The Anton Coaker column thread

11th June 2020 I side stepped past it this week

So, what’s it to be…..what statues to leave standing, or not burning any more coal?

Well, I sidestepped the BLM stuff last week, so perhaps I should reluctantly venture into it now. I say reluctantly, because it’s very difficult to make any kind of comment that isn’t strictly in-tune with social correctness without being shouted down as a wicked person. And to start, I’ll be clear. I consider the policeman in the US who knelt on that mans neck until he died did a terrible thing, and should rightly face trial for it. It is indefensible, although I rather suspect I can guess what his defence will claim when he does come to trial. A jury will have to make of that what they will.

As for events then somehow morphing into a series of protests for racial equality here, and claiming some kind of parity with the way the UK police act…well, I become less clear there. I’m pretty sure that our serving Home Secretary, who I presume has the far end of the rein controlling the nation’s police service, is a lady of Asian descent herself. That alone begs some fundamental questions about the proposition. This is not the US. The police here are not, as a rule, packing guns. Nor, when they apprehend someone, are they ordinarily expecting them to be carrying firearms. The situation is very different. And those citing incidents which could be described as parallel should be ready with comparable statistics if they wish to win me over. So far I’m not hearing such.

Moving on to historical matters, and that wretched statue that’s currently languishing in Bristol harbour. It’s regrettable that the civic authorities didn’t act on the matter some time ago. I understand there was an attempt to give it a new plaque, explaining how Mr Colston made his fortune, but no-one could agree on how to proceed.

Personally, I couldn’t care less one way or another. There are lots of things which offend me – really, heaps. I find whole tranches of urban Britain, and indeed much of urban humanity as a whole, offensive to my very core. But I have to accept that we live in a democracy, and if I’m unable to vote in someone who’ll enact my particular desires, I have to put up with it. That is how society needs to work. Allowing a minority to have their way by illegal direct action is not how a society works. It sets an extremely dangerous precedent.

As for moving the argument onto Cecil Rhodes, Clive of India, and then going looking for some forgotten pigeon guano infested bronzes to be offended by. That’s a pretty strange way to go through life isn’t it? And as for trying to drag Sir Francis Drake into it….you can get lost with that nonsense buster. Drake is remembered for his military success and some officially sanctioned thievery, knocking over some Spanish ships loaded with gold they had in turn stolen from the Aztecs. Any connection with slave trading is completely incidental…it’s not what Drake was famous for then, and not what we remember him for now.

And anyone wanting to keep bringing up the salve trade around me will be reminded that the capture and enslavement of others is as old as human civilisation. Demonising old Colston for his part in the awful wholesale trans-Atlantic slave trade is one thing. But trying to separate out who you think were the good guys throughout history is, at best, futile baloney.

As distasteful as we find it now, enslavement was found practically everywhere. Ancient Roman and Egyptian cultures were built on it, their galleys fuelled by it. Native Americans practiced it widely. The Norwegians who settled Iceland took numbers of Irish slaves with them –indeed, Cork was a slave trading centre, and North Africans extensively plundered British and mainland European coasts for slaves at the same time as we were shipping West Africans across the Atlantic. Forced detention and labour was ubiquitous….it still goes on today.

We now accept it is wrong, and can’t happen in an enlightened society. And one thing is for sure. No single group or race can claim ‘ownership’ of being the victims of it, however much they might want to.

On balance, if you want to move the case for what you consider to be a better society…throwing insults, bottles and punches at policemen here, and tearing down statues you don’t approve of, is probably not going to help. I’m generally pretty neutral about race, not much caring what your ethnicity is as long as you don’t bother me. But I’m afraid that has to go both ways.

18-6-20 Mega fauna

I had to revisit some science stuff lately, and was tickled to find a bit of a ‘volte face’ – that’s a posh U turn to you and I- had been going on. See, for a long time, clever science chaps were casting about, trying to find reasons why so much ‘megafauna’-that’s big animals to you and me- disappeared when it did, despite it being pretty obvious to this peasant what probably happened. We’re not talking dinosaurs here, and the big whizzy space rock thing that did for ‘em when it smacked into the Yucatan. That was many millions of years ago. We’re talking about big wild animals which have checked out of ‘Hotel Earth’ in recent millennia. The example which had originally caught my attention was North America, where a whole range of big hairy beasts had evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, including woolly mammoth and rhinoceroses, giant beavers – make your own jokes up please- mastodons and the like. But quite suddenly, about 15,000 years ago – in the relative blink of an eye- they vanished.

