Locks Park Farm

A quick update on the bluetongue information. Unfortunately there has been a technical hitch with converting the two Dutch power point presentations into pdfs. Andrew, who is very kindly doing this for me, is away on holiday this week, but as soon as he is back I’m sure that the problem will be resolved and we’ll be able to either upload the pdfs or give a link to them.

The good news is that I’m in contact with Karin from Pirbright who is keen to help and is willing put some information together for the blog. Though due to the warmer weather over the past week she has been extremely busy and won’t be able to do much before the weekend.

But, with a bit of luck, by next week I should have pulled together some useful sources of information that you will hopefully find helpful.

We still have no grass. I’m waiting patiently for the current warm weather to have its magic stimulating effect on the recalcitrant stuff. The cattle are not! As I write this, the perfect, here-at-last, golden-green evening is reverberating with deafening booming bellows, bouncing and crashing up from the yard just metres below me. This noise thunders around my head, twangs and plunks every taut stretched fibre in my body with insistent persistent discord. Of course this is exactly what it is meant to do. I, as number one food provider, am failing at my duty. The unrelenting bawling coupled with the compelling force of combined herd psyche is designed to send me into a spin, in much the same way as the cry of a newborn.

I’ll explain. Last year’s wet summer and very late harvest meant the forage we made was not as nutritious as usual. In the winter, when the cows are in-calf, this is not a problem. But now they are coping with the demands of their fast growing calves with an ever increasing need for milk. My cows are telling me they need plenty of accessible protein, carbohydrates, minerals and vitamins as well as roughage, and last year’s haylage is not delivering. Fresh grass would!

Trouble is, the cold wet spring over the last two months has meant the ground is still soggy and producing little forage. Coupled with this, our landlord on the ground we normally turn out onto – our best drained land – has entered into an Environmental Stewardship Scheme which prohibits the use of round feeders. So we can’t put the cattle out just yet. It’s been a long winter, very nearly six months of looking after the herd indoors. And they are not stupid - they know full well they should be out by now - it’s close to summer and they can smell what fresh grass there is: it’s time to be munching that first delicious bite. So the psychological warfare escalates….

On Saturday evening we visited a farm. Robert knew of it many years back when it was owned by two extremely ancient old boys. For numerous decades the farm sat in glorious isolation and neglect, the land and buildings softened and crumbled; definition of field and hedge, lane and track, farmhouse and barn sagged into tangled green obscurity. The old boys continued to live in their decaying farmhouse looking out over a farmyard of bent disintegrating barns and humped undulating roofs; astonishingly they were still using the original cloam oven and still gathering and burning bundles of faggots.

It was sold a few years ago and by chance we met the new owners in the pub. They are a delightful couple. Not in their first flush of youth Jim is instantly noticeable by a shock of wild bright white hair; he’s buzzing with energy, passionate and eager, a zinging wire – his edges rounded and softened by a warm brown voice and a distinct west country burr. Mary has her feet firmly on the ground and a gentle yet tough stoicism. She has an open sincere face and large, expressive eyes in which you glimpse hidden depth. Both of them shine with the ruddy glow of outdoor living and smell of fresh air and wood, plaster and earth. Working ceaselessly on the farmhouse and buildings they have made a temporary home in one of the open crumbling barns and a caravan. To Robert’s delight they didn’t hesitate in inviting him over do some mothing.

Robert returned home his eyes bright with passion for the untamed and unspoiled beauty of the place. Brimming with excitement he said ‘It’s quite extraordinary. You stand in the farm and look out over the surrounding countryside with all those neatly clipped hedges and bright green fields and just know…’

‘Hang on, hang on’ I said ‘Maybe you shouldn’t class it as a farm, should you? I mean it hasn’t actually produced food in an age, has it? Isn’t it an area, a wildlife haven. Extraordinary, yes, but a farm?’

As often happens in our own feisty, ardent relationship a discussion was soon raging about, as Robert will have it, the semantics of the definition of farm…

A farm is the basic unit in agriculture. It is a section of land devoted to the production and management of food, either produce or livestock.
So says Wikipeidia and the Oxford dictionary.

‘Uh!’ poofs Robert ‘That is such outdated thinking’ and dismisses it out of hand.

