Woodlands Farm

The sky greys and opens as rain begins to fall. A warm wet scent rises from the soil. After a few minutes, the horizon disappears.

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Whenever it rains, sleets, hails or snows here, we are reminded that water constantly threatens to reclaim this place for water, for sea.

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We are here on the fens because the soil is rich; the soil is rich because of deposits from water, and because generations of people have drained and looked after the land. We may only keep this rich land by draining it, nurturing and guarding it, pumping the water from it.

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Dykes, channels, eaus and washes criss-cross the fenland, the water in them staid or flowing, depending on local topography, season, last night's weather. From far away the straight lines of drainage look like soft pencil and brushed ink strokes but this is deep drawing and serious geometry.

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Just as ditches and eaus are lines graved into the surface of the fen, so roads, hedges and fences are lines raised above it. Man-made, too, these lines are keepers of the fenscape, guardians of access and shelter. They provide corridors, boundaries, barriers.

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Hedges keep soil in, they stop the wind scooping it away. And they enclose warmth. These living lines above the surface are ways of containing land and heat, crops and animals. They hold in place the reasons we are here.

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So: ditches drain what we have made of the fen, hedges contain it. All work on this reclaimed land is tending and tender, a promise in the face of advancing water, a pledge to continue. It is, in fact, love.

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