Eating Turf

I recently had a farmer friend of mine give me a tour around the rich arable lands of Martin Mere. Being an ignorant townie whose family abandoned the soil in 1920, I needed help identifying the various crops grown in the fields we passed. I suggested that one crop just looked like grass, akin to the pasture fields of Lancashire’s east than the black earth ‘salad bowl’ of Lancashire’s west. My friend grimaced and said it was indeed grass, or turf to be correct. Such is the hysteria for house building, that it is more rewarding for some farmers to grow turf for lawns than peas and cabbages for bellies.

Every new housing estate swallows up farmland, smothering it in concrete and brick, its agricultural output for ever lost. The time is coming when we shall have housing enough, but food insufficient. Then we might lament the day that the price of turf exceeded that of onions.

When observing a church for the first time, I am curious to look at the ratio of social/singing/Bible teaching. If the former much outweigh the latter, they’ll be sorry.