The Oak Tree fell at night and for some hours no one was aware of its passing. For nearly 120 years, it had stood at the gate of the big field, its crown a landmark for miles around. For most of those years, a stream had meandered past its side, and a smaller companion, a walnut, had yielded an annual harvest.

Drought slowly swallowed the stream, and with the next cycle of drought, we watched the walnut die. Then came the Summer storms and with it, a bolt of lightning that ripped open a gash right down the Oak Tree trunk. Still the great tree found strength to survive.

All too soon drought came again. The Spring leaves were listless, almost grey. Then quietly, succumbing to nature, the giant lifted its shrivelled roots into the night, and cracked the huge branches as they buried their weight into the hard earth.

No one spoke much about it and for weeks we avoided the death scene. Thoughts went down the long years that it had been “the oak”, ours, a friend, joy to many. We had dreamed beside it, picnicked there, passing by daily always with a subconscious pleasure in its presence. We remembered the beauty of the tree. Majestic beyond belief in Winter; the joy of catkins and bees in Spring; and oh, the magic, magic, of full moon in Summer when the ducks circled silent on a silver dam and the glorious crown of trees curved black against the moon-pale sky.

We visited that field some time later to find nature had lavished yet another blessing – there was a slender Oak leaping vigorously to the sky. Young, less demanding than the old giant, it must have been a seedling struggling in the shadows, and given its chance it throve in the sun. We could but pray that it would give to others the joy that we knew.

DAPHNE JOY HARRISON (1921 – 2008) “The Gift” was written some time after Daphne Joy left the farm in 1990, but only surfaced after her death. She only returned once to the farm in 1997 to scatter the ashes of her husband – hence the reference to the slender young oak tree growing in it’s place. She lived at Oakfield Farm from 1953 to 1988 and planted many of the lovely trees.