My kitchen window looks out on a storage shelter for logs that I use in the stove that heats the room I call ‘the snug’. I light the fire on chilly days and sit close by it to read a book or sort through general household paperwork. The snug window has a bit more of an inspiring view than the kitchen in that it looks out on the slope that leads up to the fell tops, which in winter are covered in snow.

I’ve livened up the kitchen window view by putting some bird feeders next to the log store and close to the hedge that runs alongside the lane at the side my house. This gives the birds a bit of protection when they come to feed and they flutter between the hedge and the feeders. They can’t be too careful as sparrow hawks sometimes visit the garden.

This week I saw something different from the kitchen window when I was doing the washing up. A wood mouse was scurrying out of the log pile and nipping off a leaf of the cranesbill plants that were growing nearby, and then scurrying back again. This went on for some time as I washed dishes as quietly as possible so as not to disturb the mouse going about this obviously very important business. 

The mouse was quick and nervous. It didn’t spend long in each foray out from the cover from the log pile. Not only do sparrow hawks come into the garden, there is also the ginger Tom cat from the neighbouring farm who patrols a wide territory that includes my log pile and bird feeders.

On the other side of the hedge there was something much larger and noisier moving. A tractor with a muck-spreading trailer was going up the lane to the track that leads to the high meadows that had recently been mown. Once the manure had been spread it came down again to fill up and repeat the journey.

Farmers work hard. The tractor had been on the move since first light. Around 8 am I was standing by the back gate to my house when the tractor stopped and the driver opened the cab window. They didn’t say hello or good morning, or introduce themselves. They just said “is that your hedge, can you cut it back because I have to fold in my wing mirrors to get by”. I replied that I planned to cut the hedge back in the autumn to the line of the dry stone wall, and that it was trimmed back as far as it would go at the moment. I needed to bring someone in with more tools than I had to take it back further as it had grown out over the years.

The tractor driver then said “Can you take in that bulge in the wall as well”. That took me back a bit. Cutting a hedge that had incrementally encroached on the lane over time was one thing, but taking in a bulge on the wall that had probably been there since the wall was built at least a hundred and fifty years ago was something else. It would cost thousands of pounds. I could see the lane was a bit constricted at that point as not far from the bulge on my side of the lane there was a tree with a tree preservation order on it, which I knew from old photographs from the 1890s was large even then.

The tractor driver was friendly enough in their tone but the encounter left me unsettled. Firstly, was the lack of greeting and introduction. Secondly was the assumption that the lane needed to change to accommodate the huge tractor and that the changes should be done at my cost. 

Dales farmers can be notoriously abrupt in their speech. The James Herriot vet stories about the dales are full of descriptions of interactions that lacked pleasantries and small-talk. But thinking about it afterwards made me realise that the problem was not the width of the lane, bounded as it was by dry stone walls and an ancient tree, but the size of the enormous modern tractor. I completely appreciate the work that the farmers do and how hard it is to make a living, nonetheless the solution was simple enough. Use a smaller tractor.

Do you find it unsettling when people don’t go through the small-talk of greetings and introductions? And have you been a bit flabbergasted by someone confidently saying something is your fault when quite clearly the problem lies with them and not with you? 

Rowan on the Moor

A Moodscope member

Here's some more information about wood mice in case you're interested:

https://mammal.org.uk/british-mammals/wood-mouse