However much original work a book may describe, no writer can claim sole authorship. Many people have contributed to the effort which has produced this book.

   My cows have demonstrated with unerring judgement the herbs which are essential to healthy production and the soil has responded in a remarkable way to the deep roots and mineral-rich leaves of the herbs. These are the basic facts of the whole story.

   In bringing that story to book form, I have been specially grateful to my wife, for her patience and inspiration; to my secretary, Rae Thompson, for coping with every kind of task with never a thought of trade union hours; to Lucy Johnson for typing most of the manuscript; to John Newman for relieving me of the daily duties of herdsmanship and Lawrence D. Hills for many valuable suggestions and contributions in nursing the book into print. In the tiresome task of proof-reading the pen of my friend Peter D. Turner has saved me much toil.

   I am ever indebted to Richard de la Mare and his colleagues of Faber and Faber Ltd., for the encouragement and understanding without which no farmer, especially this one, could ever sustain the effort needed to record his experiences in book form.

April 1955

1	Why Herbal Leys
2	The Complete Diet for Cattle
3	Self-service Silage and Kale
4	The Cow for the Job
5	Self-feeding for the Soil
6	Natural Crop Nutrition
7	Using Weeds to Build Fertility
8	Getting the Best from the Grazing
9	Making the Ley with a Mower
10	Making a Ley with Sawdust Compost
11	Establishing and Breaking the Ley
12	The Struggle to Maintain Crop Yields Against the Defertilizing Effects of Chemical Soil Stimulants
13	Cost of Making and Returns from Grazing the Ley
14	Consult the Cow
15	Herbs as Soil Indicators
16	The Characters and Properties of Grasses
17	Herbal Ley Mixtures
18	Infertility in Cattle—a Warning
	Appendix One. Following Up Fertility Pastures
	Appendix Two. Suppliers of Organically Grown Seeds

 

1. Mowing a herbal ley ready for silage making facing
2. Buck-raking the mown pasture for silage
3. Commencing the silage heap
4. Compressing the silage heap
5. Self-service silage—vertical end clamp covered with chalk
6. Jersey yearlings thrive on silage heap
7. Strip-grazing the kale in field adjoining heap
8. Self-service silage
9. The short legs of an orthodox show winner
10. The longer legs of Polden Chocolate Cake
11. A silage heap with young kale in foreground
12. A close-up of the same heap
13. Pulling out silage
14. Vertical end of the self-service silage clamp
15. Tripod haymaking
16. Grazing in electrically-fenced paddocks
17. Waiting to be let into electrically-fenced paddocks
18. The Author's herd
19. Some of the herd crossing a topped-off paddock
20. Polden Golden Sunset
21. Three matrons of the Polden herd
22. Polden Haughty Hetty at the peak of lactation
23. Polden Haughty Hetty—her condition in the spring
24. Ribgrass or plantain
25. The same plant—ten days after being cut
26. Simple mixture of grasses and clovers
27. A fertility pasture ten days after mowing
28. American Sweet Clover
29. Yarrow in the herbal ley facing page
30. American Sweet Clover—close-up
31. Broad-leaved plantain
32. Yarrow, Chicory, Sheep's Parsley, Cocksfoot, H.1. Ryegrass, S100 White Clover, Late-flowering Red Clover
33. Kidney Vetch
34. Burnet
35. Cocksfoot
36. Lucerne and Timothy Grass
37. Herbal ley mixture
38. Close-up of a fertility pasture

Plates 1, 2 18, 19 24, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, and 35 are by Douglas Allen, Bridgewater; all other Photographs are by the Author. 

Next in importance to the Divine profusion of water, light and air—these three great physical facts which render existence possible—may be reckoned the universal beneficence of grass.

   Grass is the most widely distributed of all vegetable beings, and is at once the type of our life and the emblem of our mortality. Lying in the sunshine among the buttercups and dandelions of May, scarcely higher in intelligence than the minute tenants of that mimic wilderness, our earliest recollections are of grass; and when the fitful fever is ended and the foolish wrangle of the market and forum is closed, grass heals over the scar which our descent into the bosom of the earth has made, and the carpet of the infant becomes the blanket of the dead.

   Grass is the Forgiveness of Nature—her constant benefaction. Fields trampled with battle, saturated with blood, torn with the ruts of the cannon grow green again with grass and carnage is forgotten. Streets abandoned by traffic become grass-grown, like rural lanes, and are obliterated. Forests decay, harvests perish, flowers vanish, but grass is immortal. Beleaguered by the sullen hosts of winter, it withdraws into the impregnable fortress of its subterranean vitality, and emerges upon the first solicitation of the spring. Sown by the winds, by wandering birds, propagated by the subtle horticulture of the elements which are its ministers and servants, it softens the rude outline of the world. Its tenacious fibres hold the earth in its place and prevent its soluble components from washing into the wasting sea. It invades the solitude of the deserts, climbs the inaccessible slopes and forbidding pinnacles of mountains, modifies climates, and determines the history, character and destiny of nations.

   Unobtrusive and patient, it has immortal vigour and aggression. Banished from the thoroughfare and the field it bides its time to return and when vigilance is relaxed, or the dynasty has perished, it 'silently resumes the throne from which it has been expelled, but which it never abdicates. It bears no blazonry of bloom to charm the sense with, fragrance or splendour, but its homely hue is more enchanting than the lily or the rose. It yields no fruit in earth or air, and yet, should its harvest fail for a single year, famine would depopulate the world.

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