How Jethro Tull changed English farming and landscape. No, not the band.
Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
How Jethro Tull changed English farming and landscape. No, not the band.
The band did too.
Ian Anderson had (has?) a huge salmon farm processing business, and “[h]is hobbies include the growing of many varieties of hot chile peppers“.
Strip fields had to do something with the long plough-teams medieval farmers used. My professor told me some years ago that the curved form of these fields was explained by close observations of actual plowing practice (by Orwin and Orwin, The Open Fields, 1938).
I googled a bit and found this article, which explains the technical details. Surprisingly the article also points out the link between the strip fields and agrobiodiversity. The long plough-teams were needed because the draught animals were small. Later stronger breeds from the Low Countries were introduced and the strip fields became less necessary.
About the region where strip fields occur that are shown in the video this same article says this:
Does this means that the walled landscapes shown in the video are not medieval at all? On the other hand, the article shows a map of Taddington (very near Chelmorton, the area shown in the video) and says fields have the typical form. I don’t find the curves very pronounced, I must say.
Anyway, fascinating stuff and beautiful landscapes.
I showed this video to my class today. It is a split-level (seniors and graduate students) course entitled ‘Principles & Practices of Wildlife Conservation in Agricultural Landscapes.’ Thanks for posting. If there are more agriculture videos where you found this one, I would appreciate knowing about them.