Matthew Gudgin (00:46):

Autumn has arrived at High Ash Farm. I'm in the farm yard and the trees are blowing around, still fully leaved, but the wind is really howling, and the grey skies, we've had rain, and it does feel like there's that little nip in the air now. So we can say, I think Autumn has definitely arrived and I've come to find Chris Skinner who said he'd be in his office. So I'm having a look through the workshop door. Chris. Morning.

Chris Skinner (01:13):

Oh Matthew, hello. Yes, welcome to High Ash Farm Workshop. There's everything you want in here: saws, screwdrivers, spanners, grinders, fans, a modern farm workshop. I've kept a bit of antiquity, which is the anvil right in the middle of the workshop and it still comes in handy today. This over a hundred years old.

Matthew Gudgin (01:37):

Well it’s the third part of our podcast and we've had great fun the last two weeks talking about the history of High Ash, and I guess this building is part of that as well. It must be a little bit older, maybe older than you. 

Chris Skinner (01:48):

Yes, it certainly is. It's mid-1800s. This was built and it had a loft, which is still there, and that was for storing horse food up there and all beyond as this whole block is a block of working horse stables and still with a little fireplace at the far end for the stable people and then a saddlery as well. And then all the horse harnesses, which I've kept quite a few of them with the various bits and pieces that would be needed for horses. Also there was a small farrier here, just somewhere to - if the shoes came off the giant working horses, they were all over a tonne - there’d be somewhere to shoe them as well at the farm. So you didn't have to go down to the local blacksmith shop, which was at the bottom of the farm.

Matthew Gudgin (02:43):

But I think we're going to go back a bit further this week, Chris.

Chris Skinner (02:46):

Yes, we certainly are. We're going back to Saxon times here at the farm. I don’t know if you know Matthew, but there's a Saxon Cemetery here. In fact, there's two cemeteries. One each side of the river Tas. One was occupied by the Saxons, and that's at Markshall just on the other side of the river, and the cemetery this side of the river is occupied by the Angles. Now when the Romans actually, their occupation gradually came to an end, and the last Romans we think left in the year 410, from that point onwards, we were invaded again, if you like, instead of by the Romans, by Angles and Saxons, and we kind of joined that name together to form Anglo-Saxons and we are probably descended from them. 

Matthew Gudgin:

So where were they from then? 

Chris Skinner: 

They were well from the Angles and the Saxons. Both the tribes were in Germany just across the North Sea, and they came across and invaded our territory yet again.

(03:51):

So Roman occupation was taken over by the Saxons and the angles, and they stayed for a considerable time. And their occupation kind of started from the end of that Roman era. About 350 onwards they started to come and they certainly mixed in with the local tribes. And there's a few common factors right through the Roman period. And in fact, before the Romans came, we were ploughing with oxen. And that's quite important. And the ploughs weren't like ploughs that we know today. They were called ards, A R D is the word. And they were pulled by oxen and it was a crude kind of branch that went into the ground. And in Iron Age times, certainly with the Iceni, they developed an iron point to go on the end of the branch. And it was slung between two oxen and then a huge plank of wood went between the oxen’s head.

(04:54):

In fact, it had four holes in and it was called a horn beam. And later on in this podcast, we're going to be looking at one of our trees actually called a horn beam. And the wood from that was meant to join these two oxen together because oxen, if you're trying to plough with them, one will go one way, one will go the other. 

Matthew Gudgin: 

They've got horns and it's a beam across 

Chris Skinner: 

Right! Horn beam, that's where the name comes from. Now the Saxons were pagans and not until close to the end of their occupation, which was several hundred years after the Romans had gone, did they start to convert to Christianity. So lots of the old Roman gods, the Romans would worship several gods in their sort of religion that they had, if you like. And very little of the Saxon occupation remains some jewellery, some pottery, but lots of urns because they cremated their dead. And at High Ash Farm will go and visit it in a few minutes - there are two cemeteries here and that's where a lot of the history that we know about today actually came from.

