Country Life
BY IAN NIALL IN the trees across the road, a great many birds—rooks, jackdaws and pigeons—are feeding on acorns that are on the point of dropping. The leaves are falling steadily and covering the grass; leaves of ash, sycamore, oak and elm that flutter and twirl to the ground and pile damply on top of one another. It is hard to credit that only recently the hill and the field beyond the trees were both completely screened from sight. Out there the corn was cut and hens fed on the stubble. Now one can see the outline of things formerly curtained : the hedge running up the hill, an old hayrick, slumped beneath a tarpaulin, an abandoned cultivator or some such implement, the red roof of a barn. Soon the trees will have lost their leaves, but by then the old stubble will have gone, for day after day now the tractor takes the plough over a wider area with a following of swirling, crying gulls that greedily feed on worms. The sounds of farm- ing industry are perhaps not quite so urgent as they were a few weeks ago, but, while these milder November days continue and the land keeps dry, ploughing will occupy much of every man's time. All things in their season, country folk say. Farmers must plough now in case it is impossible in spring and save their tasks of lesser importance for odd days apparently sent for just such work.
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