A farewell to a “Mast” year -a nod to medieval England. So goodbye to one of the hottest years in two centuries. Among the many comments on all sorts of media you may have seen those which referred to 2025 being a “mast” year. This is one of those occasions when a rare medieval expression surfaces briefly and then vanishes for another decade or two. Mast probably comes from ancient German meaning meat but it's not certain. It is well known among the animal husbandry community as a year in which there is a superabundance of, in particular, beech nuts but also acorns. This was a source of celebration in the days before the Enclosure acts (which effectively stopped the medieval system of strip farming and enclosed land with hedges and fences, thereby changing the land forever)) Back then most rural families had at least one pig and the ancient practice of pannage existed, allowing domestic pigs to graze in woodland, which was generally seen as common land, and eat the mast. It still exists in places, for example the New Forest. Pigs love this source of food and get very fat very quickly, which is good news for all concerned (except the pigs as it hastened their demise!). It is interesting that I have seen articles this year stressing that cattle and sheep should be kept away from abundant acorns and beech nuts because if they eat too many they become ill. Omnivores including pigs and us, have relatively short intestines because a lot of the food we eat is rich in fat and protein so we can quickly extract all the goodness we need from the easily digestible material with no need to keep it fermenting inside us. However, ruminants such as sheep and cattle have evolved to live entirely on herbage that is low in protein and fat. To get enough energy from this unpromising material these animals have more than one stomach and after initial chewing and digestion the fibrous remains sit in a second stomach for quite a while while they are broken down (fermented) by bacteria. The name for this wodge of bubbling ferment is “cud” in old English, hence chewing the cud is when cattle in particular regurgitate (sick up) the cud and then chew it. So there, be thankful you are not a ruminant. If acorns in particular are eaten and kept in the second stomach for any length of time they release chemicals called Tannins, chemicals that are used to tan animal hides and also oak barrels that are used to store spirits which picks up the Tannins to give them their typical taste. However if large quantities of Tannins build up in the gut they can cause problems. So why was it a mast year? Some suggest that the trees had a “strategy” to overproduce nuts in order to prevent all of them being eaten by squirrels, jays etc. To me this is humanizing trees too much. For a start both of these animals are vital to oaks and beech because they bury the nuts in the ground for the winter but then never find them all so many germinate and produce new trees. Secondly the trees have no control over how many nuts form. They produce massive amounts of female flowers (no petals so there is nothing to see) and trillions of wind distributed pollen grains. The wind has to be just right when these two need to get together. So the real reason was the wonderful (from a wind pollinated tree’s point of view) spring. It was warm and dry with gentle wind at just the right time, so at night the warm air was full of pollen drifting about and not being washed away by rain. Damp springs mean the pollen clumps and falls to the ground more easily. So the female flowers were pollinated and then the weather was great for established trees; they had enough water from the wet winter and the drought only started to slow down growth from late July onwards. By then there were lots of plump nuts, benefiting from the late warmth to mature. On the Curry Woods Conservation Trust land our recently planted oaks are too young to produce acorns but they do in Yeomans Copse and the mature woodland. Many thanks go to Cyril and Guy who spent a lot of time and sweat cutting the grassland on the land in the autumn and also cleared brambles and scrub from around the trees in Yeomans Copse. |We have now to remove dead ash from the copse and plant a wider range of trees and shrubs. Now that the Nature Recovery Strategy for Somerset has been published by Somerset County Council, (Somerset.gov.uk/citizens space) please have a look at it. A lot of work has been done and the maps are very comprehensive and informative. The woodland on the ridge where the CWCT is situated is part of the area given the highest grading for biodiversity. So as well as helping prevent flooding and capturing increasing amounts of carbon year on year it is also an area of the highest value for biodiversity. Curry Rivel is blessed with some of the National Nature Reserve land on the moor below the ridge, the woodland along the ridge and also the biodiversity at Home Farm, farmed by the Langs with biodiversity in mind for many years. This doesn't mean the job is done of course, these areas will always face threats from pollution, urbanization and unsympathetic land use. By buying land and following best practice we hope to build on our initial work for generations to come. Please visit the Trust land and if you can help us to expand our work, either by advice you can give us or by donating time, effort or money, please do not hesitate to contact me