Matthew Gudgin (06:07):

You've dusted off some diagrams and images of, I presume are these are urns that were found here?

Chris Skinner (06:12):

Yes, they're all found at High Ash Farm, probably close to a thousand of them had been dug up from about the mid 1930s towards the end of the 1930s, and then the outbreak of the second World War meant the excavation that was going on that High Ash Farm had to come to an end. So the urns were all stored at the local hotel, which was Caistor Hall Hotel. And some of them are now on display at Norwich Castle Museum and you can actually go there and see these wonderful Saxon urns on display, and some of them have got beautiful, beautiful markings on them. Some of the potters came from Germany over here and they carried on making exactly the same pots. That's why it's a site of international importance, not just a national importance because they brought their technology with them and the actual styles, so you can identify the potter that made individual pots. They were little groups of them all around the cemetery. And there's 9 or 10 distinct potters that we know about, and each one had its own, his own way of decorating the burial urns.

Matthew Gudgin (07:30):

And these urns were about maybe four or five inches tall.

Chris Skinner (07:33):

Oh yes. They're about 8 to 9 inches tall and about 12 inches across, and what they contained were the cremated bones of the deceased. Now usually after cremation, the bones were put into the urn and they were buried, but the neck was level with the ground. And the idea was that the deceased could carry on their trades in the next world - because the cremation site is on top of a hill at High Ash Farm and the spirits didn't have so far to travel to the spirit world. And if you say worked with leather or some other trade, you would have some of your belongings put in after the cremation. Things like leather, if you worked were a shoe maker for instance, you'd have some items put in. So there'd be some use to you in the afterworld, so to speak. Now, I had an amazing find about 25 years ago, I was chopping out sugar beet quite close to the cemetery and I found just what looked like an old rusty nail. And it's here in my hand.

Matthew Gudgin (08:48):

I don’t know. Yeah, it's got a pointed end there, isn't it? And there's sort of a thing around the side.

Chris Skinner (08:52):

Yeah, that's the shank for, and it would've had a wooden handle on it, but I didn't sort of think too much about it. I put it in my pocket. So I didn't go through the tractor tyres when I was tractor hoeing the sugar beet later on. And it wasn't until I got it home and gave it a bit of a scrub up that I saw this on the top end of it, it's about an inch across the top and it is the most beautiful hatch work. It's in bronze and all around the edges are different fruits from the countryside. And here I'm just putting my little finger on it each end we have an acorn with its hatching as well. It's done absolutely beautifully

Matthew Gudgin:

All the detail there 

Chris Skinner:

It’s absolutely incredible. 

Matthew Gudgin: 

So that's a stamp, is it? 

Chris Skinner: 

This is a stamp of funeral stamp that would go on the urns. And so in this lovely old book that I have that's been given to me by the museum, I searched through and about 200 urns in, I've found the exact urn with this stamp on it, and if I pop it on the top like that, you can actually see it's a perfect match. This four cornered star with the acorns each side and just absolutely blew me away to know. Somebody in about 600 ad went to work to make this, but he was a skilled craftsman. 

Matthew Gudgin (10:22):

So that would've been pressed into the wet clay to make these patterns.

Chris Skinner (10:24):

And then these urns were fired to make them very hard and brittle just like modern pottery really. And that's the exciting bit. I mean, I'm just absolutely enthralled to have this. So the museum said we would love to have this in our collection. And my question was, is it going to be on display for everybody to see? And they said, no, it will go into store, but nevertheless we would love to have it. So I said, may I keep it until such time as you want it? And that's the offer. And that still stands today.

Matthew Gudgin (10:59):

Would it still work for the purpose it was built for?

Chris Skinner (11:00):

Yes. Yeah, it absolutely would. Now would you believe I used to play with plasticine when I was little and I'm going to give you the chance to hold it. And here's a little piece of plasticine here and you have to press down quite hard. 

Matthew Gudgin:

So how old do you think this is? 

Chris Skinner:

This is about 600 ad, 550 to 600 ad.

