Lawn Order

There is an odd thing going on with our land. It is a farm. It was always meant to be a farm. It was not meant to be a neat and tidy piece of manicured parkland. But, somehow because of the pigs, it does indeed seem to be turning out that way.

Our pigs love to eat grass. Unfortunately, our pigs also like to dig up grass and snuffle around in the rootage with their shovelly snouts, until their allotted patch of garden very quickly comes to resemble a mud-swamped building site. For this reason we have arrived at a slightly bizarre solution that gives the pigs lots of grass to eat, whilst preventing them from destroying the whole landscape.

We mow.

Now I don’t mean the proper farmer type mowing that takes place with tractors and toppers and such like – although Simon does his fair share of that too. I mean the sort of mowing that normally occurs in any reasonably-sized back garden of a suburban semi, on a sunny Sunday afternoon, just before the grand prix starts on TV.

It all began when we happened to mow the bit of grass next to the pig pen, and just thought we’d chuck the clippings in to them, rather than plonk them in a pile in some corner or other. The pigs were absolutely delighted with their home-delivered take-away meal, and requested another one the next day. And as they kept eating, so we kept mowing – ever further and further away from the patch of grass next to the pig pen. We didn’t think much about it until one day a visiting friend told her husband to “be careful not to drive on the lawn” when he was manoeuvring his car in the yard. Simon and I looked at each other questioningly. “Lawn….? That’s not a lawn. It’s just a bit of grass that we happen to have cut.”

But we ‘happen to have cut’ quite a lot of grass this summer, using the ordinary garden mower, and as the grass growth slowed during the hottest parts of the year, and the pigs’ squeally demands for more food persisted, the area that was getting cut gradually expanded, and ‘lawns’ began to appear left, right and centre.

And it has to be said, creating a lawn where no lawn has gone before is a very satisfying and zen thing to do. Which is exactly what Mike (one of our summer wedding-trip farm sitters) discovered during his stay here in early August. When we returned, he proudly introduced us to the lovely lawn that he had painstakingly brought into existence on the other side of the stream, across the new bridge. And when he left, he made us promise to keep it neatly mown and in good order.

To prove that we have done as we promised, and to give Mike a chance to glow in the glorious and everlasting green aftermath of the creation that is named in his honour, here are some pictures of The Cundell Lawn, as it looks today…