South Penquite Farm

Harvest of the moors

South Penquite Farm — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:26:06 +0000

For the last ten years now we have been paid as commoners to reduce the amount of grazing with cows and sheep on the open moors. This has been under the governments flagship conservation scheme Countryside Stewardship, and is aimed squarely at improving the common land for wildlife and allowing the heather to regenerate wherever possible.

It has been a bit of a bumpy ride with the farmers bemoaning the loss of agricultural ground and Natural England dissatisfied with the rate of recovery of the dwarf shrub cover. However one element of the moors has been completely happy with the scheme and flourished over the decade – European Gorse.

The lack of livestock and a milder climate has enabled this tenacious plant to build on its foothold and spread and grow at an alarming rate. Within the uplands it is now recognised as an invasive species and there is funding under the scheme available to deal with it if you can.

It is a known fire-climax plant, which means is readily catches fire but re-grows from the roots afterwards, and the seeds are also adapted to germinate after slight scorching. So you can burn, but unless you introduce livestock again afterwards (to nibble off the fresh shoots) it only reinvigorates the plant and will re-grow very quickly, using the ash of the fire as plant food.

Mechanical flailing will hammer it if you are brave enough to risk your machine, but this tends to scatter and spread the seeds ever wider, and so with each passing year you end up with a wider and thicker mat of fresh gorse to deal with.

Natural England’s preferred method is the good old slash and burn. You pick an area and clear with bow or chain saws and then remove and burn in large stacks. While this undoubtedly works it is to my mind a criminal waste of a valuable resource.

In my humble opinion, the best way to tackle the gorse is to cherry pick and only cut and remove the older (say fifteen to twenty year plus) bushes. Once they have reached this age they do not seem to have the energy to regenerate and the roots will rot into the ground. This coppicing will not only give the livestock greater access to all areas in the summer, but their thick tree like trunks also provide you with a usable fuel for your biomass burner (kitchen stove to you and me).

There is nothing startlingly new or original in this idea. Two hundred years ago, farmers would actually plant a field of gorse (or furze) for winter fuel and many farms still have fields call Furze Park. Once again I find we are relearning what was once commonsense sustainable agriculture.

Now, so long as I don’t lose any fingers using my lethal new tractor mounted saw bench, we should all be warm and cosy this winter.

The long and winding…

South Penquite Farm — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:20:11 +0100

Hopefully the last weather related blog I shall have to write for a while now as a week ago we finally managed to clear the backlog of shearing, haymaking and silage – each of which required a specific number of dry days. It was touch and go for all of these operations and as it was we had to abandon the shearing on one day, bale the hay a day early (which brought down the quality somewhat) and only just finished wrapping the silage hours before a downpour that would have completely ruined it.

As I write this over the bank holiday weekend, the sun is currently shinning, but there were heavy showers yesterday and tomorrow promises to be overcast with drizzle!

In a succession of wet summers 2009 has definitely been the most challenging and the camping fields look somewhat battered as they have struggled to cope with the constant slipping of overloaded saloon cars unsuited to off-road work and the steady trample of welly-clad campers – hoods up and bent against the elements - as they brave it to the loos.

Particularly hard struck has been the farm entrance lane. Never the smoothest of highways, this half a mile of moorland track has developed such a series of impressive potholes that it now resembles the lunar surface, with perfectly formed craters that can rip off an unwary exhaust with ease. And all this despite spending days and days during the winter carefully filling in last years holes with tonnes and tonnes of aggregate.

In desperation I have contacted a road reclamation firm that claim to have some powerful tractor mounted machinery that will eat up the old lane, crush it and lay it out again flat, hard and compacted and smooth as a baby’s bum.

Despite an impressive array of before and after photos in the brochure, I am still a little sceptical, but ever the optimist I have sent off a deposit and wait eagerly for October to see the results. Then it will simply be a matter of digging out the little stream that crosses the lane so that the ford will drop down to a slightly less scary level and then underpin our aging bridge with some concrete and the lane will be ready to meet the climate challenges of summer 2010. Let’s hope the Met Office doesn’t predict another BBQ summer – for all our sakes!

Water, water, everywhere…

South Penquite Farm — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 13:35:40 +0100

If there is a theme to life on the farm in 2009 it is definitely water. In January we suffered an extreme freeze which burst a pipe in our boiler room causing untold damage and in June we had a mini heatwave/drought, which dried up our pond and burnt off our grass roof over the meeting room. Now we are in July and we seem to be suffering a smallish monsoon.

On the upside, the pond (which is cleverly replenished by harvested rainwater from the cow barn) is back to normal and the grass roof is beginning to show the green shoots of recovery.

The downside (apart from having to continually grimace to the hardy campers who are here at the moment) is the number of farm jobs in July that are weather dependent.

Because we are organic (and use no artificial fertilizers) and because we are a hill farm (with very poor acid soil) we like to make our hay and silage much later than our conventional farming neighbours down in the valley. Whilst the ensuing fodder is of a poorer quality (the sugar levels in grass fall quite dramatically after spring) it does give the flora a chance to flower which is good for the insects and the cover is also excellent for ground nesting birds such as Snipe.

This is all positive stuff but it does mean we rely on a spell of goodish weather from about the 10th July onwards to make the hay and finish up the shearing of the ewes with lambs. Once we get into August then both of these jobs become urgent with the days becoming much shorter making wilting the hay much more problematical and with the sheep desperate to lose their winter coats.

These are testing times and with the school holidays quickly approaching I am glad to note that the Met Office is giving me a glimmer of hope of ‘more settled conditions’ for the last week of July – not before time!

The Fatted Calf

South Penquite Farm — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:06:18 +0100

Now approaching the end of spring and the start of summer proper, we have nearly finished our calving season on the farm. Avid readers with long memories may recall that we had a change of breeding policy last year and invested in a North Devon (Ruby Red) bull from a neighbouring parish.

Most of the cows have now given birth and we have been very pleased with the result. We have only had to assist one – a young heifer who decided that late in the evening on a bank holiday Sunday would be an ideal time to give birth – with the rest of them dropping painlessly (well at least from my point of view!)

The young bull has grown and filled out and is now quite an impressive specimen and (much to Cathy’s irritation) developed a playful streak and gambols and gallops around the field when we are seeing the cows. Quite an unnerving spectacle if you are unused to it.

Last week I had the pleasure of showing round the farm a group of French agriculture students from Brittany and was explaining to them that our supermarkets (the main buyers of beef in this country) preferred French breeds such as Charolais and Limousin, which are famous for their size and leanness. This delivers economy of scale and less unsightly fat in the packet. However this is all done at the expense of flavour and texture; two attributes that the French – with their penchant for fine cooking – would surely appreciate.

What is more, the North Devon (a smaller and fatter breed) is ideally suited to our area (hardly surprising really – as it is reputed to be the oldest cattle breed and may have been bred in the South West since prehistoric times) and will happily live out in all weathers and will fatten readily on grass alone.

Like a lot of agricultural ‘improvements’ made over the last 30 years (driven mainly by subsidies and supermarkets), the popularity of importing fancy breeds from different parts of the world may eventually prove to be unsustainable. Whist the innate suitability of our native breeds – which have been bred over hundreds of years to suit our geography – will prove to be the answer to meeting the nations food needs within a low input, climate-friendly, traditional farming system. Surprise, surprise.

Alma mater

South Penquite Farm — Sun, 17 May 2009 22:50:26 +0100

May is always one of our busiest months. There is still the odd sheep having a lamb and half of the herd has yet to drop calf. Our four yurts need to be erected for the half-term, and this spring we have been building a new loo block for the campsite with a seemingly never ending list of finishing touches. In amongst all of this I had foolishly agreed to come into my old school at Camelford and give the year 11 Geographers a talk about the CAP – Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy.

As you can imagine the subject is dry as dust, but has hugely influenced the way we farm on the moors for the last three decades.