Matthew Gudgin (11:21):

So 1500 years old

Chris Skinner (11:22):

Exactly that. But the skill and the craftsmanship in the hatching on there to make acorns and other fruits all the way round. And it's the four seasons in the middle, which depicts your life as well, only four seasons of the year. But the Saxons said you have four seasons of your life, so you as a youngster then middle age and hopefully old age as well. 

Matthew Gudgin:

Well, we've got some plasticine here. 

Chris Skinner: 

Yep, here we go. You have to press quite hard because remember you're going to push it into wet clay, really hard, Matthew, give it a good push both sides and then take it out gently and look at what you've done.

Matthew Gudgin (12:02):

Oh, I think I recognise it. Actually the acorns come out really well there.

Chris Skinner (12:06):

Yeah, look at that. It is stunningly beautiful and we look back at those times to think they were crude people somehow, but the artefacts that they've actually left Matthew say something completely different. So we've been through the Iceni early days and the Stone Age, then the Roman occupation of Caistor, and then beyond that now the Saxons, the Anglo-Saxons and the cemetery is here on top of the hill at High Ash. And I just am learning so much about our history and the past as well, and so it just makes you feel somehow linked to the past. And because I'm a farmer and I can see how changed from those early days of the ard plough. In fact, if your surname was Hardley - hard work, it's arduous. You can have nothing more difficult than trying to hold a plough into the ground with a long shaft on it. The oxen actually pulled the plough, but you had to push down on that handle to get it in. And that's why the Saxon fields were nearly always square because you had to plough the field twice, once long ways and once crossways to actually move all the soil to till it. We hadn't invented Moldboards then, but that will come in the next episode. 

Matthew Gudgin (13:27):

Well there’s so little leftover from the Saxon era, but what there is is precious, including this - what I've got in my hand here - this stamp for funeral jars and I'll just put it down on your work surface. There we are. Isn’t it splendid?

Chris Skinner (13:43):

And I had shivers going up and down my spine when I took it home at lunchtime.

Matthew Gudgin (13:48):

Imagine the craftsman 1500 years ago who it belonged to.

Chris Skinner (13:50):

The work to make that, to smelt it. It's bronze and there's virtually no decay on it whatsoever. It's almost as perfect as the day it was made.

Matthew Gudgin (14:01):

I think we ought to get out to this Saxon funeral area.

Chris Skinner (14:04):

Off we go. Come on.

Matthew Gudgin (14:06):

Are we going to get blown away?

Chris Skinner (14:06):

We probably, it's blowing a hooley out here.

Matthew Gudgin:

(14:18):

The wind is roaring through the trees, but it's not cold in the least. But it's definitely Autumnal, Chris. 

Chris Skinner: 

Yes, I noticed you've got a coat on and I'm in my shirt sleeves. 

Matthew Gudgin: 

Are you saying I'm overdressed? 

Chris Skinner:

No, I'm saying you have a bit of a lightweight really. 

Matthew Gudgin: 

Well if the cap fits, yeah.

Chris Skinner: 

Anyway, welcome to High Ash Farm’s very own cemetery for the Angles that occupied this territory. And the hill, the other side of the valley where those wonderful beech trees are, is the Saxon Cemetery. And they buried their dead separately. Although they worked together, they had a lot of cooperation, but for some reason those two tribes buried their dead in separate places, but both on high ground, you can see we've got a panoramic view all the way around the territory here. 

Matthew Gudgin:

It's one of the high spots in the county here, isn't it?

Chris Skinner (15:16):

It is, yes. Yes. We're several metres above sea level, although Norfolk doesn't have mountains. There are certainly hills here. And this is undulating. And this site was specially chosen to bury the dead and much of it was excavated, but only a proportion of it. And if we walk over here, I've managed to put a little sign up explaining about the Anglo-Saxon cemetery. And you can see it was excavated between the 1930s and the late 1930s and seven hundred burial plots were found and the urns were really intricate, all of them. 

