Getting our oats

R and I went on what we call “The Railway Children” walk today.  It goes through the community orchard, along the river and then on a loop through some fields with a wonderful view of the railway in the distance.  The walk got its name because last year we saw a train and I waved at it (R does not do juvenile things like that), and today we saw another one and I waved at it again.

Anyway – I hadn’t been on this walk for nearly a year, and the last time must have been later in the year when the crops had been gathered in, so I never saw what was being grown.  This year it was waist high – and I did not recognize what it was.  Not wheat or barley anyway – so I guessed at rye.  I should be ashamed of myself being (sort of) a Scot and living right next to the Quaker factory.

This is in fact oats, which I believe Doctor Johnson said ““Oats: A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”   To which his assistant Boswell’s response was supposed to have been ““Aye, and that is why England is famous for its horses, and Scotland for its men.”  Boswell was of course a Scot himself.