Church Farm (1) – Landscape, drainage & a giant frog !

With a rare glimpse of the sun and a fresh feel to the air, on my day off from work on Wednesday 13^th January, I wandered along to the Church Farm fields. There is a lot to comment on, so for ease of reading I will split the writing into two posts.

The first thing I spotted entering the field, was ……a  giant plastic frog; discarded in the field, seemingly  half squashed by a passing tractor. So that’s a rubber snake and a plastic frog seen in the last few days. It’s never dull wildlife spotting in an urban area !

The giant frog, left all alone ;-(.

Like in the film 'Toy Story' this child's plaything has ceased to be of use and thrown away, no longer cared for. Well not any more, as I've taken it home, to clean it up and will use it to promote caring for real live frogs and toads. Waste not, want not !

Back to Church Farm. This area is situated on the current eastern boundary of the town and if the developers get their way will be a sparkling new housing estate, with 300 + homes in a few years.

The proposed development site edged in red

Walking around the site the first thing that you notice is that it is a vast open ploughed field, covering 70% of the 22 hectare site and to be honest it’s pleasant to view, from a landscape perspective. I stood wondering why it was that I liked what I saw. 

Looking east from the West Rhoden stream

The view towards the existing eastern edge of town (Dimmock Close)

Firstly, I suppose it’s because it’s increasingly rare nowadays to see open ploughed fields during the winter time, for most fields are planted with new crops, such as winter wheat,  during the autumn. There is only one other place in my blog area where the fields are extensively ploughed and that is in the northwest segment of the tetrad, west of the Maidstone Road, as you leave the town heading towards The Paddock Wood Garden Centre. So seeing something different is part in the appeal.

But I think it’s deeper than this, perhaps as a species we are ‘hot-wired’ to gravitate to wide open vistas. Homo Sapiens were born into the world 1.5 million years ago, at a time when the planet’s climate was becoming drier, the equatorial forest receding and the vast African grassland Savannah was our hunting ground. So perhaps it’s deep within our psyche to feel at home in a large open landscape?

Scanning the ploughed field through my binoculars I spotted a small flock of around a dozen lapwings in the middle of the field, patrolling the furrows & looking for food, in the form of small invertebrates; earthworms, leather jackets, wire worms  etc. 

Peewits enjoying the sun :-)

Always nervous and ‘flighty’ they took to the sky en masse and provide me with a wonderful aerial display for about 2-3 minutes, before descending onto another part of the field. In the sky they rose and tumbled, freewheeling to the point of seemingly about to stall in mid-air, as they fought to control their large ‘flappy’ wings. When I was growing up, lapwings were known  as ‘peewits’ , mimicking the sound of their excitable calls when in the air. They were always a joy to watch and there were many more of them to see back in the 1970's.

As little as seven or eight years ago, during the winter time there was a flock of around 150 -200 peewits which could regularly be seen above the skies north of the town and in the fields alongside the East Peckham bypass, just north of the River Medway. But they are no more, for this area is now partially flooded in winter, so the small flock on the Church Farm fields was good to see.

The last 10 days has been a period of frequent rainfall  and like much of Paddock Wood the field was very wet and in places waterlogged, with surface water in the low lying northern end of the field, near to the railway line. To be honest this is normal for the field, where the low lying areas, close to the railway line, retain surface water for long periods, after prolonged or intense rainfall. Not surprisingly this part of the field also lies in the flood zone area of the town.

Fluvial flood zone areas around the town.

Looking south east from the footpath behind the houses in Dimmock Close.

Not river water ( as per the flood map above), but just normal surface water in winter.

The West Rhoden stream / ditch follows a path across the middle of the field. It starts life by flowing into the site from the Church Road, next to the western boundary of the Paddock Wood cemetery. The waters which flow into the stream come mainly from the surface water drainage systems in the Green Lane & Warrington Road area of the town.

When I visited, the water was initially reasonable clear close to the Church Road boundary and I could see clumps of water starwort floating in the water, plus emergent vegetation growing on the bed of the stream.

Clean water

By the time I had walked about 100 metres downstream  it appeared to have picked up a heavy load of silt, draining off from the ploughed fields. This silt load continued to increase the further downstream I walked. 

Examples of  silt draining into the stream

There is a pond, near to Church Farm itself, into which the West Rhoden stream flows. This pond is extremely silted up, so I guess the silt has been flowing into the pond for many years now. 

Heavily silted pond

The banks of the stream / ditch increase in depth, as it flows across the field in a general south - north direction, such that near the railway line the banks are quite deep, as this photo shows.

Rivers deep, mountains high !

The West Rhoden stream eventually exits the Church Farm site under the railway line and comes out next to the western boundary of the town’s sewage farm and then continues alongside the Transfesa industrial complex and under the Lucks Lane road, before traversing more agricultural land and eventually reaching the River Medway.

For centuries agricultural fields in England have been left bare in the winter time. Initially the stubble from the previous year’s crops was left in the ground, until it could be plough back into the soil, often during mid – late winter. With increased mechanization this job has become easier and quicker & so ploughing occurs in the autumn, leaving the soil totally exposed to the elements, as has happened in Church Farm this winter. But as my own visit has revealed, heavy rain and field drainage pipes results in the top soil, its nutrients and pesticides, literally going down the drain, to pollute & clog up drains, streams & rivers far down stream.

The Church Farm ploughed field  is due to disappear in a few years, buried under the concrete of new development, but maybe at a time when our climate appears to be in flux and milder, but far wetter winters are predicted to be the norm in the years to come & flooding is a far greater problem, then perhaps we will see far less bare fields in the countryside as a whole and not just around Paddock Wood. 

The next post will concentrate upon the East Rhoden stream and provide more information on wildlife sightings for the whole field.