Matthew Gudgin:

Oh, and there's an image of one you've got here.

Chris Skinner:

 Yes. Very beautiful. Again with those stamps round and some of the potters, the people that made those urns had bracelets and the archaeologists think they rolled the bracelet round in a circle on the wet clay. But you can see this one's beautiful and this one's actually is on display at Norwich Castle Museum.

Matthew Gudgin:

Because it's almost entirely intact.

Chris Skinner (16:24):

Yes. But many of them what sort of upset the archaeologists when they're excavating part of the site, many of the tree roots, there's a clump of pines on top here of this hill. The tree roots went inside the urns and as the groups expanded, it popped the urns from the inside. So many of them were fragments, but most of them, or quite a few of them only had a small bit missing of them. So you can gain a lot of history from it. But the land all around us, including the Roman town, was farm by the Saxon with those square shaped fields, and it wasn't until the end of the Saxon occupation that agriculture changed a little bit and they started to knock some of the hedges, so just as we did in East Anglia in the 1960s, and so that you could have longer fields so you didn't have to cross plough because new forms of ploughing, turning the soil, started to be devised.

(17:28):

And the invention of the sithe as well meant that you could gather the grain at harvest time still with the corn in the ears, because before that the grain was all stored underground just in pits and you covered it over and that helped preserve the corn. But nevertheless, the Saxons were really good farmers and the land became quite productive. But they started to operate what's called a two crop rotation Matthew, and one year it would be cereals and the next year the field would be fallow so it would be left. So although it was productive, it wasn't as productive as it was much later on in the late middle ages when we started to fertilise the land and keep livestock. And you had then a three course rotation, which completely changed UK agriculture at that time. But what else happened here is there were lots of individual Saxon farmsteads with families farming their own enclosures.

(18:36):

And towards the end of the Saxon period, villages started to form so that you had lots of inhabitants in one area and they would go out and farm the land and eventually there would be strip farming and it was all measured out in something called furlongs. And a furlong was 220 yards long at that time. And they've still today horse racing, you have eight furlongs and that would be a mile long. But nevertheless, this huge change in agriculture started to happen. So it was a really important and huge transformation in agriculture and we learned so much from these urns and their contents, the sort of worldly goods that the Saxons left. Not often expensive jewellery put in the urns or if it was, it had been robbed because they were buried with the next level, with the surface of the ground. Nevertheless, it's a huge amount of history,

Matthew Gudgin (19:40):

This very important site all underneath our feet, just where we are

Chris Skinner (19:44):

exactly

Matthew Gudgin (19:45):

Where the trees are as well. It's been pretty much left undisturbed over the years hasn’t it?

Chris Skinner (19:49):

Yes it has. Yes. Apart from the excavations, but it has taught us so much about our predecessors. Again, it's very easy to think of as crude kind of backward people. And I'm learning so much that it's almost the opposite. I think they could teach us a lesson about how to look after the world that we live in.

Matthew Gudgin (20:20):

Well, it is exceptionally windy in the middle of a field. Chris, why have you brought me into the middle of this grass field here when it's blowing a hooley?

Chris Skinner (20:29):

It absolutely is, but Matthew, this is one of the pollen and nectar fields here at High Ash Farm and it's all been mown and removed. So we're past the middle of September already and we expect these winds up here. It's high country, we're over 70 metres above sea level where we're standing, so there's not much to stop the wind. But interesting things happen when we've mown this field. All the seed has been thrashed out onto the ground and starts to germinate and just need to go down on our hands and knees a moment because there's some really unusual plants here. And here is one of them. I often talk about parasites on the farm, one of which is mistletoe. And this one is a parasite but not of an apple tree or hawthorn or oak trees, although other members of its family do parasitise trees.

(21:30):

This is the broom rape family and this is called lesser broom rape and it's feasting on the pea family plants here. We've got clover all the way in the understory here. Here's some clover here, sainfoin growing all around us as well. And birds foot trefoil, another one there. And you can see there's clover right around the base of this plant. So it's a parasite. 

