Pictures of A farm straddling the Wiltshire Border who does its organic harvesting the old way, was taken in 2009. The reason for the traditional methods were to provide straw for the thatching industry.
Harvest time in Wiltshire.
On the borders of Wiltshire and Berkshire, where once the Romans harvested grain for its army in what is now Germany, a revolution in farming is taking place. A backwards revolution that is.
Walkers on the Chalk downs above the quaint villages of Inkpen and Shalbourne could have looked down and think that they were in a time shift, as in a field below thatcher Matt Williams was harvesting the Spelt crop as it was done over 50 years ago.
Matt, driving a 1950Õs Fordson tractor pulling a 1930 reaper binder, with business partner Dave Bragg at the reapers controls, are trying to become self sufficient in wheat straw for their Oxford based thatching business.
The pair have planted a type of wheat that the Romans used, in an attempt to get the perfect thatching straw for the Ôflat strawÕ thatching they have reverted to. ÒTo be honest the thatching industry has not gone forward, so this is the only equipment you can use to produce thatching straw.Õ Matt says, Ò It works incredibly well, its very efficient and quite cheep to buy so thatÕs why we use a reaper binder.Ó Modern wheat is breed to have very short stems and very heavy ears so you get much less straw and much more grain but thatÕs useless to the thatching industry because we need straw thatÕs as long as possible. This is a variety of straw that was brought into Europe by the Romans, it has a very long hard stem that stand up very well and wont fall over in a wind and rain so makes a perfect crop for thatching straw.Ó
As his family and friends gather the bundles and make them into the traditional stooks he continues ÒThe thatching industry has been affected by several bad harvests and as a result the industry has been undersupplied by about 30%. As a result we have had to import inferior materials and change the thatching style. This has meant changing the way the thatchers work and look of local villages, traditions developed over thousands of years wiped away because we have this massive undersupply of thatching straw.Ó ÒThe only way we could guarantee we would have a supply that we really liked, we knew where it had come from and hadnÕt had pesticides or sprays on it was to take control and produce it ourselves.Ó
The fields are part of Dover Farm the owners of which I first met while filming at a British Embassy Food Fair in Rome, which was attended by the then Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall while on an official visit to the Italian capitol.