Breaking fresh ground

As he toils behind his rotavator on a March morning, John Lewis-Stempel breathes in the heady scent of turned soil and is cheered by the repetitive call of the chiffchaff that heralds the arrival of spring Illustration by Michael Frith

- John Lewis-Stempel

ONLY a man rotavating. To the front of the machine, through the cobwebby mist, the bare ground around the troughs and racks where the sheep stood eating in the bleak days on the hill; behind the spinning steel blades churned earth, for re-sowing. One view is winter, one is spring. The rotavator hits a subterranean rock, pitches and rolls; the operator, although grip- ping the ox-horn handlebars tight, stumbles among the waves of red earth. A drunken sailor. The engine whines as it works; it is as deafening as conches. Yet, if the rotavator is modern, the tilling of soil is ancient, dating back to time almost beyond measure, when fur-clad humans scraped at the ground with a deer horn. The means change, the practice remains the same.