Now, as is the way of such things, it’s difficult knowing exactly when human beings first trickled across the Bering Strait. Rather inconsiderately the individuals concerned seldom left bronze plaques riveted to cliff faces. And for the dubious reasons of wanting various distant indigenous inhabitants to have a lesser claim to the countries we nicked off them, and generally look a bit primitive, it’s long been a trait among us Europeans to downplay the timescale they were knocking about until we came along. It’s archaeology that spoilt the game, by annoyingly uncovering evidence that, for instance, some enterprising early Americans had got right down to Patagonia about 16,000 years ago. Now it’s hardly a coincidence that just as humans appear on the scene, with their clever minds, sharp pointy spears and mastery of fire, several of the large American land animals suddenly vanish. But here’s the thing, for a long time, various boffins were quite positive, it was the end of the ice age, and/or climate change that did for them, not people. I never bought it for a minute Buster…there was no mystery to me.

As people then covered South America, so the same happened there, including the demise of the delightful- and very possibly delicious- giant ground sloth Megatherium, along with giant lamas, and all kinds of fabulous creatures.

Slipping round the other side of the globe to Australia, where the Aboriginals had rocked up about 60,000 years ago, the same pattern emerges, albeit tens of thousands of years earlier. As you know Oz still has some of the weirdest animals, and their now defunct mega-fauna were right up there too. One of my favourites is the Diprotodon, the largest marsupial ever known to have existed. It was something akin to a wombat, but more the stature of a hippo. Standing 7’ at the shoulder, and weighing in at around 2.7 tonnes, it happily snuffled about Australia for about 1.6 million years ago. Then, along with a whole load of its exotic chums, it abruptly became extinct some 44,000 years ago. Now it is true that was an unexplained delay of some thousands of years before we really set to, eating out way through the strange and exotic creatures we found in Australia, but the pattern was the same. Once we’d got the hang of lightly braised mega-fauna steaks….down they came.

The Maoris did the same when they got to New Zealand, scoffing all of the 12’ tall quarter tonne flightless Moa birds in just 200 years. Coincidently, that also finished off the 9’ wingspan ‘Haasts’ eagle that had hitherto dined on Moa.

The big difference was in Africa, where many of the giant land species survived, having evolved with humans as predators the whole while. It’s not by chance that this is where you’d want to go on safari to see herds of large animals. The test could be said to be Madagascar, where we were late for the show, and then abruptly bumped off another giant flightless bird, the 10’ high Aepyornis…seemingly by eating it’s eggs. And that would’ve been an omelette to behold.

The argument remains, festering away with a few people still trying to stretch things to find other causes- and there are exceptions- but the overwhelming evidence suggests that once we crossed out of Africa, we took our communication and co-ordinated hunting skills, our tool making ability and mastery of fire, and made the world our own. And the first thing we did wherever we went was catch and eat the biggest things on the shelf. And finally, most academics seem to have come to terms with it.

24 June 2020 Burning coal



A couple of weeks ago, the news was filled with the buzz that the UK hadn’t burnt any coal for so many months, and how clever we all are. And indeed we are clever. We’ve learned so much, from when we first picked up a sharpened stick, then started cracking stones together to make sharper points for our sticks, and more durable tools generally. Then, we got the hang of burning sticks….and the mastery of fire was the quantum leap. Whether we discovered the trick once, and have carried the knowledge with us everywhere since, or whether we learnt it again and again is impossible to know, and doesn’t matter much. With fire we could control our environment in so many ways, ultimately to the extent that we could smelt metals. And from there, the world was ours. And by golly, this last century or two we have been exploring and exploiting what our planet can give us.

At the same time, staggering along through our history, we falteringly learned to manage and conserve what’s under our feet. Essentially, farming is the distilled spirit of this management. Farmers use natural resources and processes, generally replicating nature, or just steering it, to provide materials easier and more desirable, than those that can just be found lying about. Managing such processes allowed civilisation to blossom. Without it, it’s hard to see how reading and writing, and the chance to retain wisdom beyond a generation or two would have been possible. ‘Farming’ as a mentality is behaviourally about the opposite of ‘hunter-gatherer’ behaviour. Instead of taking what we want, we grow what we want. And it’s the gateway to how we can shape our future.

So, back to coal. Apparently it’s true, we didn’t burn any polluting smelly coal in our power stations for so many weeks/months through the spring. And that is clearly a good thing. But before we all go down to the metaphoric –or actual- pub and celebrate, there’s some details behind the headlines we shouldn’t lose sight of. We are still burning vast quantities of fossil fuels generally, but less obviously. The enormous Drax powerstation might now be burning woodchips, which theoretically are part of a very short and identifiable carbon cycle. Or might be if they weren’t apparently being mechanically harvested in the States- using great big diesel burning machines- then shipped across the Atlantic in very big, very polluting oil burning ships. On the home front, we’ve built woodchip burning installations leading to localised shortages. Famously, one in the South East was commissioned with an inadequate local supply, leading the forestry company who’d signed the supply contract to scour half the country for in-feed. I saw an enormous stack of ash firewood loaded in Somerset, and trucked 150 miles or more, to feed that particular plant. And where the trucks built by that clever whizz Musk, running on the smell of a silicon rag? No, they weren’t. They were conventional diesel trucks, same as ever.

