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The cows are out! A huge and happy relief to all of us. A few days before, their unremitting bawling made me rush off to get some organic rolled barley from Roger. Roger was suffering from the same predicament. Cathartic commiseration was exchanged in the grain store.

Saturday was the day. We fed them early and had our breakfast while they packed away theirs. Organisation is the key. We knew they’d be over-excited and attempting to take them down the road in a highly volatile state would be too dangerous. They needed half a day in a home field to get rid of their pent up angst before being moved on to the grassy river meadows. First though we had to clip off an in-growing spur on one of Desiree’s horns – a cattle crush job - and pen off a couple of late calvers who will remain at the farm in Top Meadow, a stone’s throw from our kitchen window.

Gates in place, field decided upon, all inappropriate avenues of misdirection barricaded we were ready for the off….a red laval flow of jutting hip bones, moulting moth-eaten coats, snaking necks, cavernous maws and rubbery wet pink noses stampeded out of the cow palace; with saliva flying in whippy sticky streamers they bellowed and charged their way down the drive without a moment’s hesitation, calves ricocheting between flying legs and lethal hooves. It was over in seconds and in total surprise they found themselves in Cow Moor where grass is still a rarity. The bull, who seems to have doubled in size over the winter, and maiden heifers were the next to join the herd. This caused even more excitement, as heated sexual tension combined with testing hierarchical fights. Sweat and foam glistened, steam rose in huge huffing bursts.

A quick breather before hitching up the trailer and loading batches of young stock to take over to Pulworthy – the yearlings’ summer grazing lands. Surprisingly co-operative, we accomplished this in a couple of easy journeys, returning in good time to move the now chilled-out herd down the road.

They were exemplary. With heads down, grazing earnestly, we left them in the first river meadow and wandered off, relaxed and happy, to check gates and the wire across the drinking gully. Busily tightening the wire across the gap we were completely unaware that the herd had followed and were bearing down the gully in a heaving panting mass. Calves forsaken, their mothers single-mindedly exploded into the river with all the force of enormous red battle ships. Abandoned bewildered babies shouted at the retreating armada from the top of the river bank. Suddenly in unison and like wildebeest crossing the Mara they launched themselves into the deep river which completely submerged them, up they popped like corks and seemingly unphased they proceeded to swim after their fast disappearing mothers! I was paralysed with surprise and shock as was Robert, who clinging to submerged tree roots, had managed to get out of the way in the very nick of time!

“Did you see that? Did you see it?” he exclaimed “I couldn’t believe my eyes, it was just like the Serengetti! That’s extraordinary. And they weren’t concerned…they disappeared, went right under. Completely submerged, totally! Popped up and just swam as if they’d always done it. That is extraordinary. Quite, quite extraordinary.”

Having carefully checked over the herd we ushered them back into the first river meadow. Gradually peace was restored once more.
Where it reigns and reigns and reigns….
Ahhhhhh, bliss.

Locks Park is thought by some to be rather special. When visiting ecologists, environmentalists and conservationists ooh and ahh over our flower-filled meadows, the butterflies, birds and bees, the richness and diversity of the wildlife, hedgerows and pastures I feel privileged to live and farm such a piece of land. But I’m also made to feel culpable. When completing the infamous Higher Level Stewardship application I was brought to task over keeping sheep and ‘lost points’ as this is considered detrimental to the wildlife.
‘Bbbut’ I stammered ‘Sheep are good little farmers. They aerate the soils, break open rush clumps, encourage other plant species. Mixed grazing is important for many reasons too. And …’
I was cut short. Sheep, I was informed, eat flowers, so are unwelcome.
I also have too many cattle. More points lost. What about replenishing nutrients in depleted soils, sensitively of course, as in dung spreading and liming? Frowned upon.

I’m told that farms like this have always been subsistence farms. Minimal stock was kept, I mean just look at the buildings. Proves a point really.

I scratched my head and thought ‘I wonder. I’ll ask Elli’. Elli is the daughter of the couple we bought the farm from eighteen years ago. Elli is enthusiastic and a keen member of the community. Athletic, up before the crack of dawn and when not working all god’s hours she’s often seen cycling up three-in-one hills with her graceful dog Mel beside her. Her father, George, came to Locks Park when he was a small boy of six and seamlessly took over farming it from his father and mother when they retired. Elli has a deep affinity for the place. She remembers well the stories her grandparents and father told of their lives here. She reminisces on those fabled forever, long hot summers and winters of snow and icicles. Helping out on the farm throughout her childhood she continued even after she’d left and married running her sheep on the Rutleighs. She loves the place and I believe if circumstances had been different she would have gladly taken over from her parents.

I knew she would know exactly what was farmed here and how – it’s part of her very being, her core. “Well now, twenty-five to thirty milking cows. They were up at the house and in all winter. Followers, young stock and the like: we wintered them out on the bottom of Scadsbury. Never in. Again twenty-five to thirty. You know max, Paula.”

the out-wintering land, Scadsbury meadow

Scadsbury was forty acres of rented land. Land, unfortunately, we never managed to acquire, and the out-wintering field she was talking about is the most glorious ten acres of flower-filled culm.