Following the years of post-war food shortages and rationing, the CAP was a system of subsidies for farmers introduced with the express intention of producing large quantities of cheap food. In meeting these objectives it was massively successful, and older readers might remember the days of butter-mountains and wine-lakes that were the direct result of the policy. In its heyday in the UK we were producing over 80% of the nations food needs.

This was all swept away in 2005 with a radical reform that meant that farmers are now only paid for environmental benefits and food production is left to market forces. This has already started to bite and now food inflation has become a hot topic (and one I fear it is here to stay), and we have fallen back to meeting only 60% of the food needs of a growing population. All in all, quite an interesting story.

My class of fifteen-year-olds were a fairly tough crowd and so in order to break the ice I projected onto the whiteboard a photo of myself at 14 in my old school uniform. I had hoped that the 1976 glam rock hairstyle might at least raise a snigger, or that the fact we all wore a blazer and tie draw a gasp, but they were having none of it. I only got a small reaction when I told them that back in the 70’s - under where the new Maths block now resides - the school used to have its own farm with pigs and sheep.

In desperation for some sort of interaction, I asked the Geography teacher what he was doing in 1976 – turned out he hadn’t yet been born! Now I really feel old.

Spring lamb

South Penquite Farm — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 09:19:08 +0100

The first lamb of the year marks a turning point in the calendar and always gets a lot of attention. We try a time our flock’s lambing to meet with the late moorland spring - usually about 6 weeks after everyone else’s. This is achieved by picking on a likely date in April and then turning the rams in with the ewes exactly four months, four weeks and four days before it.

As the effects of global warming have become more tangible, over recent years I have crept our lambing date forward to match the changing times. This year I picked on April 14th and I have to say it feels about right. The grass has started to grow again and the air temperature (whilst still throwing the odd frosty morning) has been positively balmy on sunny days.

My favourite conversation starter at the moment has been the ‘long hard winter’, and whilst it was hardly a winter of discontent, there were episodes of extreme freezing and snow and it all felt much more like the ‘bad old-good old days’.

I have ridden my luck this winter and if it had not been for the fortuitous sale of thirty bullocks I would have run out of feed a while ago and I have had to suspend our mutton production since January as the sheep needed all of their calories just to stay alive and were no where near fit enough to slaughter. This year I will be a bit more cautious and save a bit more hay and silage.

Still, hope springs eternal, and one thing I had forgotten about the old harsh winters was the profound sense of relief which the warmer weather arrives and the days start to draw out again.

New loos for old…

South Penquite Farm — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:21:37 +0000

A couple of unexpected opportunities have come up in the last month and so we have brought forward are plans to replace our aging campsite loo block.

Built for our grand opening for the total solar eclipse in 1999, our trusty toilet block was already second-hand when we cobbled it together from the remains of a couple of old builders sheds. While they had served us well, they are now really beginning to show their age and can’t compare with the swanky new shower block we erected a couple of seasons ago.

The first opportunity was that as a direct result of the credit crunch, Brian - an old school mate, neighbour and builder of the shower block - had his order book dry up and so was at a loose end and able to give us his undivided attention (a real bonus when it comes to building work) and secondly an email popped into my box from an unknown farmer looking to buy some “native breed, TB free herd, organic yearlings.”

To bust some of the farming jargon for you;

Native Breed: Most of the beef you buy in a supermarket will be a crossbred animal using what farmers term ‘continental’ bulls. These are bigger, leaner animals who get their names from the regions of Europe they hail from – e.g. Charolais, Simmental and Limousine. Supermarkets like big animals as they are cheaper per kilo to slaughter and butcher (a sort of economy of scale), and they like lean animals as they say consumers don’t want fat on their meat. Farm shops and smaller butchers prefer our own native breeds as they are smaller (making for more reasonably priced joints), and fatter (which is where the flavour comes from).

TB free: Tuberculosis is still the number one worry with beef and dairy farmers, and farmers are naturally very wary of buying from herds which have experienced problems in the last couple of years. Badgers and cows cross infect each other and to date the only solution the government has been willing to undertake is to removal and slaughter of infected cows from each herd identified through a program of annual testing. Interestingly this week a couple of new initiatives have been announced. Wales (where there is still a large rural vote) is to undertake a mass cull of Badgers in the worst affected areas, whilst our own urban-centric parliament (who would never consider a cull of wildlife) is going to introduce a badger vaccine – good luck!

Yearlings: a catchall phrase used by farmers to describe any bullock that is older than a calf but not fully grown.

As it happens I have built up a bunch of about 35 such beasts that had turned almost feral whilst grazing on the moors and I thought it would be a good idea to thin them out a bit so I rang up the mobile number on the email and arranged a viewing.

He came and (despite them running around the field like deranged loonies) he liked them and he wanted to take 30 off of my hands. We agreed a price per kilo and after another TB test (a new stipulation for any animal moving between farms) we loaded them in his trailers and he drove away promising to weigh the trailers on the way home.

Their weights were good, the price was fair and the unexpected lump of cash was passed straight over to Brian with instructions to start building. Result!

Frozen Solid

South Penquite Farm — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 12:34:47 +0000

Global Warming – if ever there was a misnomer set to confuse people, this is it. Climate Change is the preferred description at the moment and a changeable climate it certainly is. The first two weeks of the New Year saw some of the coldest nighttime temperatures that my children have ever experienced. And thanks to my decision to convert our heating from nasty oil to environmentally sustainable local wood they got the true experience! Minus 13 was the lowest recorded temperature on the moors and bloody cold it felt too.

Now whenever they get some poor farmer to talk about the freezing weather on the local news, he or she always comes up with the lines that a couple of weeks of frost is ‘good for the ground’ and ‘kills all the bugs’. Well as Cathy could testify from the full to bursting wards at the local hospital where she puts in a couple of shifts a week – the bugs have nearly killed off half of Cornwall and I can only add as the farmer that the whole experience was a right royal pain in the butt.

For the first few days of frost, it was simply a matter of going around the farm and breaking the ice off the tops of the water troughs as you fed the animals. By midday the pipes had warmed in the sun, and water would trickle in again.

Then as it got colder the pipes would remain freezing and each day the levels in the troughs was dropping ‘til eventually there was no ice left to break. Bemoaning to my father-in-law he said, “Well you don’t have any problems – you do have a river!”

And of course he was right. So the next day saw me and the dogs shepherding the flock onto the moor and across to a wide ford in the river to drink. They must be thirsty – I thought. But no…the sheep stood with their backs to the water and looked at the dogs and me while we looked at them. You can take a sheep to water – but you can’t make it drink!

To be fair, the only ewe that did try to get a drop, slipped over on some waterside ice and promptly gave up. So we rounded them all up and headed back to the field.

Fortunately the next day it started to thaw and the water problems resolved themselves. That is until a couple of days ago, when we opened our campsite boiler room to find that a burst pipe had been spraying water all over our plumbing and dry storage for the last three weeks! As the temperature starts to drop again we find ourselves up to our necks in builders quotes and insurance claims while we huddle around the stove, waiting for the snow to arrive.

School’s Out

South Penquite Farm — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 10:33:13 +0000

Just before Christmas I had a request from a teacher at our local primary, wanting to bring all her Infants to the farm for a morning so that they could learn a little about food and farming – one of their topics for the year.

No problem I said. Our excellent village school only has about 25 kids all told and so the infants would only be about a dozen at the most. These would all easily fit into our ‘schools’ trailer with several bales of hay and we could take a tractor ride around the farm feeding the cows as we passed.

It was a cold (but fortunately dry) day and having let out and feed the chickens & ducks I loaded up 8 bales of hay, 14 kids and the 2 teachers into the trailer and off we went.

Up in the first field the cows obligingly crowded round the trailer with the children looking right down their nostrils. “Now children, before feeding the cows it is most important to count them and make sure they are all here – how many can you count?” Several minutes passed and after a lot of shouting and arguing a general consensus of 12 was reached by the noisy congregation. “Ah” I said knowingly “I thought you would find this hard – are you sure you haven’t missed one of the calves?”

