he sun wasn’t shining, but we made hay anyway. I felt like a medieval peasant, surrounded by the sweet smell of sedge and mulching reed in the graceful, flat fields of the Woodbastwick Marshes, with no reminders of the modern world, just a pitchfork in my hand, picking up large piles of cut vegetation and heaving them onto neat haystacks at the edge of a ride through the fen. It was overcast, but warm and close, and the atmosphere combined with the physical exertion left me sticky and tired. Nonetheless, it was an enjoyable way to spend a Wednesday morning.
The Hoveton Great Broad Restoration Project team had come out to help the NNR staff with the task as the ground is too wet and unstable to use machinery. Much of the area is made of so-called ‘hover’, a mat of floating vegetation built up over many decades which is imperceptibly different to the rest of the landscape until you take a step onto it and the whole thing ripples like the surface of a water-bed. So old-fashioned elbow grease is the only way to go. But the combination of aching muscles and the sight of the cleared rides signalled our achievement, and the peculiar novelty of using a pitchfork to make haystacks was most pleasing. In the same way that historical re-enactment or visiting National Trust places gives you a feeling of connection to your ancestors, we were carrying on an ancient tradition of fen management, reconnecting with both the labourers and the land of this place. Only, unlike our forebears, we were intentionally doing this for the benefit of wildlife, our actions influencing and shaping what the place would look like next year.
By cutting back strips of vegetation and then removing those cuttings, not only do you create a heterogeneous landscape with clear, sheltered areas perfect for a wide range of plants, but you also remove nutrients from those strips. As the reeds and sedges grow over the summer they accumulate nutrients from the soil, water and air and store them. If these were left in-situ when they die, they would break down and release those nutrients back into the soil. By removing them, you are effectively sapping the soil of nutrients. This is an important practice as many wildflower species, such as the southern marsh-orchid, have adapted to live specifically in nutrient poor environments, and it prevents any one species becoming too dominant. Whilst it may seem counter-intuitive, nutrient enrichment can lead to the wholesale destruction of certain habitats. This is what has happened in Hoveton Great Broad itself, where the addition of nutrients from agricultural fertiliser and sewage has led to the dominance of algae in the water, to the detriment of all other plant life.
Speaking of the Broad, today it has been trying to truly convince me that summer is on its way out. It rained all morning, somehow creating an eerie stillness and quiet throughout the woods despite the constant movement of leaves twitching under the attack of tiny raindrops, and the percussive rhythms that accompanied it. Seeing the trail in the rain is not something I have experienced often, as Norfolk is reportedly the driest county in the UK, and I am only here over the summer. But the changing character of the place in different weather is remarkable. I feel privileged to be able to come here week after week and see it in all its different permutations, from the freshness of spring through the flush of summer and now into the faltering of autumn. The guelder rose and brambles are laden with berries, the former scarlet, and the latter deep blue-black. The reeds, only a few weeks ago sporting beautiful burgundy flowers are now beginning to go over, leaving the skeletons of their stalks in yellowy thickets. And the common darter has faded from bright, burnt-orange to a sad, stoic grey, showing its age as the year continues to tick over.