“The cows were grazed at home on Top, Flop, Little Hill, Five Acres, Dung and Rushy. Followers continued over at Scadsbury, you know, when the grass came on in the better fields.”

She went on to say they never brought in any forage, cutting it all at Locks. Fertiliser, 20-10-10, was applied, sparingly of course, as well as lime and slag when needed.
“Even on Dillings?” I chip in. Dillings being our ultra special flower filled meadow.
“Yes, yes, of course.”
They used to bale up rushes for bedding and she can’t remember them ever buying in straw. “Nothing was ever tilled at Locks, too wet, not even in the war. Yes, I know I’m right, though I think they once did a small piece over Scadsbury and we must’ve baled that as straw.”

And sheep? “Oh, eighty ewes give or take.”’

So who’s right? These small, beautiful, diverse farms were working, commercial farms. We’ve been left a legacy that no money can create. Should we now treat their land as museum pieces – to be polished and treated with kid gloves, or should we too work them to provide food and income, allowing them to reflect the character of our age, not ages past?

An afterthought. I believe I’m trying to express my idea of what I feel is wondrous and astonishing. So let me try and find an analogy. To me true beauty in a human has nothing to do with the plastic nip and tucked, contrived, gleaming and polished doll-like exterior we are apparently meant to aspire to in today’s consumer-driven/celebrity-culture existence. True beauty is an extraordinary mix of the physical and metaphysical, the body and soul to use a well worn phrase. A magnetic pull towards a radiating working energy. Not a self-serving manufactured appearance deprived of age or history. So if you can translate these clumsy thought images to farms (the physical) and nature (the spirit) maybe you’ll have an inkling of what I’m trying to express.

flowers in Dillings

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.

Uuuhuu…big breath. I’m down to only six in the household and have a little more room to expand.

Today I managed to take the dogs for a walk over Hannaborough and in just a few days so much has appeared and the countryside has shifted and changed. I love the way it alters and moves, infinitesimally, but directionally and forever forward. It sometimes seems the landscape is locked in time, but remove yourself from it for just a memory flash and all changes.

This afternoon I found lousewort, lady’s smock, oak trees in the initial explosion of bud burst, skylarks ascending heaven high on a note and the first swallow flying over the farm. The deer have rearranged their groups and are subtly preparing to drop their calves. I felt I was walking a bridge between disappearing winter and oncoming spring.

I know I’ve mentioned that when I walk I think. All your debate and comments over the last few posts are beginning to spill through into my consciousness and form ideas. One that keeps pushing itself to the forefront is our unconscious search for the familiar…what we, or our mind’s eye, are used to. Take livestock, for instance. I choose and breed for certain characteristics and traits that appeal to me, no doubt ones that I picked up from the first stock I ever kept. When I go to look at other people’s animals again I tend to pick qualities out that reinforce my ideal. I believe that this mental process is the same with landscape too. I can remember the day I first saw the countryside around here which I now find so attractive – it was alien, uncomfortable and altogether different from anything I was used to. I searched for the familiar, attempting to compare it other far-flung landscapes I knew, even Indian grasslands, African bush, tropical jungle…but without success, of course. So putting this feeling to our debate on the countryside, perhaps this is why we are so passionate about what we see or want to see – we constantly search out the well-loved familiar? What I fondly romanticise about is another’s bête noir. There are even those who adore the flat fenlands…But as we become accustomed to new environments, so we can come to love them too, as I do now the haphazard countryside I live in. And as the strange becomes familiar, so the desire for order and structure, the need for everything to be explicable and classifiable, diminishes, and we welcome rather than fear the unexpected and unmanaged. At least I do!

Challenge, celebration and chickenpox

All the discussion, opinion, ideas and views on the last three posts has been great and very stimulating. Brilliant!

This week has been extraordinarily busy and I haven’t yet had the time to absorb all the information and ideas.

My son Ben, his fiancée Bérengère, and their baby daughter Camille, are leaving to live in France tomorrow and have been staying with us over the last week not only as a farewell to us and the farm but also to be at my stepdaughter’s Civil Partnership ceremony. Camille developed chickenpox early in the week which nearly put the kybosh on both their travel plans and the family attending the wedding ceremony and  reception. But she’s scarcely been ill and no-one’s been worried by getting the virus. Add to that a house-full of family and friends, including Tony and 4-year old son Vincent over from Canada, a couple more calvings, multitudinous meat orders, testing weather and it’s all been pretty hectic. Not much time for writing!

The CPRE have provided me with a pdf of the Robert Elms’ piece that originally sparked off the posts ‘not so green and pleasant’,  ‘all things bright and beautiful’ and the subsequent discussion threads.

I would be most interested to hear from the man himself.

the future of our countryside

I’m writing another post on this subject spurred on by your comments. Perhaps too I did not make it clear where I was coming from. I’m waiting on the CPRE to find out if they can put Robert Elms’ article on line: if they can there’ll be a link.