At this point I caught the eye of one of the teachers, who was gesturing with her head to the far corner of the field where there was the unmistakeable outline of a dead bullock with two legs sticking in the air – stiff with rigour mortis.

“Oh no – that’s right. Twelve it is – well done”, and I quickly chucked over a couple of bales and hopped back into the tractor. I drove smartly round the edge of the field (as far from the poor recently deceased as I could) and had nearly reached the next gate when one sharp-eyed youngster started shouting and pointing “Dominic…look…over there…in the corner!”

There was no hiding it – so I swung the tractor round and parked a respectful distance from the corpse. As you can imagine, this was going to be the highlight of the trip, with the cherry on the cake being the fact that a fox had eaten away some of the calf’s nose in the night!

I always like to give kids the plain facts if I can, but I was quite unprepared for the barrage of questions coming from the trailer. I imagine his is what it must be like to be Prime Minster in a time of national crisis – emerging from Number 10 into a wall of microphones and cameras.
“Why did it die?”
“Well…it’s a bit hard to tell really”
“Did a fox creep up on it while it was asleep and bite his nose off??”
“Well…no – a fox couldn’t kill a great big calf like this. It must have been dead already”
“Won’t his mum be very sad???”
“Well…I expect so. In fact yes here she comes over now.”
“Won’t his dad be sad as well????”
“Well, no…not really. You see, he’s in the next field now with another 20 cows and…” at this point I looked up at the two teachers who were leaning against the remaining bales and smugly giggling to each other as I dug myself deeper and deeper in.

“We didn’t know when you were going to stop” they confessed to me afterwards. To be honest – I wish I had never begun!

A Christmas Carol

South Penquite Farm — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 08:48:10 +0000

Once on Bodmin's windswept moorland
Stood a lowly cattle shed
Where a farmer pronged his silage
So his bullocks could be fed
Awful was the pungent smell
As his wife would often tell

Tend the Geese, and count the Turkeys
Feed with corn until quite round
Safe to peck and stretch their wings now
Mr Fox is underground
Peaceful was their winter slumber
Unaware their days are numbered

Cross the fields, upon his quad bike
Farmer goes to feed the sheep
All the ewes contently grazing
All the rams, now half asleep
Each had serviced forty mums
Leaving blue upon their bums

Short the days, and bitter nights
Rain and sleet, and biting gales
Scraping muck through muddy gateways
Wishing he was somewhere else
How much better, life will be
When he's won, the lottery

Hasn't bought the kids their presents
Hasn't got the wife's Chanel
Can't stand Dr Who on telly
Grumbles through the family meal
Not a single cards' been written
All you'll get, is this damn poem!

Bully Beef

South Penquite Farm — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 20:20:36 +0000

Apologies to any regular readers who were hanging on the result of our TB test for the cattle. We were (thankfully) given the all clear by the vet and (unlike some of our less fortunate neighbours) do not have to suffer the rigmarole of retesting ‘doubtful’ animals or worse actually losing some of the herd.

Our cows are predominantly Galloways – a wild and woolly breed from the South West of Scotland – and they are well suited to moorland life and more importantly met the criteria for attracting the old Hill Cow Subsidy which used to provide most of the profit on a cow in these Less Favoured Areas of the uplands.

The Hill Cow Subsidy was replaced (along with all of the other production subsidies) in the 2005 shake up of CAP (the European Common Agricultural Policy) and most of the incentive for keeping these less than commercial beast was gone forever.

However it was recognised by Natural England (the government quango with responsibility “to conserve and enhance the natural environment”) that some of these traditional breeds were vital conservation tools in looking after some of our more remote habitats and so they instigated a compensation package called the Tradition Breeds Initiative. This rewarded farmers for grazing sensitive sites with these native cows who have a deserved reputation for finding forage in the most inhospitable corners of scrub and wetlands.

So we duly signed up and kept our Galloways; and as there was no particular market I determined to keep the calves until they naturally reached their full maturity using nothing more than silage and poor quality grazing.

I can now claim to be a bit of an authority on this subject and can confirm that it takes over 4 years for a pure Galloway to reach his full potential in these circumstances. I can also tell you (we had one steer killed last week) that the result taste delicious and fatty and something for you to really get your teeth into.

There is however an unforeseen downside to my breeding policy. After several years we now have a gang of 35 Galloway youngsters of various ages who having spent one or more summers grazing distant areas of moorland out of sight of virtually any human contact have become more or less feral. And whilst the actual TB test was fine, our cattle handling pens (and ourselves) bear the scars of having to coerce this wild bunch through the ‘race’ (the post and rail corridor in which the cattle wait for their turn) twice in a week. To say that they had a smashing time would be understating it – by the time the last steer was tested there was a pile of splintered timber where the proud race had formally stood.

Still – I find revenge is a dish best served medium-rare with a béarnaise sauce!

Les Misérables

South Penquite Farm — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 15:57:38 +0000

Half term and just back from four days in and around Paris. Having managed to persuade the family during our French touring holiday in August it would be a very bad idea travelling overnight to spend one day in Disneyland, I had to relent and agree to a trip in the autumn.

My top tip for Disneyland is simply don’t go. However, if like me, you have failed to rule your family with a rod of iron and you find yourself outvoted, then I strongly advise you to pick up a copy of A Brit's Guide to Disneyland Resort Paris by Simon & Susan Veness. While I cannot share any of the couples enthusiasm for all things Disney – it proved to be a invaluable guide and we would have been wandering around like lost sheep without it.

I would like to say that the first two days we organised in Paris and Versailles were compensation for spending 48 hours chez Mickey & Minnie, but in truth we had to queue for an hour and a half to simply gain access to Louis XIV’s sumptuous palace (after first spending an hour and a half on the train getting there) and on the day in Paris we queued for a staggering two hours in order for the privilege of climbing up the first 375 steps of the Eiffel Tower. This meant that we didn’t have time for the Pompidou Centre and to cap a perfect day they changed the late night opening for the Louvre so that all that Cathy got in reply to her “Ou est la Mona Lisa” was “Sorry Madame, we are closed – come back on Wednesday.”

Still, this put us in good stead for the two days at Disneyland, where queuing is the order of the day. By the time they opened our first chosen ride (Thunder Mountain) there was already a 50 minute queue. 53 minutes later we staggered from our carriage with Cathy and I in mild shock and Churton screaming that he wanted to go home. The teenagers however were keen for more thrills and so the day developed into a routine of long queues followed by short burst of either excitement or disappointment. After about six hours of this I was grateful to sit down in the Silver Spur and, despite paying Michelin star prices for a Harvester style steak and chips, was sufficiently mellowed (after a bottle of Disneyland Merlot – who says they haven’t embraced French culture!) to face a couple more queues before retiring for the day.

Day two was saved by the lesser used (but in my humble opinion – vastly superior) Disney Studios Park, which instead of fairground thrills delivered its excitement through a series of experiences which were all linked to actual movie making. The stunt car demonstration was spectacular and the Sci-Fi Armageddon was so realistic that one child had to be let out of the simulation in hysterics. His annoyed parents obviously hadn’t read the warning signs on the door.

All in all though, the time passed pleasantly enough and that evening we were all aboard Eurostar for the long trek home. Our sleeper from London delivered us back to Bodmin at 6.30 in the morning and we were to be greeted at home by a letter from the State Veterinary Service stating that the farm from which we had purchased our new bull (see entry for 7th July) had gone down with TB (tuberculosis). We now await our routine TB test on Monday with some trepidation and our fingers firmly crossed – I have had quite enough excitement for one week.

Turf's up!

South Penquite Farm — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 07:07:36 +0100

When we extended our popular meeting room by knocking through into a redundant tin barn I had the bright idea of having a ‘living’ roof. Cathy, despite immediately correctly sensing that this would be yet another in a long line of green ideas that would be unlikely to save the planet but guaranteed to cost us a fortune, reluctantly agreed and we broke the news to Brian the Builder before he commenced work.

