Turning cartwheels back to long-lost harvests

Little Gransden, Cambridgeshire The iron wheels spoke of long-ago summers and children cadging rides on a hay cart

Hidden from sight of the neat farmhouse with its whitewashed walls, sash windows and trim thatched roof, the farmer's thought processes and plans seemed laid bare. Screened by a brick barn there was an open-air repository of the "has been, could be, will be, and can't-bear-to-part-withs".

What the rest of us might store in private was open to view here from the public footpath that ran alongside, with only a waist-high fence separating me from an eclectic assortment of stuff.