The perception of the countryside, and the values we attach to it, vary as much as we do. Even if we’re broadly in agreement, the detail leads to plenty of healthy discussion! None of us holds quite the same views about the Enclosures, wind farms, badgers, hunting, subsidies, green belts, organic farming, gmos…

Just a tiny scrap of the British Isles is left untouched by human hand. We haven’t scarcely an iota of true wilderness left. Ours is a cultural landscape, a record of our history and social evolution. A palimpsest – love that word. And it will continue to change. In the next few decades I believe it will undergo as rapid a transformation as anytime before, apart from perhaps the clearance of the wildwood, through the demands of population growth, climate change, food security and energy generation, but that’s no excuse for not sharing our views on what the future of our landscape should be, so that collectively we can exert some shaping influence.

I’m not a naturally untidy or lazy farmer. Far from it, I’m cursed by obsessive industry. It’s all too easy for me to look at a beautiful farm and see only work to be done. I have farmed various types of land for over three decades and my ideals, passions and expectations have changed dramatically over the years. But I’ve never held sway with intensive agriculture and have always tried to the best of my ability to farm in harmony with the land. When farmer met environmentalist (Robert- husband) there was a meeting of minds on some aspects, but headlong clashes over others. I began to look at certain practices with different eyes, just as Robert began to better understand the needs of a farmer, his stock and crops. Fortunately for us, Locks Park could never be intensively farmed (come Armageddon I will have the greatest of difficulty to even grow a handful of cereal to feed the family) so compromise has not been too difficult.

Reading Robert Elms’ article I was struck not by his dismissal of the countryside (I couldn’t care a toss if he doesn’t want to live in it) but more by his observation of the boring sameness of it all. You see I agree. To me a lot of our countryside has become over manicured, bland and uninteresting. With mono-culture, horsiculture and diesel and unimaginative planning laws we are losing character and individuality.

Affluence is part of the problem. We no longer have to mend and make do. We have the cash to throw on the fertilisers, on all-powerful machines, on high tensile wire and smart new gates. You can tell so much about a place by looking at a single old wooden gate, repaired and patched over many years, lichen-smattered, so little from a brand new one.

Then there’s the legacy the Victorians left us, that cleanliness (neatness) is next to godliness. The inordinate desire the stamp our mark on every last square foot, to create order out of Nature’s chaos. Have you any idea how difficult it is to cut a field in wavy lines, so deeply ingrained is the need for everything to be straight and true? Many say that the sign of a good farmer is how neat his land is, but in my view we have to learn to think differently.

And that goes for environmentalists as well as farmers. How many times have I seen the soul of a beautiful place tamed and dulled by the well-meaning but misplaced views of some conservation organisation or another? The sort who believe that tacking an inconspicuous line of fencing wire to an oak tree or two is a sin, requiring instead a line of standard-spec yellow-green fencing to cut across the landscape like a slash across a Constable.

Am I the only one willing to speak up for the rusty tin roof, the abandoned harrow in the hedge, even the ruts in the lane?

A couple of days ago I sat on the bench in front of the house in a tee shirt and ate my lunch, I almost felt too hot. I cut the grass – and sweated. I flung open the windows and doors. Thousands of clusterflies emerged from the roof and the thatch tremmeled with their frenetic infuriating whine-buzz. The dogs looked for shade. The cows shouted expectantly – ‘had I forgotten turnout?’ The sheep could hardly be bothered to rouse themselves for their evening feed. And we cut our first asparagus.

Today there was no looking for midges flying over the sheep. No tea on the bench either. It was April Whiteout!

urban countryside?

I’ve just read an article in the CPRE’s spring edition of Countryside Voice by self-confessed city lover, Robert Elms, who can’t stand the ‘the dreary predictability of muddy little England’. Compared to ‘the buzz, thrill and noisy creative glory of a city’ to him the countryside is ‘a depressing rejection of all that in favour of safe, samey conformity’. And I find myself nodding in partial agreement. Too much of England has become over-sanitised, too safe, too uniform.
Often when Robert (husband) and I return to visit old walking haunts we are surprised to find how much they have changed. Gone are the haphazard pastures and meadows filled with a riot of dandelions and daisies. No more are there crumbling stone or earth banks, gaps stuffed with old bedsprings and handy corrugated iron. Gone is the decrepit rusty fencing tied up with fading fibrous pieces of bailer twine to the nearest gnarled stump of hedgerow bush. Gone too is the exhilarating feeling of a remote and wild place. In its place we find acre after acre of bottle-green nitrogen ryegrass, geometrically divided by straight, neatly trimmed hedges bounded by bright tight squeaky clean fencing. Smart tanalised styles, each with neat dog gate and sporting a brand new painted signpost. Barn conversions all following the same brown-window syndrome

I feel angry, upset and cheated. But, if I’m honest, I can remember thinking once that all that broken decay was a sign of shoddy farming! Okay, so our rush-infested fields and pastures are either a waterlogged, sink-sucking morass or an ankle-breaking, knee-twisting concrete with nothing inbetween, and they are exacting and unproductive, but we are blessed with a farm that has character. It is totally individual and exciting. So we resolve to leave that old dung-spreader where it was in the field corner, not to make any more hedgerows redundant through fencing them, to tolerate those thickets of brambles springing out here and there and to leave that muddy gateway where the house martins collect the mud for their nests.

Would Mr Elms, I wonder, find this countryside - wild, unkempt, unpredictable - a more interesting exchange for his culturally exciting, glorious buzzy urbanity? Or would he still feel all the countryside has to offer is various forms of soil?

to read the whole article see May edition of Devon Today

Checking the sheep yesterday I found green. Look! It’s just beginning…

Touches in the willows alongside the pond in First Rutleigh.