The barn that was being replaced had a nearly flat roof - which was ideal - and so the main requirement was to beef up the walls in order to take the weight of the sodden sods on top.

Building anything these days is expensive but I was quite please that the extra timber and the special membranes for the roof had only added a few hundred pounds to the overall cost and decided that we could save a few quid by doing the actual grassing-over ourselves. However, come the spring, when the building was eventually finished (barely three months over date) we had already started lambing and with the camping season nearly upon us I decided to put off the earth moving until the autumn.

All summer long people admired our new addition but wondered what the wooden retaining rail around the roof was. “That’s going to be a grass roof” I would explain looking up, and the more I looked at it the more daunting the task seemed to be.

The perfect opportunity presented itself a couple of weekends ago as Evan (the digger driver) was here ripping up the camping field in order to lay a new track and I had some unpaid labour in the form of an old army buddy. Roger had motored down on the Sunday and we had a very pleasant afternoon at the beach followed by a full roast dinner and plenty of wine in the evening. Once he was nicely mellowed I broke it to him gently that I had a small job for us the next day. “No problem” he said after his third glass of vin de rouge.

We soon gave up with the hired turf cutter, as this impressive looking machine was a pig to operate and the resulting turfs – though very neatly cut – were wafer thin and no use for this job. So we hacked into the field with the digger and hauled up rough and ready chunks of field with the aid of the tractor loader and knitted them together like some giant jigsaw. The actual roof is (thankfully) only nine metres by four, but even when laying clods of earth and turf that were less than six inches thick this equates to about six tonnes of material to hoist up.

To say that we were knackered after two days would be an understatement. To say that on close inspection it was a pretty job would be a slight exaggeration. However I can say that I am exceptionally pleased and proud with the result – anyone for crochet?

Band of Brothers

South Penquite Farm — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:13:28 +0100

Spent the weekend away from the farm at Lulworth Cove to attend a reunion that I had helped organise of some of my old army buddies.

I joined the army in September 1978 as a ‘boy’ soldier in the Junior Leaders Regiment at Bovington camp in Dorset. I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do after scraping through my ‘O’ levels (beyond a determination to leave school), and so when one of my best friends, Simon, suggested we join the army as bandsman as his older brother had done I said ‘sure, why not’ (much to the relief of my father – who was beginning to despair at that point).

So, along with twenty-odd other 16 year olds, we reported on that fateful day to Stanley barracks and began what was to be two years of training to become musicians in the army. Why Her Majesty required us to be harassed, bullied and brainwashed for quite so long and quite so hard, still remains a mystery to me. The job of bandsman (and I think even my comrades would agree) was not that hard – the ability to play simple tunes while marching in a straight line with shiny boots was about as difficult as it got. Yet we were subjected to all manner of tortures including log-runs and rope-courses and endless, endless moping and polishing and ironing all whilst being shouted at by a group of grown men who (now looking back) I can only believe must have derived some sort of sadistic pleasure from it.

However, this was our rite of passage and over those two years, in the face of adversity (especially the Physical Training Instructors) we bonded and grew together. Then - as abruptly as it began - it was all over and we were split up and posted to our regiments in different corners of the empire, and while most had kept in touch with one or two of the others, many of us never saw each other again until this weekend.

As it happens, another ex-bandsman now works there so we had full access to our old barracks (thanks again Olo), and as our collective memories began to piece together our shared experiences I was amazed at how well we all got on – almost immediately picking up where we had left off some thirty years ago. I was surprised at how fond I was of friends I hadn’t seen for decades. I had forgotten so much, and in an age of anxiety where many struggle with who they are and where are they going, it is a wonderful thing to rediscover where you came from.

A fantastic weekend, and the hours flew by in a haze of memories. It was an event that will stay with me for a very long time and I know that I wasn’t the only one to experience a surprising depth of nerves, then elation, then emotion, before the bar finally rang time on our humble gathering. Over the course of the evening many of the lads came up and told me how grateful they were that I had perused my initial idea and brought us altogether - but it wasn’t that difficult in these post-google times, and I in turn was just as grateful that they all travelled so far and taken time out of their busy lives to make it all happen.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.

Vive La France!

South Penquite Farm — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:20:26 +0100

Not long back from a great ten days spent touring Brittany & Normandy in the camper. Our normal destination for a few days summer camping is Polzeath Beach (about 20 minutes away on the North coast) so this was quite a departure for us. Back in the winter when our good friends Bev & Jane (wonderful but foolhardy souls) offered to house/campsite/farm sit for the August bank holiday, we leapt onto the web a booked some ferry tickets before they had a chance to think it over. The kids were absolutely amazed when we announced that we were going to go “abroad” and the excitement was building all summer.

Now some of you might think that seven of us in a VW camper for ten days might not sound like much of a holiday and as the date approached I began to wonder if indeed it would be less a relaxing vacation and more a severe test of family unity. The kids said that was fine as long as it was hot and there was good surf. This I evaded with “Well it will certainly be hotter that here” - (not hard after possibly the worst summer on record).

And so we trundled off to Poole with every inch of the van crammed full of stuff and carrying a large tent and four surfboards on the roof. It was raining as we left and the crossing to Cherbourg (4 hours) was rough enough to give everyone a real sense of adventure (especially Cathy whose pallor by the time we landed matched the olive green paintwork of our van). But as we landed the sun came out and with minimal screaming as Cathy negotiated the first series of French roundabouts we were on the road and soon at the first campsite.

Having done all of the booking and planning I was going to be in for a hard time if the holiday didn’t live up the kids wild expectations and so I was a bit nervous as we approached. However, I needn’t have worried as it was a lovely clean campsite, with its own outdoor pool and footpath down to a secluded sandy beach where a handful of surfers were enjoying an evening in the waves.

I could go on and on about how wonderful the next ten days were but those of you who have already been to northern France already know it and for the rest of you I simply say – visit, it is a wonderful country. There seems to be so much space compared with our crowded Isle, you get a real sense of peacefulness. The roads are empty, the locals are friendly, the bread is always freshly baked and the butter is too die for…what more could you want.

By the time we had reached Carnac, my stock in the family had already risen appreciably. Here we had the inspired idea to hire some bikes to visit the various Neolithic megaliths in the area (always a high point in any Fairman Family holiday – just ask the kids!) and we finished the day on the largest sandy beach I have ever seen. It went on for miles and was only spoiled by the fact that we annoyingly had to share it with at least 5 other people, a dog and a horse.

How Newquay ever earned the reputation of the surfing capital of Europe I shall never know – if you like surfing then head for the west coast of France. Before we left I was worried that our latest eBay purchase (a nine foot longboard) would never get to see the water. As it was we had some of the longest cleanest surf we have ever experienced.

Back home and after two weeks of rain and wind and the holiday feel good factor is just beginning to wane a little. We have just reached the end of the stack of butter we brought back and I am suffering ‘moules’ withdrawal. Lets hope that Bev & Janes memories of the trials and tribulations of running South Penquite over a wet bank holiday begin to fade before next summer!

Peak Oil

South Penquite Farm — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:48:03 +0100

There is a modern myth that every farmhouse has an Aga in the kitchen; and whilst this might be true of the period farmhouses that have long since been divorced from their land and are now home to the rural affluent - walk into the kitchen of a real farmhouse and you will find a Rayburn.

The Aga was designed by a Nobel Prize-winning Swedish physicist Dr. Gustaf Dalén and is revered amongst serious cooks for maintaining a constant roasting temperature.

The Rayburn was launched in 1946 and is loved for its ability to warm hypothermic lambs, dry socks on the foot, and run on a fuel of damp twigs and baler twine.

Interestingly, they are now both produced by the same factory in Telford.