With us this is an old, well worn and often revisited spat. Robert believes, fervently, that not all farms – land - have to be managed mainly for food. Some of it, just a small proportion should be managed for nature – marginal farms like ours and Jim and Mary’s. We are pretty refined and adept at this dialogue now, but still it manages to get our blood boiling, turns us red in the face, gasping and choking at the heinous atrocities the other is mouthing. Yet we are basically of the same mind and thought about most things. We cycle tandem ninety percent of the time.

Why am I at odds with this? Why do I feel it’s slightly immoral? Why do I feel it’s a luxury to be the custodian of a farm (as that’s what we are) and manage it primarily for wildlife? Running through me is a twist of tough chewed fibre – possibly a remnant of my bog Irish ancestry or strands of my Scottish heritage. Whatever, this part of me feels vaguely uncomfortable - almost guilty. To me, as guardian of a farm, I have a sense of duty, an obligation, to try to grow the best quality produce I can without compromise to my stock, the wildlife or the landscape. Can I achieve the balance I strive for? Robert thinks not. He believes I do compromise nature…and due to the demands of my livestock I’m unable to allow wildlife the unfettered freedom it requires; nor am I able to produce enough food on these marginal soils to render the farm economically viable. I’m falling between two stools. He has a point.

wild crab apple blossom

Don’t despair I’m still in the process of getting pdfs of the Bluetongue presentations. Hopefully either copied onto CDs or emailed to me. It’s taking a little longer than anticipated, but they will be here.

Meanwhile the countryside has undergone a transformation in the last seventy-two hours. Flowers and foliage are burgeoning…by the hour – the minute – the second. Just a few days ago I was bemoaning the lack of early purple orchids – now they are everywhere. A battalion of slender purple-magenta spears guard a corner of the Hatherleigh road; further along a sunlit gathering cluster exotically, decked in shades of rose-mauve, intense red-violet and faded purple-pinks. Truly a meeting of sumptuous beings, their pages tiny dog violets peeping through the formal rosettes of glossy-green spotted leaves.

early purple orchid

Verges explode in a sudden froth of cow parsley.

The soft pink-white flowers of the quince tree open like stars. A wild crab apple is a vision of blossom at the entrance to Scadsbury where heather-pink lousewort carpets the field between wet fronds of mosses and shoots of purple moor grass.

common lousewort

Not only are my eyes bombarded at every turn by colour, growth, life, but my ears are assailed by a hundred different bird songs. I’m not nearly good enough; I can’t decipher the many different tunes. I need Robert to point out the blackcap, the willow warbler, the coal tit and tree pipit. Yesterday garden warblers returned as did our first resident swallow and, at last, an orange tip butterfly appeared, to be quickly followed by others.

Yet amongst this achingly beautiful confusion of life, a tragedy. This morning, early, in the softest soft green drizzle, a ewe cast herself. Brutally split by ravens her guts spilled in glistening slippery warm pink ribbons across the green grass; eyes empty bloodied sockets; her mouth, tongue and tail cavernous dark black-red wounds slowly oozing bloody streams. Alone in the field by her side her lamb called and called and called.

Enough, enough. Enough of the doom and gloom. I want to be cheerful and enjoy the newness happening out there. A bit of lightness and brightness to feed the soul, top up our optimism and give us the energy to face the future.

Now here’s a thought. Midges are insects. Flowers are designed to attract insects; therefore without insects we wouldn’t have the glorious diversity of flowers we anticipate and marvel at each year. In effect insects are enriching our lives too. How curious is nature? Robert is quite keen I write a poem. Something along the lines of
‘Where the midge sucks, there suck I
In a cowslip bell I lie…’ Cowslip, cow’s lip? Ummm, maybe not. I’ll work at it.

But this evening I’m off. My gorgeous friend who winkles me out of the farm and takes me to opera, theatre and ballet – recently Matthew Bourne’s exuberant, colour extravaganza Nutcracker – is treating me to a Seth Lakeman concert at Plymouth Uni.

Meanwhile I leave you with some glorious insect inspired flowers just on our doorstep!

“So you think it’s going to be bad? Well, you’re wrong…

We shuffle in our seats, steal surreptitious glances at one another, clear our throats and half smile. A rustle of whispers stirs through the listeners.

…it’s going to be devastating! Don’t underestimate for a second what effect this disease will have on your stock, you and your business.”