My wolf dog, Ness, waiting patiently whilst I looked for more signs of spring.

Amazing molinia - purple moor grass.

On Saturday the rain hurled rods and sleet flung stinging shot; the wind whipped and howled, crashing and banging anything and everything with vandalistic glee; the fields ran and sighed with cold clay water – and I lost a lamb. She died from pasteurella. She was bonny, big and strong; she and her sister were some of the first lambs to be born.

I’d been up in the top yard checking the buildings were holding out, and the ewes and lambs hadn’t succumbed to drowning or hypothermia. Surprisingly everyone was okay though a mite wet and bedraggled; the ewes had sensibly brought most of the youngest lambs into shelter. Returning back down to the farmhouse Robert made some remark about the water supply and so couple of hours later I went back up to check all was well. And there she was, dead. Pasteurella is that sudden. It’s a bacterium, p. heamolytica, which leads to severe pneumonia. I’ve never had a case before on this farm. They say if you’ve had one probably more will follow so I’ve been keeping an ever watchful eye on the flock and…I dare say no more.

But what a difference a day makes.  It was time to move Dot, her offspring and a couple of other ewes and lambs up to rejoin the main flock.  Walking them slowly up the hill to the Rutleighs I felt and smelt a balmier air.  A definite stirring. The verges along the lane had erupted with the crumpled unfurling of cow parsley and hog weed.  Down in the dip the pungent cat’s pee smell of wild currant mixed with earthy watery dampness. Primroses cover the hedge banks and nestled in a sheltered mossy hollow I found the first shy violet. Promise…

I love wearing grey: blending, cloaking, merging. Subtle, veiling, yet a window to life beneath. Both disguising and revealing. A foil for the complex colours of the soul.

Sultry, smudgy charcoal, wispy, misty smoke. Sharp-glint granite, feather-down nestle dove grey, iridescent mussel pearl. Gauzy-gossamer and ethereal ashes of roses. Addictively, I’m drawn to it. My wardrobe is full of shades of grey; I collect the colour in all its varying hues.

My comfort blanket, handed down from my great grandmother and miraculously free from moth damage, is made from the softest, snuggliest cashmere – a smoky charcoal one side and soft cloud the other. To wrap oneself in its comforting soothingness is pure bliss. And then there’s grey jumper.

I bought grey jumper about twenty years ago for no other reason than it was another grey jumper. Overlarge, a simple block square design, perfect to throw on over anything. It became a staple, not only to me but to the boys too…after a days surfing ‘throw us a jumper mum’; coming in from a cold wet windy day ‘where’s grey jumper?’. A hormonal downer, a rejection or some deep thought-thinking - you’d find them curled up in it. Walking, farming, gardening; holidaying, travelling, drifting…grey jumper would be found stuffed in some nook or cranny.

Over the years it’s often found itself in the pile of clothes to be given away, recycled or bundled to the charity shops only to be snatched back. And every year at the beginning of lambing and calving I find myself rooting around in the bottom of the cupboard. With a contented sigh I pull grey jumper out, slip the well-worn fabric over my head, ready to face whatever lies ahead, secure in my other skin.

Everyday I check the ewes with eagle eye. Once over the frantic, hectic lambing and immediate post lambing days it’s very easy to rest on one’s laurels, sit back, enjoy the hilarious antics of growing lambs and the satisfying sight of the flock contentedly grazing.

One of my problems this year is too much milk…yes, too much milk! Supposedly due to last year’s wet summer I’ve had a higher than normal percentage of singles. A proportion of ewes that generally twin have given birth to single lambs and yet are still producing milk enough for two; resulting in engorged, painful udders until lamb, mum and milk sort themselves out - regulate. This can resolve itself naturally but not always, and if ignored could lead to mastitis. Mastitis in sheep is very serious, unlike mastitis in cows, and almost certainly results in the loss of the udder if not the ewe. An ‘udder’ (groan - sorry, just couldn’t help myself…) problem is orf. The stress of lambing can cause a break-out of orf pustules around the teat area (similar to reoccurring shingles in humans). It’s very painful and the ewe will prevent the lamb from sucking – and, you’ve got it…inflamed udder, damaged teat and possible mastitis if not detected and treated.

Today at  feeding time I noticed a young feisty ewe with a very lopsided udder. Unfortunately the sheep were thinning out around the troughs (the easiest time to catch them is when they’re in a feeding frenzy) and she saw me coming. After several abortive attempts at trying to catch her I was about to give up when I thought I would try out some sheep whispering.

Crouching, I approached her and her lamb slowly, very, very slowly with my arms outspread. Looking her directly in the eye, I mumbled soft sounds whilst gradually moving forward. My mind was totally focused. Edging closer and closer I saw her fear and anxiety reached fever pitch then gradually subside; her breathing steadied. I was inches from her. I made no attempt to catch her. I waited just a second or so; she took a steady step towards me, looking unswervingly into my eyes she put her head forward to snuffle my hand. For a moment we were frozen together - a tableaux. She allowed me to put my arm around her chest, start the milk flowing from her swollen udder and encourage her lamb to suck.