Matthew Gudgin:

It looks alien, doesn't it? 

Chris Skinner:

It does. 

Matthew Gudgin:

Everything else is green and that's a very different colour. 

Chris Skinner:

So it doesn't have any chlorophyll in it whatsoever because it doesn't need to have any because it's getting all its nutrition off the clover plant underneath it. So it looks rather like a dead orchid, I suppose is one way of describing it. It's colourless, but it is in flower at the moment, and you can see there's a slight purple tinge to the tips of it.

(22:27):

And it's about halfway through its flowering stage. It will be about a foot tall in about two weeks time, and then it drops seeds on the ground, the seeds germinate and feed on members of the pea family. So you can get it on lupins in your garden, this parasitic plant. You can get it certainly on all the clover species around us here. So it's quite common out on this field and if you walk out a bit further, you can actually find clumps of it. But it is really unusual and that's why I get quite attracted to them because they stand out like this and you have to wonder what they're doing and how they've arrived in our countryside, it's a bit like a cuckoo being very lazy, I suppose. A cuckoo parasitise other bird's nest, removes an egg and then lays its own egg there and then it's brought up.

(23:23):

So cuckoos are kind of lazy parents and in a way that's what parasites are like. You can get fleas on your dog or your cat, worms as well, obviously. But out in the countryside the clover doesn't have any treatment to stop itself being parasitised. But the plant does really well on these because clover has little rootlets with something called nodules on the roots. And we've got sainfoin and lucerne or alfalfa on the other side of the farm and they've also got these nodules on their roots. So all members of the pea family have this and nodules are hugely important. They can fix nitrogen from the atmosphere and actually make it into a plant food. And all farmers will know that nitrogen is a really important constituent in getting plants to grow. So you can sow what we call the clover lay on your farm and then you plough the crop in and then the succeeding crop will feast on all the nitrogen left by the previous legume crop.

(24:31):

And this particular plant, lesser broom rape has learned to do that. So it's really clever and quite intriguing as to how it can survive, how it arrived here in the countryside because obviously it's a parasite on a plant. So it's a much later edition as though plants are beginning to learn how to harvest their nutrients from their own environment without having to have a whole root structure. So a bit like mistletoe, it's completely dependent on its parent plant, although mistletoe has green in its leaves, so it's a semi-parasite. This one has no chlorophyll in its leaves whatsoever. And that's why I'm fascinated by them. It's just an amazing sight and it just stands out like a sore thumb.

Matthew Gudgin (25:19):

Look out for something that really doesn't look like it should be there. And it could well be lesser broom rape in amongst all the greenery. It's a colourless with just that hint of purple plant looking a few inches above the ground at the moment, but could go up further.

Chris Skinner (25:36):

Yes, yes. It should be closer a foot all by the end of September. So there we are. Yep, stunning to learn what's here in the countryside at this time of the year. And on the way back to the truck, Matthew, I've got a little bag in my pocket because we're going to pick a few edible mushrooms, and I can see some peeping up above the grass, so at least you'll have something to eat this lunchtime.

Matthew Gudgin (26:01):

Oh, you're going to get me lunch, are you? 

Chris Skinner (26:03):

Oh yes. Look here.

Matthew Gudgin (26:04):

What are these?

Chris Skinner (26:05):

These are field mushrooms, Matthew, and I will check for you. Pick one check underneath, bright pink. Next check is does the cap peel off right to the centre? And it does. So here you've got field mushroom, absolutely perfect condition. There we are. Little bit of butter in a pan. And you've got lunch.

Matthew Gudgin (26:29):

Chris, you spoil me.

Chris Skinner (26:30):

Absolutely.

Matthew Gudgin (26:37):

We're in the lee of some woodland here so the wind doesn't sound quite so ferocious as it did a few minutes ago in the Saxon Cemetery. We've just gone past the proverbial steaming pile as well, haven’t we?