When we first moved to the farm in the seventies there was already an old Rayburn in situ which ran on solid fuel (wood and coal). It was a full time job to feed it and empty the ashes, and our roast dinners were either well-done or rare depending on the vagaries of the weather. During the 1980’s a lot of these machines were converted to the cleaner and easier fuel of oil - however my Dad was having none of that. Whether it was some hangover from the war or just the memories of the oil embargo of the early seventies, he refused to “give any more money to those bloody Arabs”, and we carried on with a sooty kitchen and lukewarm baths.

When he passed away in 1997, Mum was only too pleased to cash in his secret collection of illicit wartime weaponry (Lugers and the like) and had enough to purchase a brand new oil fired Rayburn. Next door, we had already had our old Rayburn converted to oil and so for the next decade or so we were both happily filling up our oil tanks (at about 18p per litre) and had hot water and central heating on demand.

Last week we paid a chap £240 to have ours converted back to wood. I don’t need to tell you why, and the old man who came to do the work was supposed to be semi-retired, but has found himself run off his feet, ripping out the oil burners from Rayburns that he and his father had spent years carefully converting to oil.

I have bought myself a new chainsaw and a rather natty pair of safety trousers and am planning to spent the winter months stockpiling the forest of gorse and willow that have taken over areas of the farm and moor which are now conserved for wildlife. In previous years we would have paid contactors to clear this scrub which would have burnt it on site as a waste product. With oil now at 60p a litre it is now a criminal waste of a perfectly good fuel and so Cathy now spends a good deal of her day stoking the fire like some latter day Casey Jones while I’m a lumberjack (and I’m OK) – my old man must be laughing in his grave!

Ruby Red

South Penquite Farm — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:36:06 +0100

Regular readers might remember that last year we purchased a Beef Shorthorn bull to ‘work’ on our Galloway cows, which marked a change in direction for our beef breeding.

The Galloway hails from the South-West corner of Scotland and is renown for its hardiness and ability to shrug off the most inclement weather. It has a thick hairy black coat and an even thicker hide which can withstand the worst extremes of the winter with ease. To say that they are good mothers is an understatement – they are actually ferocious mothers and will happily chase you around the field bellowing at the top of their voice if you so as much glance at their offspring. This makes tagging (every calf in the UK has to be identified by a unique numbered tag in each ear before it reaches the age of 7 days) and castrating interesting work indeed.

As I get older the ‘fun’ of playing cowboy when dealing with these wild beasties has diminished over the years and with so many campers and school children visiting the farm I decided a change to a more calmer breed was in order. Hence the Beef Shorthorn which was a recognised commercial cross with the Galloway and promised a quieter life.

Unfortunately, whist the bull was certainly a gentler animal, the calves he sired were enormous and proved very difficult to deliver. In an ideal world, your average beef farmer would like to go out in the morning and be pleasantly surprised by each newborn happily suckling on its mum. With the Shorthorn we had to drag each calf out of the cow with the assistance of the modern equivalent of a medieval torture tool known as a calving aid. This device can exert great pulling power on the emerging calf, but can leave both the cow and calf (and indeed the farmer) feeling bruised, battered and drained.

So the Shorthorn has left and has been replace by a North Devon – known as a Ruby Red in recognition of it fabulous deep colour. These smaller animals are renown for being docile to the point of comatose and will quite happily put on weight merely looking at a field of grass. These are both qualities that are ideally suited to our organic system and as middle age approaches I can see that me and the bull will have quite a bit in common as we go about our business, gently piling on the pounds. Although - I should hasten to add - here the similarities end and only one of us is here to serve the old cow!

The Brown Envelope

South Penquite Farm — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 10:16:23 +0100

Earlier this week I was having 40 winks on the sofa after a particularly hectic morning vaccinating lambs, when I was rudely awoken from my slumber by the telephone. The lady announced that she was Tiffany from BBC Radio Cornwall, and would I like to comment on the “good” news today that DEFRA (the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) had declared its intention to pay 75% of farmers their 2008 Single Farm Payment by the end of January 2009. When she learnt that I was one of many still waiting for my 2007 payment she was keen for me to do a telephone interview ready for the main 5 o’clock news.

Farming subsidies are a complex and emotive issue and they have undergone radical changes in the last few years. Previous to 2005 we were paid a set amount per cow or ewe as part of the European Common Agricultural Policy. This was set up back in 1960 to ensure that the (mainly peasant) farmers of the EU could receive a reasonable standard of living while producing reasonably priced food.

Over the decades this has proved to be an unwieldy beast and led in the 1980’s to the infamous butter mountains and wine lakes. These surpluses were not only wasteful but highly damaging to developing third world countries who were struggling to maintain their own agricultural industries. Something had to give and as the EU expanded it was apparent that this level of protectionism couldn’t be sustained.

So in 2005 we had a massive shake up, and whereas previously we had to apply for a variety of subsidy schemes (Cow Premium, Ewe Premium, Hill Livestock Compensatory Allowance) each with their own rules and tradable quotas, we were presented with a brand new, one-stop scheme which paid out per acre rather than per animal.

This was radical because it meant that farmers would receive support for environmental benefits (clean air, water and soil protection) and were not required to grow any crops or keep livestock. For us hill farmers this would mean that each cow and sheep now had to pay its own way through life and gradually over the last few years farmers have reduced herds and flocks to more sustainable levels and the prices have responded to the diminishing supply. While this has contributed to the rising food inflation, it has meant that the amount of the EU budget spent on agriculture will drop from the over 60% of the total budget in 1992 to around 30% by 2013.

On a farm level the stark truth is that while a rise in the price of beef and lamb has been welcome it has been more than matched by a rise in diesel and grain and I would say that nearly every farmer is still ‘subsidising‘ his livestock enterprise with his Single Farm Payment so some degree or the other. I pride myself in being further ahead than most in running a low input, organic, sustainable farm with a handy extra income stream from the campers, but I am still no where near being able to survive without the ‘Brown Envelope’ – (farmers jargon for the subsidy cheque).

So I had a few choice words for Tiffany - she obviously wanted a whinging farmer for this item and I gave it to her in spades, and made the headlines of the bulletin at 5. I then immediately crossed my fingers and hoped that nobody from the Rural Payments Agency was listening, lest they might slip my application to the bottom of the pile! As it happens my brown envelope was delivered the very next morning – talk about the power of radio.

Mmmm….I’m lovin’ it

South Penquite Farm — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 10:28:00 +0100

Last Sunday was Open Farm Sunday. This initiative has been going for three years now and farms across the country are encouraged to open their gates to the public on the first Sunday in June as a massive PR exercise. This is an excellent idea and has really gained momentum since the first open day in 2006.

I had thought about doing it last year – but only really heard of the scheme late in the day and was already behind getting the campsite ready for half-term. However this year, with plenty of time to plan, I signed us up to be one of the 400 odd farms who would participate.

As first timers I thought we would keep it simple and I listed on the Open Farm Sunday web site that the event would start at 2pm with a guided farm walk, followed by a trailer ride back to the farm yard and then I would do a small sheep shearing demonstration and it would all be over by about 4.30.

The good people at LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming) who were doing all of the central planning and organisation had managed to attract an impressive array of sponsorship for the event and every farm that signed up received a box of goodies including posters, flyers, postcards, helpful books and a rather natty Open Farm polo shirt with all of the sponsors logos on the back. All of the usual suspects were there including the RSPB, the NFU and Natural England as well as a couple of unlikely ones including McDonalds.

Now, just because we live on an organic farm and grow our own veg in the garden doesn’t mean we don’t all enjoy the odd treat of pigging out on fast food once in a while. In years gone by I would always have favoured KFC over McDonalds – nibbling at bits of lip-smacking chicken and daintily wiping my fingers with the lemon-scented wipe supplied. McDonalds at that time was using Argentinean beef and had a lousy reputation.

However in recent times they have really cleaned up their act and now source only British beef (hurrah) and only use British Organic Milk (hurrah, hurrah). KFC on the other hand seem to have gone right downhill (if our experience in Plymouth last month was anything to go by) and their tasteless chicken (scoured from some broiler house god knows where in the world) was dripping with grease and to add insult to injury they have even discontinued the moist tissues!