It was over in minutes. One trance-like udder-relieved ewe and her lamb rejoined the flock and one happily flabbergasted shepherd walked the half mile back home - grinning.

I’ve run out of steam. For me March can be like that. The world around me has lifted; lighter and brighter, faster and smarter, pulsing in an elevated frequency - but I am not resonating to this hammering beat.

Bird business flourishes and whirrs through bush and branch, a helter-skelter of display, mating and nesting, collecting and feeding. A lattice-work city of frenetic activity. Song clamours from every direction swelling the air with vibrating tunes and notes; the head-banging enthusiasm of the woodpecker’s drumming, a heart-busting liquid cadence from a blackbird, the clear loud chime of the great-tit belling, a robin’s hope-filled spring aria, the rabble-rousing, chattering, squabble of sparrows. Even the night echoes around the vixen-cry of the barn owl discordant against the quivering ‘oos’ of the tawny owl’s hoot. The first chiffchaff, the first skylark, an imagined cuckoo…

The trees shift imperceptibly as their roots suck up draughts of deep cold water. Buds tremor, blush, swell and burst. Peeks and flashes of fresh-clean acid green. Cotton-wool buds of pussy willow, golden-rain catkins. Shoots thrust with phallic determination through wet glutinous clay topped with winter detritus.

Ice-clear light bounces off surfaces in shattered kaleidoscopic patterns. My eyes sting - hurt. I’m so far behind this living vitality. Lost still in the sludgy greys of winter, my body has yet to shed its winter skin. I feel a pale, slow, sallow shadow beside the energy of life around me. Ugly and unlovely. Soon I will catch up with mother earth but for a few weeks more I shall struggle to free myself from Skadi’s clutch.

In the glow of the setting sun on Monday evening Dot gave birth to twins. The last lambs of 2008 to be born. Dot is my oldest sheep (to find out more about her click on Sheep Secrets) and quite a character - even Robert has a soft spot for her and he has no time whatsoever for sheep. I was hoping to keep her away from the tups last autumn, but Dot had other ideas. I kept my fingers crossed that at least she would spare herself and have a single - but no, in true Dot style, she was in lamb to twins…yet again.

Old productive ewes carrying twins can run into problems during the later part of the pregnancy. Pregnancy toxaemia can develop as the fast growing lambs take more energy than the ewe can take in. If the signs are not seen early on the ewe can become so depleted she’ll stop eating all together; having reached this point it becomes very difficult to pull her back to recovery.

Over the last month I’ve watched Dot with an eagle eye and as soon as I saw her interested in food was waning I took measures to make sure she had access to an easy unchallenged measure of oats and molasses. Soon she was back to her old self, bright and lively, though still thin.

Dot gave birth on Monday evening with the minimum of fuss and bother. But she wasn’t out of the woods quite yet. With the unborn lambs having used up all her resources and her labour having sapped every last ounce of energy, she had nothing left to make milk with. It’s a fine line allowing the lambs to suckle to encourage milk supply and teaching them to suck a bottle to substitute the ewe’s milk. But with patience one eventually gets the balance right.

Old ewes can crash after the stress of giving birth, and Dot did. The immediate need for energy and the changing hormones can cause digestive upsets and prohibit the liver from working properly. So it’s careful nursing and feeding, letting the ewe have access to ivy and certain plants that will help her rebalance her metabolism. I gave her a multi-vitamin jab as B vitamins help kick start the liver.

We’re there! Today Dot is nearly back to normal and has begun grazing, making some milk and eating a small quantity of whole oats. Her lambs are bonny and bouncy and joy of joy the little ewe lamb is a replica of her mum – a mini Dot!

So here’s to Dot’s last lambs…and a peaceful retirement!

bluetongue’s winter warmer

Now here’s a thing. I had a fit of the giggles. Actually it was probably a touch of mini-hysteria; the uncontrolled, raucous, thigh-slapping, tears-pouring-down-face kind, coloured by total disbelief. Wishful thinking there – what I would hope to be total disbelief.

In this week’s New Scientist under the heading ‘Bluetongue’s Winter Warmer‘ we were told about the distinct possibility of bluetongue virus overwintering in the unborn calf cosseted and protected by the cosy bubble of bovine uterine warmth.

And as those hungry veracious biting midges reappear (the end of the non-vector period was the 15th March) these bonny babies would become a delicious fresh source of the bluetounge virus. Hey-presto! Yup, you have it in one.

Pirbright suggest there should be additional controls targeted at newborn animals. Now, me-wonders, what on earth have they in mind? No vaccine around yet. Could only be one other thing.

And if that’s not sinister enough – listen to this…the only bluetongue virus ever seen to cross the placenta of infected mothers to infect their foetuses was a laboratory-adapted strain used in experiments with sheep in the 70s.

Ring any bells? Shades of last summer’s FMD fiasco? Afterall the great and the good have been wondering how the BTV8 strain gained such an unshakable foothold in northern Europe.

Maybe they now have their answer.

I’ve surfaced from a surfeit of lambings. Zombie-like and mindless. Why?