Chris Skinner (26:47):

Yes, this year’s muck heap and it is steaming away. I was going to be a bit unkind and so you can put your hand in there to see if you can bear it from more than 5 seconds. The heat is intense, so it's steaming away beautifully.

Matthew Gudgin (27:04):

Yes, all smoke coming out of the top.

Chris Skinner (27:05):

It looks like smoke, but it's steam. 

Matthew Gudgin: 

It’s not on fire. 

Chris Skinner:

No, it's not on fire. So in front of us we have a very large field. It's 40 hectares, which is basically a hundred acres in old money. And just as we arrived I noticed masses of swallows, oh, there's two or three in front there now, skimming across the top of the grass.

Matthew Gudgin (27:27):

They're just above grass height

Chris Skinner (27:28):

Yes. So what's happened, because it's windy and we're in the lee side of the woodland here, Matthew, some insects are being stirred up out of the grass and the swallows are hoovering them up. And we had a large batch of swallows here just as we arrived. And they're on their southern migration. And these ones could have been in Scotland or northern England a couple of days ago, and they started their southern migration. In the northern part of the UK, Matthew, swallows will probably only bring off two broods and the further south you get - the weather's a bit more clement down at this end of the country - some of our swallows that we still have here at High Ash Farm are on their third brood already. So fingers crossed, they have some nice weather to finish off the young chicks so they can make the migration. But they're just skimming right across the top, almost touching the tops of the grass with their wings. And that's obviously where the insects are.

Matthew Gudgin (28:28):

So these dozens of birds are likely to be fueling up for the next instalment of their epic journey.

Chris Skinner (28:33):

Absolutely. So they'll probably spend a night in the London area, they'll be heading southwards and then the next stage will be go down to the channel, cross the channel, which is only like a 20 minute flight for them.

Matthew Gudgin (28:46):

So London is just over a hundred miles from here and then it'll be another a hundred miles off.

Chris Skinner (28:50):

Exactly. They tend to do these hops and often the youngsters from the first brood will have already left without mum and dad telling them the directions to South Africa. You'll find them down in the goldmines region of South Africa. Johannesburg for instance, they spend our winter down there, but there's no mum and dad to tell you which way to go. So that's one of the incredible feats of nature. Anyway, Matthew, we've come to the corner of a woodland and all over High Ash Farm. There's 13 areas of woodland. And all the elder woodland that's been planted on the corners of the woodland is a special tree that's been planted.

Matthew Gudgin (29:33):

So this one here?

Chris Skinner (29:36):

Yes. 

Matthew Gudgin: 

It's quite gnarly, isn't it?

Chris Skinner: 

It's very gnarled, isn't it? And it's probably 150 years old. And we were talking about it a bit earlier in the programme. 

Matthew Gudgin:

So this is the hornbeam? 

Chris Skinner: 

Correct. And even the young hornbeam trees are planted here at the farm, have this gnarled smooth grey bark and it's incredibly hard wood. So some people have said it's as hard as horn and that may be what it gave it its name. So you can look in here and it looks like a bonsai tree. 

Matthew Gudgin: 

It does.

Chris Skinner:

Fissured and gnarled and there's algae growing on and it's really unusual. And it is absolutely. I wouldn't dare punch it. It's agony. 

Matthew GudginL 

Goodness me. Yes, like granite. 

Chris Skinner: 

It is, so hornbeam and the leaves are really distinctive. Some people confuse it with beech trees, but it is a completely different family. 

Matthew Gudgin: 

These aren't very broad these leaves, are they?

Chris Skinner (30:35):

No, no. They're long narrowish lance-shaped leaves. And the interesting thing to distinguish them from beech tree leaves is that the edge of the leaves are serrated and they also feel very rough. Whereas if you run your fingers down a beech leaf, it's very smooth. And so the buds are already forming over the winter. Some people say they look like a crouching mouse and they can be one or two centimetres long. Just where the leaf joins the stem here. 

Matthew Gudgin: 

I can see yes. 

