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| Crop Circles
Archive 2000 |
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 Crop Circles news, views, gallery and archive brought to you by Weird Wiltshire Introduction Latest News News Archive Community Hoaxing Opinion Forum Gallery 2003 Gallery Calendar Postcards Wallpaper Circle Designs Milk Hill Alton Barnes Barge Inn Signs Movie Links  |
First published on July 20, 2000 FARMERS are claiming hoaxers cause thousands of pounds worth of damage by making crop circles and encouraging people to walk across fields and trample the crops. Some who farm in the Marlborough and Devizes areas who have had formations regularly in their growing crops, said they all are a hoax. They are now appealing to whoever is responsible to stop. David Sheppard, who farms at Cannings Hill, near Devizes, where crop patterns have appeared regularly in the last few years, is baffled on how they are made, but is convinced they are all a hoax. Mr Sheppard said he has lost crops worth hundreds of pounds, trampled underfoot by people who swarm to see the crop formations. "It was not so bad a few years ago when corn prices were good, but it's not so funny now that corn is only half the price it was," he said. Avebury farmer Robin Butler, who has two huge circles in his fields behind the Wagon and Horses public house at Beckhampton, found broken bootlaces in one formation which he believes came from whoever helped make it. Mr Butler said: "These people who make the crop patterns think they have a God-given right to walk in your fields. We are dealing with some very clever people who make them and who probably spend all winter producing the designs on computers." "I personally think it is all linked with the crop circle organisations and I think they use aircraft earlier in the year to choose exactly where they will put them." David Hues, who farms at Beckhampton, said aerial spotters are an additional nuisance to farmers. "During most summer evenings we are buzzed continuously by helicopters, light aircraft and micro-lights just going round in circles looking at the patterns or photographing them," he said. "It is big business for these people who are making cash out of it from things like coach tours and bed and breakfast." But crop circle expert Francine Blake, who ran a two-day conference in Devizes at the weekend, said while some of the patterns are hoaxes she believes most are genuine. Mrs Blake said: "Farmers are frustrated and don't know who to blame. there is nothing to indicate that they are man-made. I took a team of four from a TV company an entire Sunday working in daylight to construct a crop circle." "It was 90 feet across while the latest one at East Kennet is 300 feet across and contains three miles of paths. It is a hundred times more complex so how could it have been made by a team of people in darkness?" The Wiltshire Crop Circle Study Group, with which Mrs Blake is involved, is a non-profit making organisation, she said. Back to 2000 index |
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