It doesn’t seem to matter much if you have a large or small flock – for one reason or another it evokes the same reaction in the shepherd. I started off my shepherding with a dozen or so Longwools expanding to two hundred Mules and Mule-Suffolk crosses when I was dairying, back down to a medium flock of Herdwicks which I grazed over moorland on the North Devon coast and finally to my Whiteface Dartmoors here at Locks. Oh, and somewhere in there was a sprinkling of mad hysterical Shetlands that Robert gave me as a present one Easter – never again! Each breed has its good and bad points and it really depends what you’re after as to what breed you choose. The main thing is you like what you’ve got – that will help you tolerate multitudinous sins…

Sheep generally lamb together, it’s part of their flock survival strategy. So you are dealing with rapid-fire; that’s lots of births in quick succession, many of them multiple, and associated difficulties.

And then there’s temperament, theirs and yours. Sheep have tendency towards hysteria when they lamb whether there’s a problem or not; but if you’re dealing with a complication, and the ewe you’re helping suddenly decides she’s not dying and legs it across a muddy field, or uses the lambing shed as a race track, it can be difficult to keep one’s patience and cool.

And patience, calmness and time are definitely needed - to make sure all newborns have suckled and have a belly full of colostrum (first milk full of fats and antibodies): baby lambs are tiny and it’s imperative they suckle as soon as possible after birth. Once ewes have lambed and are penned, ewes and lambs are bonded, and lambs are sucking well …it’s maintenance time - water bucket, hay net, feed, bedding. At the same time you are dealing with all this you could have a handful of ewes in varying stages of labour. It’s trying to be everywhere at once that’s energy sapping.

Twelve to twenty-four hours after birth, all lambs (providing they are strong and healthy) need double-tagging in the ears, tail docking, and castrating if males; mothers need their feet trimming (they haven’t been done for the last three months  of their gestation) and worming. When lambs have recovered from handling, tagging, docking and castrating they are numbered along with their mums for easy counting and identification in the field. Mine are transferred to an adjacent nursery field close to the house with access to shelter. Back in the lambing shed, the pens are mucked out and disinfected ready for the next occupant.

Every year due to tiredness or just lambing pandemonium there’s someone whose tail is forgotten, a tag wrongly recorded or a lamb who slips through as a female when he’s a male and should have been castrated. I have a note book in the shed which I translate onto the lambing sheet in the house – there are always mistakes in transcription, however hard I try!

And that, in a nutshell, explains the dazed, shell-shocked expression friends’ or acquaintances’ have when they say in a rather bemused fashion ‘Oh, I’ve been lambing’.

I’m afraid I am exhausted, weary and dragging a body around that seems to be made of led. I mentioned the sheep were hanging onto their lambs this year and according to my calculations only had the next couple of days in which to lamb. Well, that’s just what they’ve done. Since yesterday afternoon lambs have been dropping left, right and centre – I’ve only a handful left to go! The cows, not wanting to be left out of the fun, thought they would add a bit of spice by having a couple of calves too.

My bed beckons. Sinking my head into a soft pillow and letting oblivion wash over me for a few hours would be ultimate bliss. I’ll leave you with a picture of some of the first shoots of wild garlic I found the other day. It’s green, it’s peaceful, it’s not an animal and it’s not going to have babies….

This weekend we burnt. Throughout the winter months Robert lays hedges. This is done in rotation over the farm and is a bit like the Forth bridge – you never ever get to the end.

The final hedge to be laid this winter is between Dillings and Rushy Field. Our third time of laying since we’ve been here. Stupid. In retrospect we should have trimmed it more often to encourage the hedge to stay thick, bushy and do what it’s meant to do; be a strong effective stock barrier as well as providing a bountiful larder, the ultimate des. res. and the definitive transport system for multitudinous types of wildlife. This doesn’t mean hedges should be trimmed every year – but once every three to four and at a slightly greater height each time. By doing this you can increase the hedge’s useful life as a bushy barrier and it should only need laying, say, every twenty years, even forty years, instead of every eight. Of course there’s the other side to the coin – if you don’t trim but lay, the hedge will produce copious quantities of firewood and won’t require hours of fuel-guzzling tractor work. Something which with our changing climate and countryside we should to take into consideration?

It’s hard gruelling work, laying hedges. Especially on our land as the trammelled clay becomes a gloopy, welly-hungry, energy-depleting morass. Over the years Robert has honed his skill and expertise resulting in hedges that are aesthetic living sculptures, works of art. My role, on the other hand, continues much as it always has. I’m the skivvy, the pack donkey, the serf that trudges up and down the hedge line bowed under huge bundles of branches and brash for the final burn and tidy. But in some perverse way it’s satisfying, hard, hot work. And a change from the intensity of the lambing and calving sheds.

A first for Locks Park…twin heifer calves!

They are the sweetest things and I found myself treating them more like lambs than calves. Luckily they were eager to suck and happy to be helped with the standing-balancing act which was slightly problematic when all your growing has gone into bone with very little muscling. Gwen started calving at around 5 am and finished by 8 am. She’s a very gentle, sweet and attentive mum after the surprise of finding two babies who needed attention. Read the rest of this entry »

Lambing and calving is a strange time of year. It’s unsettling. I still have masses of routine things to do. But I avoid them. I can’t concentrate on computer work, I shun the phone - where are you? the messages demand; I wander listlessly through the house and wander back again.

