No harm for Mayo people to learn the old ways

COUNTRYFILE

I often think of long winters endured on the hills of south-west England, where I spent my younger days.

February 15, 1978, is etched firmly in my mind. The winter had been fairly normal - plenty of cold rain with intermittent snow showers.

A high-pressure area crept in from the east to meet warm, moist air moving up from the south. About mid-morning snow began to fall. A bitter wind swept in unannounced and blizzard conditions developed.

The greatest level snow depth was about 85 centimetres - just shy of three feet. The deepest snowdrifts recorded were about 25 feet deep. The weight of frozen snow brought down powerlines.

Roads were impassable. Sheep farmers lost entire flocks, which had gathered to find shelter and suffocated under drifts.

We were snowed in for a full six weeks. Emergency supplies were brought by helicopter, to a location three miles distant.

Blizzard conditions had filled roads with snow to a depth of several feet so we were able to walk right over the tops of the hedgerows on our weekly walk for provisions. Everywhere and everything was such a bright, brilliant white it became hard to see.

Wildlife suffered greatly. While foxes and badgers did reasonably well on a diet of dead sheep, that year we lost our barn owl pair to a combination of cold and hunger.

In the hay barn I found 13 wrens crammed together in a niche between bales, each one of them frozen solid.

Pheasant, woodcock and snipe came right into the farmyard to feed alongside the cows. With their diet restricted to frozen grass and ivy, the local red deer starved and their numbers were greatly reduced.

Streams froze solid and ceased to flow for weeks on end, destroying most of that which lived within.

Obtaining water for dairy cattle was a big problem. All the farms on the moor were in a similar situation, throwing milk away every day, struggling to get through.

Eventually (and gradually) the thaw arrived. As if by a miracle, April brought birdsong and wild flowers. Within a few weeks things were normal again.

That was the longest winter that I ever experienced, though I don’t doubt for a moment there have been far, far worse.

Of course, the fact we were unprepared for it didn’t help. There were no weather warnings then, not as we have them today.

Now it seems the mere prospect of a cloud appearing on the horizon merits a place on the charts, and is the signal for everyone to panic-purchase bread and toilet roll.

There has recently been talk in the media about what would happen if the Gulf Stream were to collapse, which according to some is a real possibility.

Some say such a thing could happen quickly and without proper warning, plunging western Europe into near Arctic conditions for long months at a time.

In countries where cold conditions are the norm, salting, pickling and otherwise preserving food is the norm.

Here we could scarcely imagine such horror.

With the future never as uncertain, we could do worse than to learn the old ways.