Country Diary: North Yorkshire

The ings alongside the lower Derwent valley are alive with tractors - mowing, turning and baling, as the farmers literally make hay while the sun shines. Normally, they would start cutting immediately after July 1, the date agreed with English Nature, which manages the ings as part of the Lower Derwent Valley national nature reserve. By then, the wild flow ers have set seed, ensuring a continuing bloom of meadowsweet, great burnet and meadow crane's bill. Ground-nesting birds will also have got their chicks off by then.

But this year is different. A wet summer has kept water on the land, making the ground soft and likely to be churned up by machinery. Rain throughout July resulted in poor drying conditions. The ideal is to cut, dry and bale the hay within three days; leave it lying longer, and it loses colour and nutrition. Having it stand till the end of July before cutting poses a similar risk, hence the flurry of activity when we are blessed with a few days of continuous dry weather. Being late with the hay also means that it is overlapping with the barley harvesting.

The ings, subject to winter flooding off the river depositing silt, which refreshes the land, have been managed in this way since Saxon times. A thousand years of continuity is bundled on to the creaking trailers laden with hay. There are few fences, each ownership marked by a post, originally sandstone blocks, at the field edge.

Following the hay-making, stock is turned out on the ings for aftermath grazing, as the grasses and flowers surge forth again in the late summer sunshine.