Within hours of the news that Foot & Mouth had struck again we had concerned campers ringing up and wondering if they should still come down. With well in excess of 1,000 visitors over the summer from all over the country and with livestock which mingles with my neighbours beasts on the commons, what do we say? What exactly is the appropriate level of response.

Bio-security is not a word that slips easily off of the tongue, or indeed fits well with our marketing image of fresh air and freedom to explore our wonderfully wilderness. I remember vividly the sense of chaos and crisis which accompanied the 2001 outbreak, when I found myself - after a hastily convened meeting of commoners in the village hall - in charge of maintaining a bed of straw laced with disinfectant just below the cattle grid on the road to Blisland, about ½ a mile from the farm.

This was a typical - but understandable - headless chicken response by a community under threat from disease we actually knew very little about. More worryingly, this also seemed to be the case with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who ran around fire-chasing seemingly without a clue with how to really deal with the situation.

It was as I maintained my lonely vigil by the cattle grid that I began to see the fruitlessness of it all (who was I kidding with my bed of mushy straw), and I am depressed to see again farmers encourage to employ a range of Heath-Robinson disinfection-points with the inevitable hand painted sign written badly in Massy Ferguson red on an old piece of chipboard.

My personal feelings are that F&M was never carried or spread by the general public last time and I am glad to say that the advice from DEFRA this time contains unequivocal statements like “the countryside remains open” and “there is a clear principle that there should be a presumption in favour of maintaining public access”.

So our response to concerned visitors has been “come on down – its business as usual” and there is no bits of old carpet in our gateways or footbaths brimming with chemicals. Bio-security is a word which belongs firmly with establishments like the Pirbright laboratories. Air-filters, compulsory strip showers, secure drainage – this is Bio-security. And even with all these mechanisms and procedures in place, they managed to let the cat out of the bag.

It’ been a mixed week – to say the least

With a promise of seven dry days on last Sunday’s weather forecast, I was quickly on the phone to various contractors in the hope of getting all of the silage, hay and shearing completed in what would in effect be the first (and possibly only) week of summer.

First call to Graham (who cuts and bales the silage) only to find that he is approximately 600 acres behind on his list of work and couldn’t possibly come for a fortnight. Not very encouraging - it might be snowing by then!

Better luck with the next call to Greg the shearer. He says no problem – leave it with him and he will fit us in.

Lastly, I call Johnny and instruct him to cut the 4 acre field we always use to make some traditional small bale hay for the horses. ‘Am I sure?’ – yes of course I’m sure. Look at that glorious sunshine.

It was all going well until Thursday morning when the ‘possible light shower’ turned out to be a downpour followed by a couple of hours of steady rain. Make hay while the sun shines, goes the old proverb, and how true. Perfect hay is sun dried and each shower of rain that falls on the freshly cut grass will dramatically reduce its feed value.

So, with the weekend looming we had damp hay, no silage cut, but with at least a promise of shearing on Friday – as long as the sheep were dry. And thank goodness they were, for we woke on Saturday Morning to the news that Foot & Mouth had been found in a herd of Longhorns in Surrey. A complete shutdown on all livestock movements was implemented within hours of the outbreak and this has also stopped the shearers from working farm to farm.

So the sheep are all now shorn (except for four that gave Greg the slip – I will tackle these errant girls myself on Monday), and I have given up on making the hay (after another overcast day on Saturday it seemed wisest to just get it quickly into big bales – not such good quality, but adequate bullock feed nonetheless), and have spent the rest of the weekend reassuring campers that, despite what they see on the news, we still open and very much business as usual – mores the pity!