Happier outside. I put on my boots, hat and coat; check the sheep, ewes and lambs, check the cattle, cows and calves. Carry hay, carry straw, muck out pens, scrub and disinfect, ready for the next occupant. I’m hungry; I’m yearning for something delectably delicious, though nothing tempts me. I pick at proper food and end up eating a whole packet of shortbread, cashew nuts and maltesers which make me feel sick.

Oh it’s time! On with the boots, on with the hat, coat, pockets heavy with knife, castrating tool, homeopathic remedies, iodine, surgical gloves, notebooks and pen, twine and hanky; out again to check sheep, check cows, check lambs and calves.

Each year I think I’ll manage to avoid my slip into no-man’s-land. Cook good food, rest after lunch, keep to some normal routine if at all possible and prevent the slide. Never works.

I’m in a lull. The first snow-sprinkling of lambs born and I’m experiencing a hiatus. Surely, you’d think, a welcome break before the intensity to come; time to recoup and recover? But it doesn’t work like that. Giving birth isn’t an exact science it’s unpredictable. So every few hours it’s out to check. Waiting, I’m out of kilter; jumpy, wondering when the bubble will burst.

In the nursery field I keep an eagle eye out for any problems that may develop with baby lambs and their mums. Post-partum mastitis, scours in either ewe or lamb, orf, inter-digital abscesses, pneumonia, clostridia, failing-to-thrive and, less serious, but very uncomfortable, scraping glutinous-glue-sticky colostrum-ochre stools which gum tails hard and fast to ballooning rumps (dogs’ delight!). The first few days can be critical. Energy required by a post-partum lactating ewe is huge and demanding, stress triggering all manner of nasty surprises. Baby lambs are tiny and vulnerable, dependant on the ability of their mothers and diligence of their shepherd. But I’m lucky; my sheep are motherly and vigilant.

Oh it’s time! On with the boots, the hat, the coat, pockets heavy…

plannin’ and dreamin’ that she’ll have some time to spare away from that lambing affair…

The dogs find this time of year a trifle tedious. Apart, that is, from the delicious morsels that come from multitudinous birthing and milk-sucking baby animal - more detail would be too much information. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday I visited my mum. During lambing it’s difficult to leave the farm so I try and see her as much as I can before it starts. I make a quick dash down to Peter Tavy after lunch, have tea with her, and I’m back in time to do the animals. The extra hour or so of daylight now makes all the difference.

As the crow flies it’s no great distance. The road though follows a scenic route, narrow, windy, hilly; peppered with hamlets and speed restrictions. Reasonably quick if you’re the only vehicle but frustratingly slow if you catch a lorry, bus, tractor or tourist. Monday was a frustrating day and I was clock watching by the time I arrived. I noticed the light on in her room, ran up the stairs to the back door, calling to her as I pushed open the door to her room. I stopped dead, something was very wrong. A foul smell hit me. Taken aback, unsure, I called out.

It’s me, it’s Paula. It’s me. Are you here? What’s happened? Are you okay?

A small rasping croak replied. Yes, darling, just lying down.

I walked up to the bed. There she was. Curled, tiny; papery grey-white translucent skin stretched taught, she looked, for all the world, like a foetus. Large pillows surrounded her, engulfing her frail jumble of bones in a blowsy puff of nest. Her head, still, unmoving, looked unnaturally large, cheek-bones and jaw line sharply etched against the white sheets. Her eyes, sunken and bruised, slowly turned towards me, a filmy gauzy blue, no longer looking outwards but inward at some better world.

Darling, just lying down. Is daddy there?

No, no, he’s not. Not at the moment. What’s happened? I stroke her hand and head so as not to alarm her, trying to still my fear and anxiety.

Just having a small sleep. Is daddy there?

Not yet mummy. You have a little rest. I’ll go and get you a drink, shall I? I stroke her gently, letting her know I’m going.

I fly down the corridor to find someone, one of the carers, anyone. No one’s around. No residents either. No one. What’s happened? The doors are sealed, notices on them. I’m not concentrating. I see Lynn, Faith, Julie around a table. I gesticulate. They let me in.

We’ve got Norwalk virus. I left a message on your phone. We’ve shut ourselves to all visitors. Paula you’ve got to go. Now!

But Morna. I can’t leave her. I can’t leave her like this.

It’ll be okay. She’ll be okay. Honestly, it lasts around twenty-four hours. Now go.
No, you mustn’t go into her room. There’s hand wash. Leave.

This is the hardest thing I’ve done. I leave. Don’t let her be taken like this. Please.

the first wind flower or wood anemone 

This year’s first lambs, born at mid-day today, a few days early. Interestingly the ewe, a second lamber, lambed on exactly the same day last year. Though young, she chose well - a good time of day for their shepherd and mild gentle weather for the lambs.

Being licked dry.

A few minutes later they attempt their first wobbly, unsteady steps.

Searching for the teat. One is a little eager and is sucking hard on his brother’s face!

What do I hope for the future of farming?

What I hope for is probably irrelevant. Our countryside will change hugely in the coming years. Since the Second World War farming and countryside has been in a constant state of flux due to changing food demands and growing new crops. Farming has never been stable; but now more than ever farming has to alter to meet the demands of a planet in crisis.

