Those People of Our Past & Us Detectorists of Their Future

Judy gets her first taste of stubble!

Our previous foray into our new fields took place back in June when a hay crop was cut - seemingly for our convenience! Of course, nothing is ever conveniently timed where farming and detecting is concerned and when we passed by just a week or two later the second crop of the year was growing abundantly and we could not resume our search there.

Finally, the arable crops were cut and we ventured out upon a new set of fields some distance away from the first. Here we saw that we had about ten acres at our disposal and half of that was permanent pasture which we'd save till wintertime. The arable land looked fairly unpromising to my eyes in that I could see very little in the way of obvious signs of past activity upon the surface. Just a few sherds of Victorian pottery scattered here and there, some fragments of clay roof tile too, but the soil not coloured by concentrated human activity or manuring.  Of course, that should not deter anyone from trying a field. We tried our best there for a couple of hours but the results were just as unpromising as the surface signs suggested they would be. Nevertheless, the dogs enjoyed it immensely and Judy had her first taste of stubble!

I noticed that even when she would put her full weight on the spade she had trouble penetrating the hard-baked surface and so I set to work making a garden border spade into a proper detecting tool. This is not a difficult task to accomplish with an angle grinder and a file and with across-the-counter prices for 'proper detecting tools' with the very same blade profile retailing at ridiculous prices, then DIY is, in my eyes, an essential economy. This wooden handled spade (and wood is best, I think!) cost just fourteen quid and half-an-hour spent cutting away excess steel then shaping, fettling and sharpening a new edge profile, transformed it into the best tool for the job. It was good quality from stock and I expect it to give many years service as it stands now. Over the counter, you might be asked to pay £45 for something similar that might well not... 

The next evening we chose to search for an hour or two in a field that my initial map research suggested might be promising. Fortunately, the stubble was that of barley and not nearly as punishing to work over as wheat stubble might be. For a beginner, I think wheat stubble might have proven too much of a deterrent, and even a seasoned pro might blanch at the thought unless wheat stubble is all that's available at the time. Judy managed it easily enough and she had plenty of signals to dig. Unfortunately, most of these were fragments of aluminium trash of which the field seemed to have far more than its fair share.

At last, she dug her first decent find - a half-penny of Edward VII and it looked to be in good condition too. Unfortunately, an hour later she'd lost it! She set off to find it again but I called her back from what would have been an utterly fruitless task in the half-light of dusk! And then I realised that I too had lost something - my high-power reading glasses, without which I cannot tell the difference these days between the half-pennies of Edward VII, George V or even Victoria... 

I've had people ask me how those people of our past managed to lose so many of their belongings for us detectorists of their future to find. 

I think that upon this evening we proved just exactly how that happens!