Anyway, it was the source of much amusement with the kids to see their dad sponsored by the big M and raised quite a few comments from the 50 or so members of the public who thankfully turned up. All in all it was a successful event (despite the fact that if started to rain at exactly two o’clock!) and the kids tea and cakes raised £84 for Save The Children. The date for next year has already been set for Sunday June 7th – so if you are in the area please come along.

Two’s company…

South Penquite Farm — Mon, 26 May 2008 09:29:27 +0100

May is one of the busy times on the farm; with the flock lambing, the cows calving, four Yurts to erect and the campsite to be ready for the first May Bank Holiday. Chatting to my farming neighbours on the road, we have come to a consensus that this had been a ‘slow’ spring. Although we had some decent weather in early April it has been a very mixed bag since with lower than average temperatures and quite a few nigh time frosts – even as I sit here writing this on the second May Bank Holiday it is blowing a gale, and through the rain lashed window of my office I can see the hunched forms of disgruntled campers traipsing across the yard.

Lambing went well generally, with only a few weather related deaths and quite a good crop of ‘doubles’ (twins). On one early morning I was accompanied by Churton (now 7) who had plenty of time to lamb a few sheep before his day starts at the village school.
“Can a sheep have three lambs Dad?”
“Yes – it’s called a triple and we sometimes get them with our flock”
“Dad – can a sheep have four lambs?”
“Yes – we’ve never had one, but it can happen. It’s called a quadruple”
“Dad, dad – can a sheep have five lambs?”
“Yes – I’ve seen it in the farming paper”
“What’s that called?”
“A quin-something”
“What about six?”
“Well…”
“What about seven??”
“Hmmm…”
“What about eight…a hundred… a zillion!”

By one of those wonderful quirks of fate – as we get to the far corner of the lambing field that morning there is a ewe standing proudly over her three lambs! For a hill ewe to safely deliver three offspring by herself is quite a feat. Lots of sheep have trouble counting two lambs, so to have delivered three in the dark and successfully nurtured them all is good going.

There are a couple of problems with triplets. Firstly it is quite normal to have either one lamb much bigger than the other two or worse one much smaller, and secondly the ewe is only equipped with two teats. With twins, each lamb will stick with his preferred ‘side’ to drink from – with a triple one lamb is always undernourished. So after a few hours it is best to take one lamb away and adopt it onto any spare ewe you may have that has perhaps lost its own lamb.

All the sheep have now lambed and with all this rain the farm has really greened up and there is plenty of spring grass for everyone – if only I could get the campers to see the positive side!

A spoonful of sugar…

South Penquite Farm — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:54:17 +0100

The earliest Easter for 95 years, coupled with a rather dreary spring has kind of thrown us all out. Calving started while the cows where in the barn, and with the odd snow flurry and bitter night time temperatures there was little prospect of turning them all out. However, a winter barn with four months worth of manure underfoot is no place for a newborn calf, and so the mums and babies have to brave it out in the elements. This led to three of them developing ‘dickey’ tummies and requiring twice daily doses of scour tablets and re-hydration drinks.

These are a simple combination of sodium diacetate and glucose (salt & sugar to you and me) which is administered by diluting with 2 litres of water. A simple and effective solution which both provides the calves with all they need while restricting the amount of mothers milk they will intake.

How do you get a calf to willingly take 2 litres of medicinal potion twice a day? Well in this we are added by a clever gadget known as a Calf Reviver, which is an humane force–feeding device consisting of a long clear tube attached to a plastic bottle. You gently insert the tube into the calves mouth and ease it down its throat to a marked point on the tube – this will ensure the end is well past the wind pipe. You then hold the bottle in the air at arms length so that the fluid is gravity-fed into the calf’s stomach.

This is actually much easier than it sounds and would be painless for both calf and farmer if it were not for the perverse attitude of the cow. Instead of standing back and quietly thanking you for treating their loved-ones, our Galloway cows tend to take great exception to you manhandling their offspring.

If you are lucky they will contain their protest to bellowing loudly while pawring the ground with their front hooves. This type of angry mum can be kept at bay by an accomplice with a large stick to wave. The more aggressive mums will chase you round the field as soon as look at you and over the years there have been more injuries on farms attributed to cows with calves than to bulls.

One of our mothers fell into this extreme category and so we had to develop a new technique using the pick-up truck.

The driver (Cathy or Mitchell) would drive into the field and position the truck between the cow and calf, which would leave the passenger (me) a couple of vital seconds to leap out, pick up the calf and toss it into the pick-up bed, nimbly jumping in after it before (hopefully) the cow had the chance to circumnavigate the truck. We would then drive across the field with the cow in hot pursuit while I administered the medicine in the back. Once treated, it is a simple matter to stop the truck, lower the calf over the side and drive off into the sunset leaving the mother to reunite with her beloved!

Sport of Kings

South Penquite Farm — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 08:26:27 +0000

If you are looking for a great family day out at this time of year, you could do a lot worse that your local point-to-point. The grass roots level of National Hunt Racing – these meetings are the bottom rung of the sport which works all the way up to the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the Grand National.

Even at this humble level the races are all over a gruelling three miles and the fences are all at least 4’6” high. This is a demanding test and requires a great deal of stamina and courage from the horses involved.

Last weekend found us all at the Royal Cornwall Showground just outside Wadebridge for the Western point-to-point. The great thing about these local events is that you really are in the thick of the action. As you lean against the rails you are literally only a few feet from the pounding hooves of the horse as they fly past; as you trudge back to the enclosure after the race (tearing up your betting slip as you go) you are literally rubbing shoulders with the owners and trainers; and when you go for a pee you are quite likely to be standing next to a jockey in full racing silks!

Before each race you get a chance to choose your nag as it is paraded around the ring and then it is off to the row of bookmakers to place you bet. A quick look at the odds on offer and you will find one or two horses are ‘odds on’ (meaning that your £1 stake will only win you a matter of pence) while the rest are 20/1 or over - which could net you £20 , but more than likely means that they won’t even make the distance.

The kids are amazed at the prospect of winning so much money for so little outlay, and with five different horses backed in each race we were certain of a fair share of winners. It is only at these provincial meetings that bookmakers don’t wince when you walk up and ask to put a quid on each of five different horses, and after each race one of the kids (the one who had inadvertently picked the favourite) would run back to the bookies to claim his/her winnings.

The net result of all this is that you only have to lay out £5 for each race for having the joy of seeing one of your dear children win enough to buy themselves a small chocolate bar. Lets hope we can wean them off of this addiction before they build a super casino in Cornwall!

Who wants to be a…

South Penquite Farm — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 10:44:14 +0000

…type-1-Transporter-of-livestock-with-a-certificate-of-competence….I do!

I doubt Chris Tarrent would be sitting quite so pretty had he used the above as a pitch for his quiz show. However, Wednesday found me sweating it out with eight other farmers in a room at the National Farmers Union office at Exeter, faced with 28 questions about transporting livestock. There were - of course - four answers to each question to choose from, but crucially no 50/50 option and no ‘phone a friend’.

The prize – a certificate of competence in transporting livestock distances over 65km. Something I have been doing (like all other farmers) quite competently for the last twenty years.

Experience has taught me though, that despite the temptation to buck against such pointless bureaucracy by starting a one man protest of non-conformity, it is best to grasp the nettle and get on with it, as somewhere down the line the lack of the correct paperwork will come back to bite you in the leg – usually costing you either time, money or extreme hassle. So I duly stumped up the required £33, sent off a passport photo (which I presume means that the certificate will take the form of yet another piece of laminated plastic competing for room with my credit cards in my wallet), and wended my way to Exeter.

There was due to be a half hour workshop on the regulations immediately before the test, so I presumed that there would be no need to actually read the glossy information pamphlet they had supplied before I got there. Wrong!