Jaws drop. We sit stock still. He has everyone’s undivided attention: Marco Zerhoef, the vet from Holland who has hands-on experience of dealing with Bluetongue, the disease that’s decimated the livestock industry in much of Northern Europe.

He continues “In Holland we were unprepared. We’d heard of it yes, but we thought the handful of cases that bubbled up in 2006 and then died down was the end of it. A one off, nothing to get excited about. How wrong we were! In 2007 the first cases in Holland occurred in July, but we misdiagnosed them as sunburn – it had been an unusually hot spring – and photosensitisation. We correctly identified the disease too late and by August nearly every farm in our practice had contracted Bluetongue. The disease continued to snowball with unprecedented effects.”

He went on to explain what we could expect. Showed us images of cows and sheep; oedematous, encrusted with lesions, lame and unable to drink or walk; and calves, malformed, mummified, suffering severe encephalitis and other unusual deformities. Youngsters that failed to thrive. Depressing graphs, facts and figures.

The only thing they could do was nurse the sick and dying, helping to relieve the excruciating symptoms. It’s an awful disease, killing 40% of sheep and causing long-term damage to those that survive and to cattle.

“You” he carried on “have a chance. Have a chance to be a little more prepared. And a chance, maybe, to get in front of it with the vaccine.”

A Dutch dairy farmer gave his first hand experiences of coping with Bluetongue in his well kept milking cows, calves and heifers and the ongoing effects the disease is continuing to have on his stock and business. Needless to say, milk production has been severely reduced; his followers lack growth and are giving just a small percentage of their expected yield, his cows are difficult to get in calf, calves die in utero, and so on.

Karin Darple, a vet from Pirbright and a Bluetongue expert who has been working on the disease and vaccine, gave her presentation next – and it was superb. What she doesn’t know about Bluetongue isn’t worth knowing. She had very practical advice on how to cope with the disease, whether and when insecticides would be appropriate, housing versus the outdoors and much, much, more.

Karin would like to see 100% take up of the vaccine as soon as it hits the shelves, but EU legislation prevents this! Vaccine can only be given in Protection Zones where the disease has already struck, not in the surrounding Surveillance Zones. Karin couldn’t stress enough that speed is of the essence: to stand a chance of avoiding the devastating effects of the disease we must vaccinate ahead of it – we must prevent the virus from getting established.

There was far too much useful information to put in this post. I have asked my vet for pdf copies of all three presentations. Those that I’m able to, I’ll link to from my blog. If they are too large I’d be willing to email you a copy if you are interested. Leave me some contact detail in the comment section and I’ll get back to you. Please also look at the Warmwell site and the link Jane Barribal left for more information.

bluetongue 4

The infuriating niggle-niggle that keeps irritating and scratching persistently away in my mind’s eye is ‘you!-you-ostrich-head-in-the-sand’ and ‘maybe-if-I-look-from-behind-my-hands-it-won’t-happen’ as well as the ‘if-I-squint-I-might-not-really-see-what-I’m-looking-at’. I don’t know if you experience them…those irksome posters that march across your field of vision making sure you are perpetually aware of a subject you really don’t want to think about. This particular no-no is, of course, Bluetongue. And no, it won’t go away however much I will it.

As I breathe deeply, sigh and marvel at the fabulous weather of the last few days, another part of me is scanning for midges and hoping that the cold, frosty mornings and chilly Easterly wind might give us a few more weeks grace. Might, miracles of miracles, allow us to evade the next month of certain infestation and infection. At least, get us a little bit nearer the promised vaccination.

I’m itching – operative word here – to get the cows out. But if cold wet rain, sleet and snow – in fact a ‘fimble-winter’ - is the recipe for that miracle, well, bring it on!

The day before yesterday the midges were biting…and hard. The cows were careering about, bellowing and kicking; a heavily fleeced sheep cast herself itching; and the rams decided that the persistent irritation obviously originated from one of the others which resulted in a bloody battle. I also frenziedly scratched and pulled at my hair. It hasn’t been too bad since then.

This evening I’m attending a talk arranged by my vets on Bluetongue. The speakers will be a Dutch vet who has first hand experience, Intervet, the vaccine manufactures and possibly a vet from Animal Health. I wait to see what, if anything, I can do.