What a night. I’ve just got home from the Nags Head, Peterchurch, having attended the Eskleyside Agricultural Society’s annual silage competition. The Nags is one of the great social spots in the Golden valley. Here you can meet potato growers, social workers, sheep farmers, stranded pilgrims, water diviners and Thomas the cat. I’ve witnessed carol singing and dancing on tables, and the fire only goes out for two weeks each year, in the height of summer.
Tonight the focus is silage. Grass, maize and cereal crops, harvested last summer, have been under wraps ever since in the local barns. Starved of oxygen, they have been steadily “pickling”, to ensure they’re packed with nutrients when fed to hungry cattle and sheep.
