Kate Downie
Fieldnotes by Kate Downie

In this locality of big fast tractors, mathematically ploughed fields yielding fast-growing crops, this corner of an old farm close by my village plays against the modern rules of production. Perhaps more by default than design, it is like the field equivalent of a half-forgotten cupboard in an old house; with its accumulations and layered clues to its many past lives, it can overwhelm and fascinate by equal measure.
Edged with castle ruins, abandoned quarries and an overgrowth of trees, it is a quiet crop of whatever wishes to grow, freely crisscrossed by wild birds, deer, hares, badgers and squirrels to delight the still watcher. In these very edges lie half-buried accumulations of cast-off farm equipment and broken animal shelters, marking the passage of folk, of work, and of place. It’s a space where the natural and the human intermingle. Weather and season play beautifully across this tucked away corner, and each time I walk this way it takes on a fresh mantle of new colours.

"I believe in empty spaces; they are the most wonderful thing." Anselm Kiefer