#pit holes

[torfalcon]

There are places that I’ve always meant to draw. Places that I’ve passed thousands of times but never actually stopped in. They are places on the way to somewhere else that always make me stare.  

This field with it’s poplar filled pit holes feels like an old friend. I used to pass it four times a day, taking my boys to, and from, the school bus. The pit holes were full of undergrowth then, creating huge balls of vegetation marooned in acres of arable crops. The undergrowth is gone, and some of the poplars too, but it’s still a place that grabs my attention.  

[torfalcon]

December, Pit Holes.

Pit holes once pocked the epidermis of Norfolk like a fatal dose of plague, modern agriculture though has reduced them to a mild case of acne. Dug over centuries for nutrient rich clay, to spread onto fields, the survivors stand testament to a more local past. They are deep dents in flat ground providing cover for outlawed flora and fauna. They add hight to glum acres of sugar beat, and interrupt the play of light on monotonous miles of wheat. They force bends in tram lines and mark distances.

It's ironic that abandoned sites of farm industry are now the only pinpricks of refuge for the natural world in arable Britain. Why not raise a glass with me, this Christmas, to the unshowy Norfolk pit hole. Long may they puncture modern monoculture, help raise our eyes to heaven and give succour to the unloved.