Chris Skinner: 

But this time of the year, Matthew, it forms a really important function if we just walk out a bit, some of the branches are hanging down, which is very convenient. And this happens.

Matthew Gudgin: 

I know these are lighter coloured leaves and smaller. 

Chris Skinner: 

Yep. This is the fruiting body of the horn beam. So oak trees produce acorns, beech trees produce beech mast and hornbeam produces nuts.

(31:40):

And there's one particular bird species you can almost see where hornbeam trees grow, which is really across the southern half of the United Kingdom from sort of Wales across to The Wash. If you imagine that line, everything north of that, most of the hornbeam trees have been planted by humans. They will grow, but they prefer this warmer southern part of their climate. And really we're on the sort of western region because European tree, we're on the western sort of border of their territory. Now I said they produce nuts, so I'm going to have to explain what I've got here. This is the sort of female part of the plant. You get male and female flowers on the same tree. Now if I turn this over, you can see these leaf light structures, they're called bracts, actually conceal two little seeds at the base of each one. So each bract of this here, probably 10 seeds here. So what we'll do, we'll take one off, just pull that away. They're really hard. They look like miniature hazelnuts. Here we go quite small and I can just about tease one out which I've done and then I'll take the little husk off that. And inside we should see a pure white nut.

Matthew Gudgin (33:05):

The green casing is coming off

Chris Skinner (33:06):

The green casing, it is incredibly hard. And if these drop on the ground and they're not eaten by a particular bird, which is favourite food, it's called hawfinch. Then they take about 18 months to germinate for the frosts and the weather to actually get this husk off. And I'm having trouble. I'm nearly there. And it's pure white seed in here, which is the fruit of the hornbeam tree just beginning to appear now. But it's absolutely hard in my fingernails. So there we are. 

Matthew GudginL 

There are thousands of these on it’s bow

Chris Skinner:

And quite soon, animals like squirrels will come and take them, drop them on the ground and then feed and get these little nuts out. As I said, favourite food for the hawfinch, one of our native birds with a huge beak to able to crack open these little seeds and it's its favourite food of the beautiful birds, very chunky members of the Finch family. And hawfinch's and horn beam are closely linked. So where you have hornbeam, you'll also, if you're lucky, have hawfinches as well.

Matthew Gudgin (34:20):

Why though are these trees the horn beam and they are beautiful in their own way. There's gnarled old manner, but why are they on the corner of these woodlands?

Chris Skinner (34:28):

We don't know. That's one of the reasons we don't know. All around the farm there's trees planted in strange places and all the way up the end of this field and it's a massive field - There are holly trees and each one's planted exactly 22 yards apart

Matthew Gudgin (34:45):

Which is a chain as we just…

Chris Skinner (34:46):

Is a chain. That's one of those old measures. It's also the length. I know you're smiling of a cricket pitch as well. I knew.

Matthew Gudgin (34:53):

Well you were telling us earlier there are 10 chains in a furlong and 8 furlongs in a mile… 

Chris Skinner (34:56):

No, no, no. There's 8 furlongs in a mile. Not chains, but there are 10 chains in. Oh yeah, you're right. There's 10 chains in a furlong. Yes, 220 yards long, those old measurements. But the interesting thing is acres are just coming back into being used. Farms in about 20 years ago start to be sold in hectares. And then very clever land agents started to realise that if you advertised the farm in acres, it appeared much bigger 

Matthew Gudgin:

Because basically the numbers are bigger! 

Chris Skinner:

Basically there's two and a half acres in hectare, which is the European equivalent measure if you like. Anyway, that's the hornbeam. And the other lovely thing about this tree is in a week or two's time, these dark green leaves turn into the most beautiful, golden, yellow colour that you can imagine. So it really signifies that autumn is quite close.

Matthew Gudgin (35:58):

Well, Chris, it's been great fun once again coming to your happy acre, and we look forward to our next podcast visit and some history and natural history.

Chris Skinner (36:08):

Exactly that. Yes, look forward to that. See you soon.