What can we expect? Fields of tree planting for carbon storage; hectares of elephant grass and acres of withies to fuel power stations; drought resistant crops –sunflowers perhaps; less methane belching grazing animals and huge areas of cereals for human, rather than animal, consumption. We will become more and more conscious of energy (wind farms, solar power), food miles and food security (growing our own), and national biosecurity.

Whenever an industry undergoes massive transformation it’s hard for those involved. Change is frightening and we are not good at accepting it. But I do feel that there are huge opportunities to be had for people with sight, vocation and enthusiasm, but most of all innovation. After all we have to eat to survive. The countryside is changing and I for one will mourn it. I love the quintessential Englishness of our pastoral idle - our patchwork of fields; hedges, trees, woodlands and moorlands; our grazing animals. But preserving that in aspic is no longer something we or the planet can afford: farming and the landscape either change dramatically or we face extinction. The trick will be to guide the change in ways that create beauty and inspiration, that feed our souls as well as our bellies.

endangered?

What would you do for farming if you were government?

This was one of the questions I was asked when being interviewed the other day. A ribbon of quicksilver thoughts free-fell through my brain – global economies, EU legislation, free-trade, climate change, energy, air-miles? Where would I make a change, what would have an effect? I was about to open my mouth with something along the lines that the topic was far too involved and deserved discussion in its own right, when I heard myself say – Education. Simplest, cheapest and most effective. Educate all our children from an early age about food, farming, countryside and the environment, locally, nationally and internationally. Integrated fully into the curricula of subjects already taught, future generations would come to understand the value of quality food (so they are prepared to pay the extra to buy it and farmers can earn a decent crust), and about the way food and the environment and our cultural heritage are inseparable. So, the current Year of Food and Farming is on entirely the right lines, but it needs to be continued, become mainstream. Ultimately, farming depends upon all of us as consumers, and this is where government should show real leadership, not through passing yet more laws but through helping us to make informed choices.

In the last month I’ve arranged my posts and pictures so they an be scanned and read on the front page.

Previously I had the the opening paragraph, maybe an image and the click to ‘read the rest of this entry’.

Would you be kind enough to let me know which you preferred, or if you don’t care one way or another. You can click on one of the categories in the left hand column to compare.

Thanks in advance!

I’m tired. Sand-grainy, blink-wet eyes; fogwebbed clouds obscuring any coherent thought process and bumbled lips, ones that refuse to form letters, words, sentences and end up vacantly tuttering.

Yesterday was my annual Soil Association Inspection and audit. I hate it.

Annual questionnaire-accounts-invoicescorrelatingincomingsoutgoings; marketingdetails-labelexamples-derogations-restrictedpractices; croppingdetails-rotation-forage-harvest-grazing; manuremanagement-source-treatment-inputs-pestcontrol-declarations; livestockmanagementplan-movementrecords-grazingrecords-anualfeedingrecords-feedpurchaserecords-vet.treatmentrecords- vet.purchaserecords-recordsofkeepingrecords-noncompliance-crosscompliance-compliance and…oh yes, one concussed, stressed farmer!

However much I uphold the need to scrutinise all licensees to ensure they are farming and producing food to organic standards as stipulated by EU law, it is, nevertheless, a daunting task to collect, collate and present all relevant information. Because of this it’s one of those jobs destined to the back-burner until that looming deadline is kicking you in the butt, has invade all your avoidance tactics and is infiltrating your dreams!

I’ve farmed using organic principles for years and as organic farming has grown in popularity I’ve seen how the Soil Association has had to adapt and change with the pressure of growth and new legislation. One of the things I’ve found ‘challenging’ (not to put too finer point on it) about the annual inspections is the choice of some inspectors.

I’m passionate; passionate about the way I farm, passionate about the extraordinary beauty and diversity of the British countyside and the people that live there; passionate about keeping stock happy healthy and as naturally as possible; passionate about producing the best food I can. But I make mistakes and I’m certainly not infallible. Nevertheless I strongly object to inspectors, with little practical farming experience, insinuating I’m trying to cheat, to hide a non-compliance or I’m guilty of gross misconduct until proven innocent (after all, what is the point?). I wait with trepidation to see who has been sent to ‘do’ me.

But yesterday I was pleasantly surprised. I had a human! Yes, a normal, speaking, smiling, courteous person that was not only knowledgeable about organic farming but was an organic farmer to boot. He was thorough, but fair, interested yet professional. A far cry from the zealous mini-hitler I was expecting. And what a difference it made to a day that is long and demanding, especially when suffering from concussion.

Relaxed, relived and sleepy, I checked the cows before flopping into bed. Wildcat had started calving. So it was up at 2am and again at 3.30am to check her conscious of Jennifer’s long labour. Happily everything was fine and she had a very lively, bonny calf. Today I had to attend an assessment of my mother’s care plan and tomorrow I’m being interviewed for an article. So it’s off to bed to dream sweetly and regain some control of my senses before the morning. Fingers crossed there are no middle of the night calvings tonight.

I briefly mentioned that I had a cow calving yesterday. This was Jennifer. In the