Earthman @Snohrap

Across Britain right now, farmers are shearing their sheep, bagging up the wool, and burning it. Some bury it. Some leave it to rot in a corner of the field. The wool-burning has made the odd headline as a protest, but the truth is duller and sadder. The fleece is worth less than the diesel it would take to haul it to the depot. The numbers are grim. In recent years a kilo of British wool has fetched somewhere between twenty and sixty pence, and hill breeds like Swaledale and Welsh Mountain sank as low as ten. A whole fleece off a mountain ewe might bring thirty pence. Shearing that same ewe costs the farmer around two pounds. One Lincolnshire farmer added it up out loud: over three pounds to shear and cart a single fleece to the depot, and twenty-six pence back. So she burns them. A great many do. Here is the part that stings. The shearing still has to happen, every year, whatever the wool will fetch. A sheep left in full fleece overheats, struggles to move, and gets eaten alive by maggots. So the job carries on purely as welfare, a cost the farmer simply eats to spare the animal, with the wool itself going on the fire straight after. And think about what this fibre once was. For centuries wool was the engine of the English economy, the country's greatest export and the crown's main source of tax. It raised the soaring wool churches of the Cotswolds. It turned merchants into princes. To this day, whoever presides over the House of Lords sits on the Woolsack, a literal cushion of wool, put there in the fourteenth century so nobody would forget where the nation's wealth began. Prices have lifted off the floor this past year, the first real relief in a long while. It still does not cover the shears for a hill farmer. The fibre that built England now smoulders in a heap behind the barn, and almost nobody notices the smoke.

Eilean Donan Castle

Midsummer morning in an Oxfordshire field

Great Coxwell barn in Oxfordshire was built in 1292. Dendrochronology has shown that some of its timbers were felled in 1256, whilst the majority were felled in the winter of 1291. It was part of a Cistercian abbey founded by King John. I forgot all that when I first saw inside - jaw dropping..

A portrait of American author Harper Lee, was taken in 1960 by her close friend, author Truman Capote.... "She was a 30-year-old airline clerk living in a tiny New York apartment. Then two friends gave her a year of their savings and one condition: spend it writing. She wrote a novel about a small Alabama town. It sold 40 million copies. Then she went home and never looked back." On Christmas morning 1956, a struggling writer named Nelle Harper Lee opened an envelope from her two closest friends, Michael and Joy Brown. Inside was a note and a year's worth of their family savings. The condition: she must quit her job and spend the entire year writing. Harper had been working as an airline ticket agent, too exhausted to pursue her craft. She accepted the gift, moved into a tiny Manhattan apartment, and began filling yellow legal pads with longhand prose. She was working on a novel set in a fictional Alabama town called Maycomb, about a small‑town lawyer defending a Black man falsely accused of rape. Her agent and editor saw promise but told her to scrap the draft and start over from the perspective of a young girl. For two and a half years, she rewrote the book as a first‑person childhood memory. On July 11, 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird was published. Within months, it became a phenomenon, winning the Pulitzer Prize, selling over 40 million copies, and being translated into 40 languages. The 1962 film starring Gregory Peck became an American classic. Harper Lee was 34 years old and the most famous writer in the country. But she had already decided something the world didn't yet understand: she was not interested in fame. She had grown up in Monroeville, Alabama, the daughter of a lawyer, and the childhood friend of a frail boy named Truman Capote. When Capote asked her to help him report the murder of a Kansas farm family, she went—and won the trust of the small town that would become the source of In Cold Blood. Capote's book became a landmark, but he barely acknowledged her contribution. Harper Lee did not complain. She had already chosen a different path. She gave only a handful of interviews and accepted no public honors that required her to appear. She returned to Monroeville, moved in with her older sister Alice, and lived quietly for the next 56 years. She never published another novel during her lifetime. A second manuscript, Go Set a Watchman, appeared controversially in 2015, but by then she was elderly and frail. The world debated whether she truly consented. Harper Lee issued a brief statement: "I'm alive and kicking and happy as hell." Then she died peacefully in her sleep on February 19, 2016, at age 89. She was buried in Monroeville's Hillcrest Cemetery, beside her parents and her sister. Her tombstone bears only her name and dates—no mention of the book that changed the world. That was her final act of defiance. She had used her words to create a monument to justice, then used her silence to protect her own small world. Harper Lee's life is a lesson in the power of a single gift. Two friends gave her a year, and she gave us Atticus Finch. She could have chased fame, written sequels, lectured at universities. Instead, she went home, grew old, and died in the same town where she had once played with Truman Capote in the dirt yards of Monroeville. She understood that the greatest courage is not only writing the truth, but living it quietly. As she once said: "I would like to leave some record of the kind of life that existed in a very small world." She did. And then she returned to that world, proving that the most extraordinary legacy is not a famous name, but a life of quiet integrity. Share this if you believe that sometimes the greatest gift is not a check—it is permission to stop being busy and start being meaningful. © Reddit #archaeohistories

An update and a message from Jeremy. “Thank you so much for all the kind messages I've had but now, an announcement.”

@karenfthompson Take your man to the bull of the woods in Bungay on Friday excellent beer and happy bikers 🙃

@SamaHoole We just got used to it

@karenfthompson Good luck with tomorrow x

@karenfthompson One door closes another one opens it’s just having the courage to close the door. Well done you won’t regret this xx

SO TRUE.

A “Rohtak dome” is a brick dome ceiling, with self supporting geometry built without steel or beams . Originating from the villages of Rohtak in Haryana, India Wait for the results… 📹 rohtak_domes_

When an engineer designs a scarecrow.

#BobFlowerdew on… CHIA SEEDS :-) Best wishes Bob bobflowerdew.com

Breaking News:- Historians have discovered the grave of what they believe to be the UK’s oldest ever living man in Yorkshire. He was 193 and his name was Miles from London.

@countrymousie I’m waiting till the end of June before peening my scythe

@karenfthompson Looks like you guys are having a good time. Enjoy. X

#BobFlowerdew on… BEEF STEAK TOMATOES :-) Best wishes Bob bobflowerdew.com

“Barnaby bright, Barnaby bright; Longest day and shortest night” St. Barnabas’ Day, 11 June, coincides with the summer solstice in the Old Style calendar. St. Barnabas is a saint invoked to bring peace. His flower is the ‘Midsummer Daisy’, the ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare)

Une des meilleures vidéos que j'ai vu sur internet 🥹🤩🤩🤩🥰