There are greenhouse gases and there are greenhouse gases, and whilst Carbon Dioxide hogs most of the limelight, it has a couple of partners in crime which, despite grabbing less of the headlines, are much more deadly.

Nitrous oxide is a staggering 300 times more damaging than CO2, and (as I have already pointed out in an earlier post) the very fact that we are an organic farm and therefore do not apply soluble nitrogen fertilizer to the fields, dwarfs any of the other measures we might take in the fight against climate change. If you are a farmer and would seriously like to make a difference – then this should be your first step. This will also have a beneficial knock on effect on the other unseen enemy – Methane.

Thirty times more damaging than CO2, and a quarter of world wide emissions come from belching and farting livestock. It’s the burps that cause the most Methane, and such is the extent of the problem that scientist across the globe have been tasked with researching possible solutions.

It is now acknowledged that the greatest threat the Chinese pose to global warming is not by hankering after a washing machine and/or family saloon, but it would be a simple change of their eating habits towards the western diet of red meat with every meal that will cause the most damage.

What I love about these debates is the ludicrous statistical parallels that are quoted to illustrate the point. So - believe it or not - in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, the production of 1kg of prime beef is equivalent to driving an average car 160 miles. Does that make it any clearer? What if – like us – your nearest MacDonald’s is 14 miles away?? What price a Big Mac then???

Anyway, as it turns out, the boffins have discovered that diet of the cow can have a dramatic effect on its flatulence output, with plants such as white clover and birdsfoot trefoil being the best performers.

While very interesting, this comes as no surprise to me. For while these species are generally less productive and hard to establish from new, they are both abundant on our low input organic holding. No nitrogen fertiliser with fewer animals eating a less potent diet. Once again we are reinventing the wheel within agriculture when good old fashioned traditional farming already has the answers – even to ‘new’ challenges such as global warming.

At some point I am going to have to say a few words about the weather.

The last four weeks have been grim – very grim. Even telling the campers “never mind, it could be worse – you could be in Hull” hasn’t bought a smile to their faces. Every man, beast and plant on the farm now is desperate for a little sunshine on it’s back.

The warm wet period has been a boon for Blowflies and has seen me shearing a succession of damp fly-struck ewes, whose maggot ridden fleeces are quietly rotting in a corner of the yard.

Fortunately, when Greg the shearer rang me a couple of weeks ago late on a Saturday night and asked whether I had any sheep fit to shear on early Sunday morning, I had the presence of mind to forgo our Sunday lay-in and say “Yes – come on down”. A couple of hours work, and his team had shorn 160 of our ‘mutton’ (last years lambs) and so our prime organic wool for the year was safely stored away dry. I had momentarily thought about shearing them myself (as I had last year), but that would have required a least a week of dry weather (when it comes to shearing – I’m  20 a day man) and so thank goodness I didn’t.

Our organic wool has been improving year on year as we have been selecting only the best young sheep, throwing away the belly wool and not using any paints or markers. Whereas our first batch was ‘Arran’ (very itchy), we are now up to Double Knitting (only slightly itchy) and I have had a very natty sleeveless cardigan made up for myself – (pictured here after a hard morning in the shearing shed).

I have become very fond of the item of clothing, and not only does it look very dapper but I think it makes quite a bold statement. There can’t be many (if any) farmers in the UK sporting a garment produced from his own flock – let alone wool that he had sheared himself. My children, on the other hand, treat it as some sort of crime against fashion - they howl with protest when I get it out of the wardrobe and refuse to let me wear it in public.

However it doesn’t matter, for as it happens I was approached by Sky Travel Channel last month, who wondered if I would like to be part of a programme they were making about green tourism in Cornwall. They explained that the programme would have an audience of about 300 million people across 90 countries and would be repeated over and over ad nauseam. I jumped at it. What better opportunity I thought, of giving my cardigan the audience it deserves while sticking it in the eye of my brand-obsessed teenagers - hah!

Fashion? – what do they know about fashion!