The young chap giving the presentation started by saying “I wont bore you with the details of the regulations as I’m sure you will have read them by now so I shall just give you a brief overview of the background to the new regs” – oh shit.

Luckily, during the PowerPoint presentation the other farmers are giving full vent to their frustrations about how ‘that’ wouldn’t work in ‘this’ situation, and surmising that the ‘pen pushers that wrote this rubbish have probably never even seen the back end of a cow’, giving me ample time to scan the regulations before we got down to business.

For the test, each of us had a laptop and a different 28 questions randomly picked from a pool of 400. I pity the poor soul who had the job of posing 400 different questions from such scant material and then dream up a staggering 1600 possible answers; and some of my questions revealed the extent to which he must have been scraping the barrel by the end. It was all very commonsense stuff and I’m sure most members of the public could have gained the pass rate of 21 correct answers, without never having been near a livestock trailer in their lives.

However I did manage to get a couple wrong and on the drive back I was wracking my brains to work out where I had slipped up (they didn’t give you a print out of the test presumably in case you passed on the questions and answers to your neighbours). Eventually I deduced that the answer to the question on ‘the condition of a healthy cows skin’ should have been ‘soft and supple’ – not ‘dry and tight’.

Well, all I can say in my defence is that they obviously aren’t talking about my hairy Galloway cows (pictured), whose gnarly weathered hides are as tough as old boots. Ironically, most people on the street would have probably guessed the right answer correctly – whilst my 'experienced' opinion of dry (as in absence of sweat – a sure sign of distress in an animal) and tight (having bent many a needle trying to inject my leathery cows) got it wrong!

Pesky pestilence

South Penquite Farm — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:34:18 +0000

The farming press has only one major preoccupation these days – disease. Bluetongue is the hot topic at the moment, but it is only weeks since the last case of Bird Flu and only a few months since last years Foot & Mouth fiasco. All this is underlined by the ever present threat of TB (Bovine Tuberculosis), which gets less prominence in the press, but is ever on the increase – especially here in the South West.

In the good old days our chief moan was usually about European red tape (followed closely by those hardy perennials – poor prices and the bloody weather); then at least you knew who to direct your anger at, and spending the odd rainy day in the office wasn’t all bad. These current threats are altogether more stressful and you feel helpless in the seemingly futile fight against various bacteria and viruses.

The advice we receive is less than inspiring:

Spray the wheels of incoming vehicles with disinfectant – Foot & Mouth

Keep your chickens away from wild birds – Bird Flu

Keep your cows away from badgers – TB

Attend meetings and talk to your neighbours – Bluetongue

None of the above instils you with much confidence in our ability to cope with an outbreak and for a farm which prides itself on extensive free-range livestock, attractiveness to wildlife and openness to the public we don’t know where to begin.

Bluetongue is a particularly nasty one which debilitates animals and led to a 25% increase in livestock mortality in the Netherlands last year. The good news is that there is a vaccination currently being developed. The bad news is that it won’t be available until May, while the disease will be a threat from mid-April (earlier if warmer - as it is carried by midges).

Meanwhile, here on the farm, we have just reached closure on BSE – the curse of the 90’s. Currently the only cows now that are not allowed to enter the food chain are those born before 1996 (pretty old for a farm cow), and these may be sent on the governments Older Cattle Disposal Scheme. This means that the cows will be humanely destroyed and the farmer paid 292 euros in compensation.

There are estimated over 200,000 such cows left at the moment on farms and even when the scheme closes at the end of the year there will still be in excess of 100,000 kicking around. We had to wait several weeks for a slot in the scheme our two remaining geriatrics, and anyone left with older cows after December will be faced with a bill to slaughter them. This will then draw a line under BSE forever and confine our experiences of Mad Cows to the history books. Lets hope it doesn’t take a decade to sort out Bluetongue!

Food for Thought

South Penquite Farm — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 08:20:38 +0000

Three years ago I joined the membership of the National Farmers Union. You might wonder why it took me a couple of decades of farming before signing up; well I suppose it was mainly the influence of my late father, who had a slightly different interpretation of what the initials NFU might stand for - (it involved the words ‘no’, ‘use’ and another that, even in these days of lax moral values, I shan’t repeat in mixed company). They were seen in his time as very much representing the interest of the old barley barons with not much to offer the subsistence hill farmer.

Things have changed over the years, and above all they now have an excellent insurance arm which can offer any farmer a very competitive whole farm insurance with just the sort of no-nonsense, common-sense approach to claims that make them a joy to deal with.

They are also much better at recognising the needs all farmers and have even paid lip service to embracing the organic movement as having something positive to offer. However, they still do take a very black and white view of modern agriculture, maintaining that all farmers are doing a fantastic job while suffering under poor prices, unseasonable weather, bad press and unreasonable bureaucracy.

We liberal, eco-friendly, lily-livered organic souls tend, on the other hand, to be full of doubt and self-awareness and we regularly tie ourselves in knots on issues with which we can have very little influence over - such as air freight, fair-trade, global warming and human rights. This can, if you let it, get you down rather and I sometimes wistfully wish I was as self-assured as some of my colleges in the NFU appear to be.

As it happens, the latest copy of their trade magazine – British Farmer & Grower – has a fascinating article in it, comparing farming today with 1908 (it is the NFU’s centenary celebration this year). Written by their chief economist – Carmen Suarez – it is full of statistics that I for one would have hardly credited were true, and shows perhaps why the NFU feels that British agriculture has much to be proud of.

Back in 1908, farmers produced only 40% of the food needed by the then population of 40 million – we now produce 60% of the food required by the 60 million or so on our crowded Isle today. This actually represents a fall since the mid-eighties, (the height of production subsidies), when we reached the giddy heights of producing 80% of the nations needs.

This has all been achieved with a workforce which is now only a fifth of the size of the million or so workers employed in 1908 (fairly amazing efficiency), and also the actual number of farms has been steadily falling as they have grown in size. Interestingly though, this has been lately reversed with the ‘Good Life’ factor finally kicking-in and producing a rise in small holdings, part-time, and lifestyle farmers.

I would have to say, that we are probably slipping into this category, as most of out real income now comes from the campers and Cathy’s job as a nurse at the local hospital. The necessity for this is evident from the last set of stats, which reveals that in relation to the cost of living, farmgate prices have fallen steadily over the last hundred years so that they now only represent a paltry 20% of their 1908 level. Food for thought indeed.

Hedge fund manager

South Penquite Farm — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 17:07:12 +0000

I don’t listen to the Archers religiously, but with four of my five radios (bedroom, dining room, wind-up radio for bath times and the one in the truck) permanently set to Radio 4 (so much so that the wind-up now can’t pick up anything else) I do get to hear quite a few episodes. In case you are wondering - the fifth one in the tractor swings wildly between Pirate Radio and Classic FM depending on whether it was Mitchell or me who last fed the cows!

Sad to say, that from time to time as the story of the good folk of Ambridge unfolds over the airways, I sometimes find life imitating art – or visa versa – and I hear exact conversations between the characters that we ourselves have at home.

Just before Christmas there was a story line about Ruth and David Archer replanting a hedge that his father had removed during the good old subsidy driven days of the seventies. As it happened, I had also just ordered 250 metres of native hedge to plant as a new field boundary.

Unlike the Archers, we were not reinstating a hedge, if fact our moorland holding doesn’t have any hedgerows at all – just miles of granite walls. However one particularly large field had been split by a former owner with a simple wire fence, which was now about twenty years old and showing its age. To build a new stone wall to replace the 250m of tatty sheep netting would cost well in excess of £30,000 and so I hit upon the idea of planting a new wildlife-friendly hedge.

First of all, we borrowed a tractor-mounted rotovator and ‘ploughed’ a line next to the old fence. Next, in came Chris with his huge monster-truck post thumper and put a new wire fence the other side of the rotovated strip. Then the trees arrived.

