Category Archive

There are a number of commercial wind farm proposals for North and West Devon in line with the government’s Kyoto Summit agreement. These are being met with massive opposition. They destroy the look of the countryside, they are inefficient, nimby-ism, and the huge grants available to energy companies who erect them is only there to make the government look as if it’s taken the energy crisis and climate change on board. Which, according to some, they haven’t, as they have their fingers stuck firmly in some other mucky puddle.

One argument that opponents to wind farms use is that because they can only generate power when the wind blows, every time a new wind farm is built a new coal, oil or gas station has to be built as well. I’m not sure I understand this. I get the point that wind farms will only ever produce energy intermittently, so they have to be used alongside other forms of power generation. No one says they are the solution on their own, just part of it. I just don’t see why new non-green power stations have to be built as well. Provided existing such stations are kept operational and ticking over, then when the wind drops they can be turned up. The argument that we need new conventional stations seems to me only to hold true if we need more energy overall – but with the increased imperative that now exists for energy conservation that should not be necessary. Indeed wind farms should surely mean that conventional power stations have to be used less (although as I say still kept operational), so helping to reduce climate change? Can anyone please help me here?

“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.

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

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.

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?

Yesterday was not a ‘remembering remarkable holiday’ day. It was a full-on farming work day.

Every year, about half way through the winter housing period, I muck out the cow palace. I do this for several reasons – the dung is beginning to build up, to make sure that parasites or fungal growths such as roundworm, lice and mites that thrive in moist warm dung are removed; and, most importantly, to help get rid of any bacterial build up before calving. This seems to be more important during recent winters as we no longer have any sustained cold spells to inhibit the growth of pathogens.

And every year I look at the job in front of me and think ‘it’s never going to be done in a day’ ‘how have I ever managed before?’. This year Olly was my helper and, taking on board what was expected, he just looked at me and said “You gotta be joking! It’s impossible! We won’t do all that!” With false cheer I replied “Yup, I, we, will. It’s done every year. I know it looks daunting. But we’ll get in done. And in plenty of time too”. Read the rest of this entry »

Jane has asked for my opinions on set-aside. So here goes, not, I’m afraid, a terribly sexy subject!

Set-aside was originally put in place in the early nineties as a production control measure to take around 10% of arable land out of cropping; it was not an environmental scheme. I can remember the huge outcry from the farming community as some of England’s good arable land lay fallow. Apart from letting the land revert there were specific things you could and could not do to manage the land; these requirements changed over the years. Back at the beginning, for example, you could grow fodder legumes (lucerne, vetches and clovers) and graze at certain times with goats, camilids and horses (hence the exorbitant prices alpacas and lamas commanded back then and the start of the huge surge into horsiculture). These things stick in my mind as I was running a milking herd of goats that benefited from a neighbour’s lucerne hay and some herb-rich grazing. There was some talk of environmental opportunities missed, but the increases is farmland birds and rare arable plants that followed was incidental, not a planned benefit. Read the rest of this entry »

farming has devastated the environment?

‘And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.’ (the Bible Genesis 1:28).

Shouldn’t it be so? Shouldn’t the earth be used to feed the starving in any way she can? A recipe for global disaster! We need the Earth’s diverse and complex ecosystems to support life, give as the oxygen we breathe. Don’t we need it too to inspire us and bring us wonder? Read the rest of this entry »

Gill asked if I could write a post on the economic side of farming. Wow what a subject and one I don’t feel I’m fully qualified to write on. But I can maybe give you slightly more understanding.

Farming is in a state of change and flux. It could be said that’s always so, but never more than at this present moment. Farming will survive for as long as we need food, it’s knowing what form it will eventually take. Pressures come from society’s changing needs and perceptions, new laws, free trade and the influences of climate change and depleting energy sources. It’s certainly a tough and unknown path to be trod but I believe there are opportunities for those that can see them, though I also think the casualties will be great. Read the rest of this entry »

We were like a cartoon characters – exploding out of the duvet, sitting bolt upright, eyes wide open and hair seemingly standing on end. The colossal crack-bang-clap of thunder shocked us awake, the simultaneous lightning flash floodlit the bedroom in a bluish light, the heavens opened and hail hammered down, pounding at the windows and ricocheting off the corrugated roofs of the barns. Wow! Robert leaped from the bed and ran round the house franticly turning off all sensitive probably-blasted-to-the-heavens-by-now stuff, bounded back into bed, snuggled down and pulled the duvet over our heads as we waited for the next explosion, and waited and…waited. That was it, just the one mega blast.
“I think we should wean the calves today” I mumbled from under the duvet
“What?”
“The calves…wean them…today”
“Yes, I heard, but why, what?”
“Well it came to me. Suddenly. Just like that. In a flash of lightning!” I giggled.
So we did.

Read the rest of this entry »

With the family are still clustered around the home fire, we were able to bring in the New Year together and even better celebrate Ben and Berengère’s engagement! Read the rest of this entry »

I can’t think straight. My brain’s like jiggling jelly. My body’s disassociated itself completely and my eyes, nose and lungs feel as if I’ve been burrowing deep in one of those sawdust lucky-dip bins….but I feel so relieved! Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, sun, sun, sun. Warm, bright, glorious sun!
Berengere returned from Marseille and brought the sun back with her. And little Camille has returned home to Norwich…we miss her. Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago I was a fairly reasonable, sane-ish person. In the flick of a switch I’ve changed into an obsessive, compulsive, agitated idiot. Why… Read the rest of this entry »

It’s doing monsoon…
The rain flings itself at the windows, the wind moans, grabbing and rattling the doors.

A fire burns brightly in the sitting room. The kitchen’s full of fragrant aromas. I slow cook tasty, succulent diced shoulder of Whiteface lamb in a port wine sauce with prunes and apricots. Roast the sweetest freshly-pulled baby beetroot and carrots drizzled with olive oil, and scattered with flat-leaved parsley. Chop and gently steam the colourful green, red-veined beetroot leaves and their deep red stalks, which I toss in butter. Bake our second early red potatoes to steaming, fluffy perfection.

We eat and feel wrapped in a warm cosy feeling more akin to autumn evenings than those of mid-summer. Read the rest of this entry »

On Sunday…(Heavy downpours)…we visit Port Isaac in Cornwall. Robert’s aunt, Deidre, is staying with us and we take the opportunity to walk one of our favourite stretches of coast. We are lucky, a narrow window of glorious weather paints the sea and cliffs in vivid colours.

On Monday…(Torrential rain and winds for twenty-four hours)…we bring the sheep up from the river meadows in torrential, driving rain - just in time, the river burst its banks. Read the rest of this entry »

I wonder how many of you heard the piece on the Today programme where Liz O’Neal from the Vegetarian Society stated that we should all be veggie/vegan to help climate change as farm animals produce more methane than the airline industry. The interview was prompted by a leaked email from the Environment Agency to a vegetarian campaign group. Read the rest of this entry »