There are pigs, sheep and goats here. Some are ancient varieties, more popular 1,400 years ago than they are today. Like a shaggy-haired pig described my guide, John Sadler, as “half a ton of very grumpy animal … only interested if you feed it, or if you fall in — in which case you are food.”
That’s from a podcast I follow, The World in Words, which is about languages, not agricultural biodiversity. This particular episode was part of a series about places which have been important in the evolution of the English language, and focuses on Jarrow in northern England, haunt of the Venerable Bede.
“He’s the first person to actually write down who it was that actually came to the British Isles,” says linguist David Crystal, co-author with Hilary Crystal of Wordsmiths and Warriors. “He talks about the Angles and the Saxons and the Jutes, and discusses the range of languages that were spoken around the country.”
The grumpy pig and other animals “are part of a re-creation of an Anglo-Saxon village, with timber-framed buildings and turf-covered sheds. The farm is called Gyrwe, Old English for Jarrow. It’s part of a museum called Bedesworld.”
Its website has a little bit on the livestock you can see there, but I couldn’t find anything on any crops that might be part of the experience, which is a pity. I hadn’t thought much about this before, but such open-air museums focusing on the history of farming could be useful ways of communicating the importance of conserving agricultural biodiversity, and indeed even doing some conservation. There are many of them, in the US, in Europe (see also) and elsewhere. And there are some journals that cater to them.
Does anyone out there know of examples of farming museums such as Bede’s World doing serious conservation of crop diversity?