decided that the duty was illegal; and the money is being returned.
If milk can be produced so cheaply in the West, there ought to be more dairy-farming, and more land should be laid down to permanent pasture. But that is not a popular opinion now. Some acres will produce more food if they are ploughed than if they stay in grass, and perhaps the average acre will, but some acres certainly will not; and though the produce may be more per acre, it may be less per man employed. This is forgotten, and the cry is all for ploughing up. Experienced people will not go ploughing up their pasture; but power may be given someday to a Ministry or Board or Council, which has to lay down general rules and therefore takes the average case regardless of abnormal cases, such as the rich pastures here.
According to the Food Controller’s rules, milk could be produced much cheaper on one farm than on the next adjoining farm, if the county boundary happened to come between the two; and really there were places fifty or a hundred miles inside the boundary where it could not be produced as cheaply as at places just as far outside. No doubt, the line must be drawn somewhere, if there is to be a line at all; but such lines are merely nuisances when they do not represent the facts.