Autumn: season of sales, scents and sport

In the countryside, however, each farming type has its autumnal high, though, as we become more specialist, these moments lose their importance. But tradition dies slowly.

In our Northern uplands the gimmer lamb sales are the most important part of the harvest of the hills, followed by the gimmer and suckled calf sales. They represent a year's concentrated investment in time, energy and TLC crammed, because of the very nature of the business, into just six or eight autumn weeks.

If the buyers from the East and South either fail to come or arrive with a thin cheque book, the prospects are poor for the coming year. Mart directors will have made their PR visits to the Bicester sale where the gimmer lambs of last year from the North come back under the hammer on offer to Southern flockmasters and from these values the fortunes of the men in the hills are decided.

The smell of a mart on a moist September morning, a mixture of damp sheep and men and the odd whiff of baccy, is one to savour.

Down in the Vale or up on the Wolds, little spring corn is now grown and stubbles are turned in as soon as the straw has gone. I'm a romantic and, although now I have nothing to do with arable farming, autumn is about ploughing, partridges, grazing geese and hounds being exercised and eventually going cubbing.

Last night I watched a six-furrow reversible plough eating up the stubble and couldn't help but think how little this ancient process has changed in centuries. The Saxons used oxen, and occasionally men, to pull their wooden, pointed beam ploughs to break up the surface then, in the seventeenth century, metal ploughs were introduced, with a mould board to turn the soil over and bury the trash on the surface. Since then, little has changed except that the power and technology have added size and speed.

The plough of old worked in only one direction and the art of "splitting a good ridge" was much prized and became the basis of the ploughing competition. September and October are the time when ploughmen still gather in competition around the countryside and, if you go, you will see horses, or tractors of 50 or 60 years of age, all working beside the monsters of today hauling their huge reversible units. It is comforting to realise that the aim of the game remains the same as it did 250 years ago. The finished piece must be level, with no wisps of grass or stubble to be seen.

Once more the smell of a ploughing match triggers memories with soil, gas oil and horse muck mingling on a fine autumnal day.

Which brings me to sport, because of scent, that mystery of nature so powerful in autumn and such an integral part of shooting and hunting. I don't shoot, but to see a covey of fine brown English partridges in full spate across a stubble heading at a hedge, behind which are the guns, is truly a sight to enjoy. I often wonder if the grouse, during its season in August, is really more challenging. It is, however, sad that our native brown game bird has been largely replaced by the French impostor which is prepared to live in many different locations to be reared in multitudes.

In the hunt kennels the puppy show is over; the new entry has returned from a year among children, cats and farm animals to start its education learning the art and craft of single species hunting from its peers.

The new entry goes out on exercise at first with the hunt staff, mounted on bikes, up the lanes and roads, but in these days of dimishing country ways the hardening of pads has to be increasingly confined to byways where few vehicles go. What a great sight to see a couple of men on bikes, often with a few children on ponies, out and enjoying the company of 20 couple of hounds.

Then it's out on to the stubbles and into the covers to check out the vulpine population. November and hunting proper. Will it ever really stop?

Much of our rural tradition is gradually being eroded, but there are moves afoot to try, in a practical and meaningful way, to create an archive of the reality of agriculture, sport, community and the uniqueness of the British country.

At Masham next Friday and Saturday, September 24 and 25, the annual sheep fair recreates and celebrates what was, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the largest sheep sale in Britain. At its peak, 50,000 sheep were sold in one sale. In those days the roads were full of animals being brought into the area. For weeks before, and still today, the narrow fields adjacent to many roads around the town are relics of that past, showing us where the animals were held in the build-up.

Bert Verity, now a sprightly 93 years, was born in Masham and remembers well the column of sheep stretching from the mart to the station and the train that needed two locomotives to move it away fully loaded.

It is said that, until the Fifties, you could walk from Kendal to the Midlands and never leave a farm with Masham cross ewes on it.

Memory is a fine thing and it is recording such things as this that we are keen to do. It is only recently that anyone in Masham knew that the Queen Mother and her husband, the then Prince of Wales, honeymooned for a couple of days in the area. How do we know? Bert presented Her Majesty with a bouquet. In the Sixties, he reminded her of their first meeting when he won at Smithfield Show in London.

As autumn gives way to winter the countryside quietens but, although the holidaymakers are gone, the modern phenomenon of the commuter carries on. The roads are still busy and not everyone approves of the winter way of life of many of the residents. Hunts will hunt, shooters will shoot and in halls, pubs, cottages and mansions folk will gather to celebrate their luck at being at one with their surroundings. As farmers, we will be preparing for next autumn and another harvest, good or bad.

Let's hope this cycle will continue without interference for many more years to come.