With over 1200 assorted thorns and beech this was going to be no mean job for Cathy and I (despite the fact it only seemed to take the Archer family one leisurely afternoon), and so it was with considerable relief that I learnt that the local college was looking for planting jobs for the students on their NVQ land management course.

This was a true win-win situation, with the college delighted to have such a large planting job to train the youngsters on and with me having to do nothing more strenuous than stroll up and down twice a week and survey the progress.

So now the hedge has been neatly planted (with about 5 tonne of shredded garden wasted as a mulch to keep the grass down for a bit), leaving me to return to restoring old tractors and running the village cricket team while Cathy runs off for a fling with the herdsman - damn those Archers!

With a cheap cheap here, and a cheap cheap there…

South Penquite Farm — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 16:50:34 +0000

Like many, I have been glued to the TV this week watching Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s bold attempt to convert the good people of Axminster away from buying cheap, intensively-reared chickens at their local supermarkets. In addition, my email inbox has been bombarded by emails from both the Soil Association and the NFU (National Farmers Union) roundly condemning him for either ‘going too far’ or ‘not going far enough’.

I have a lot of respect for Hugh and have followed his career with interest ever since the first series of River Cottage. This had a subtle but profound influence on me, and I look back now and realise that I have since been gradually turning my farm into a very large smallholding. This has suited Cathy (who I suspect would be just as happy with 20 acres instead of 200) and has been a real boon for our small campsite – the campers just love to see the chickens, ducks and turkeys roaming around the tents, and lap up the burgers and sausages from our own sheep.

Several times now, when hosting events for other local farmers, I have heard one sneer ‘this place is just like bleeding River Cottage’; which I take as a huge compliment rather than the insult it is so obviously intended to be.

Quite often in life, I pride myself to be between six months or a year ahead of my time (or ahead of popular opinion anyway), and so I can smugly declare that it was over 12 months ago that I said to Cathy that, as we already have a plentiful supply of top notch beef & lamb, surely we can afford to spend a bit more on our chicken. So we stopped buying two for a fiver at Tesco and started buying from another local organic producer at Stephen Gelly Farm. Now we are a large family, and so for a large bird we pay anything between ten and fifteen pounds. But, as Hugh pointed out in his programme, we harvest at least 3 meals from each carcass, and once you have tasted real chicken it is impossible to go back.

Persuading people to pay more, when food and fuel prices are already on the way up, is a tough one, and hats off to Hugh for even attempting it. However this sort of exercise also needs to be repeated across pork, beef & lamb, all of which we struggle to produce profitably in this country but will suffer from their own welfare and environmental issues if sourced cheaply from abroad. The messages are subtler and much less easy to convey to the public – but this is the challenge we as farmers need to rise to.

New Year Revolution

South Penquite Farm — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 10:47:12 +0000

I have grown to like making New Year resolutions and like to think that over the years I have changed our lives on the farm in small but significant ways through trying to keep to them. First up for 2008 is to make a concentrated effort to walk more. This may seem a strange one for a farmer, but believe you me, you can quite easily do a full days work without stretching your legs any more that climbing in or out of the cab of your pick-up/tractor.

Now that the cows are in the barn for the winter, all their feeding is done with large round bales, and the sheep are fed oats which are dispensed onto the ground in neat little piles by a trailer we pull behind the quad bike – so not much room for exercise in the day to day routine. My saviour is our young dog Maggie, who if left to her own devices will harass the poultry all day long. The only solution is to chain her up while not in use and so she requires a couple of good long runs each day. This will do us both the world of good a as an unexpected bonus has provided me with uninterrupted thinking time away from the kids/phone/office – a real bonus.

Without doubt though, the star resolution this year has been to limit the time the kids spend watching TV. I suspect that this is a bit of an issue in any house and is nearly impossible to handle without a major row. When I was a kid at secondary school I was the only one in the class without a TV - and so considered a bit of a freak; nowadays our own offspring think its too bad that we don’t let them have a TV in their bedrooms!

There must be a third way I thought, and so I scoured the Internet and purchased a wonderful little gadget called TVTimer. This simple little box takes your TV’s plug and locks it in to a small timer, and you can then set the hours of each day when the TV will come on. This is a bit fiddly, but well worth persevering with. Our TV will now only come on for an hour in the morning (for the sake of the youngest) and then remains dead until 6.30 in the evening (in time for the teens to watch Hollyoaks) and then cuts off at 10.30 – thus making sure we all get a decent nights sleep.

If you are desperate to watch something out of these times then you can of course video any program (the timer only effects the TV) and watch it later. This all takes a bit of getting used to, but as I keep saying to the kids, with a stroke I have given them all something that money can’t buy – several hours a week of their lives back!

Actually they have accepted it surprisingly well (because, I think it is much harder to get angry with an inanimate object that is preventing you from watching the box than it is to harangue a tired parent), and for me the proof of the pudding was when on day three (of the rest of our lives) I walked into our sitting room (formally the TV room) on a wet afternoon and there was my eldest, sitting on the sofa, quietly reading a book – it almost brought a tear to my eye.

www.tvtimer.co.uk

Merry Xmas & A Happy New Year!

South Penquite Farm — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 11:57:36 +0000

T'was the night before Christmas,
and all over the farm,
nothing was stirring
~ a quiet eerie calm

No squawk from a goose,
no gobbling Turkey
They’re both stuffed and trussed,
just awaiting the gravy

No moo from the steer
~ that great thumping geezer
You won't hear him now,
from the back of our freezer

The silence of the lambs,
who along with mint sauce,
we’ve had chopped with our chips,
without trace of remorse

And the ewes and the rams,
after hectic conception
Chew a post coital cud,
in relaxed contemplation

The children have finished,
decking the tree with it’s bling
And lay dreaming of goodies,
that tomorrow may bring

Leaving old Farmer Christmas,
tying sacks on bedsteads
And mumbling ‘Bah Humbug’,
as he stomps off to bed

Jumping Jack Flash

South Penquite Farm — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 17:34:32 +0000

As winter approaches, and the grass slows its growth, it’s time to think about bring in some of the animals and feeding others in the fields; and so we cleaned out one of the stables in preparation to bringing in my late father’s horse – Jack. Bought for £300 from a neighbour as a youngster over thirty years ago, he was my dad’s workhorse and hunting companion for two decades until he passed away in 1997.

Christened Jumping Jack Flash in homage to the famous track by the Rolling Stones and also because he gave the local young rough rider – Ronnie – such a lively time while breaking him in. He was what my father would describe as a hony (as opposed to a porse) which meant that while he was a horse in height he was more like a pony in nature. In the begining Dad had grave doubts about Jacks ability to carry his six foot three inches across the moors , but he needn’t have worried – Jack had the heart of a lion and never missed a day.

‘The best horse is the one ridden the most’, is an old adage and Jack certainly proved it true. When my parents first bought the farm, it was only made financially viable through us taking in German students for horse riding holidays - whose parents would happily pay through the nose for so that they might improve their English. Jack would ride out as lead horse six days a week throughout the summer and then in the winter Dad would go out hunting most weekends; mainly with a ‘pirate’ pack of foxhounds called the Temple Beagles from the next parish.

When we carried my father’s coffin through the farm - Jack led the mourners; and despite my Dad once famously saying that he ‘might need another horse now that Jack has passed 20’, Jack has survived him by over ten years.

A few years ago, I thought I would take my eldest daughter to experience a ride out at the traditional New Years Day meet in the village. I took Jack out of retirement, dusted down my Dad’s old hunting jacket and out we went. From the moment Jack caught sight of the hounds he was in his element; he absolutely loved every minute and after three hours I thought my arms were going to be pulled right out of their sockets. Everybody recognised him and I was greeted by cries of ‘Hello Jack – long time’ all day.

I am writing this with a heavy heart as I decided that this would be one winter too many for the old boy. Spring can be the cruellest time for farm animals and with his dodgy teeth, Jack had only just made it through the last one. Having had a good autumn, it was time to let him go. Adam - the hunt master – came and helped me and he is now buried within a few yards of his former master.