Wind and solar are great, and best of all, potentially helping dissemble centralised generation systems to a more localised level, where we’re more involved ourselves. But it’s hard to ignore the role still played by nuclear. Nuclear power stations are, in carbon terms, hugely costly to build –just take a gander at the monumental structures going up in Somerset right now. And they leave a nasty legacy for our grandchildren, and their grandchildren in finitum. One of the grubby little realities of nuclear power is that we’re building power stations faster than we’re able to decommission and clean up the old ones. The unsavoury gift we’re leaving our descendants grows worse each year. In the UK, we’re still spending money trying to sort out the mess from the very first reactor we sparked up…. almost 70 years ago.

Meanwhile, we pretend that we can plant a few rowan and birch trees on some farmland –with a 50 year carbon cycle-, and ‘protect’ some peatland which was only formed a few thousand years ago. And that this is going to save the world from the release of carbon from fossil fuels which laid in the ground for 350 million years. It’s a fallacy… a sticking plaster on a growing malignant tumour of behaviour.

We are really gambling with our futures now, by pouring ever more carbon into the atmosphere –and if the temperature spikes in the Artic haven’t spooked you this week, you’re not paying attention. Vast areas of the Siberian wilderness have experienced temperatures in the high 30’s, which is 20 degrees hotter than normal summer expectations. This is unprecedented in human experience, and is a shocking sign of how something is up.

Right. I’m off to burn some diesel turning hay.

30th June 2020 Wrinkly nosed bulls

One of the things about having a fair mob of hairy spring calving suckler cows as I do, is that of necessity I also have several bulls around the place. And just now, they’re either going to work, or impatiently pacing up and down the fenceline thinking they damn well ought to be at work. Testosterone levels have been building, as they put on a bit of condition during the wait, knowing that they’d soon need to be back with their cows. They’re thick in the crest over their necks, wrinkled of nose, and with a greasy shine to their coats. Admittedly this shine is barely visible beneath the coating of earth they’re all wearing, having been hoofing great clods of earth over themselves, pawing the ground as they wail and grumble about who is the biggest bull in town, and how many cows they’re each going to jump. The place has been echoing with this bovine song for some weeks, as their impatience has grown. The post lockdown ramblers* have left various gates unlatched, allowing top Riggit bull Peeps to slip off on some pre-emptive forays. He likes to see some fresh countryside of a sunny morn, perchance to happen on some unsuspecting bovine belles, and sure enough these journeys twice found him in with the South Devon maiden heifers. I put a stop to that by shutting him up in the paddock nearest the house, under close obs. We did consider digging deep pit traps, filled with spikes on which to impale the wretched ramblers concerned, but I couldn’t think of a way to stop Peeps falling in too. We tried locking down both South Devon bulls in a couple of rocky acres behind a plantation, but the somewhat rickety fence wasn’t going to hold them, so youngster Solomon was put to work a day or two earlier than planned, and Dave was put indoors with one cow for company, until his wives could be fetched in off the hill. He’s been demoted from top South Devon sire, and doesn’t really like the idea.

That’s the next task, finding the main group of cows with which to pacify these grumbling boys. In fact, I suspect they won’t be hard to find, as they’re also aware that they’re soon needing the bull – nature is a wonderful thing- and have started edging back down off the hill, eying the moorgate with a wistful look. And so it will all begin again!



* Speaking of post lockdown recreation, it has been interesting- if not altogether wholesome- to watch the difference in behaviour since lockdown has been eased somewhat. As soon as urban Britain was allowed out, there was an explosion of littering in the great outdoors. Assemblies and groups everywhere, from beaches, parks and the countryside, to celebrating football fans and ‘social reform campaigners’, seem to think it’s OK to just drop your trash wherever you go. A pal of mine farming in the Lakes has various popular beauty spots in his patch, and enjoys a weekly disposal charge from the council for the garbage he has to pick up behind visiting townies. BBQs and Al Fresco drinking seem to be the chief interests of his unwanted guests, judging from the spore, and the norm is to simply walk away from the empties and leftovers.

Now in the greater scheme of things, this isn’t a big deal. It’s unsightly on a local level, but nothing compared to, say, the selfish mindlessness of changing your smartphone/tablet/car/entire kitchen or wardrobe every 10 minutes, as some people feel the need. For the waste throughout the entire system might go unseen, but if you could but see it…..is uglier by far. Such conspicuous consumption might be very good for the economy, for ‘growth is good’, but the mindset reflected suggests that overall, no-one cares. And that’s what we see in the actions of these post lockdown visitors.

Limp voices proclaim that after Corona virus we’ll all be loved up with the planet, and this is a chance for a new ‘green’ start. They evidently haven’t watched the news. There is a huge tranche of society who, though they might click on the ‘like’ button to save the poor likkle dolphins from choking on some waste plastic, then go right out and add to the problem. I sometimes stop my 17 year old landrover, get out and pick up bags of the hedgerow/roadside trash – which blossoms along the wayside like some colourful explosion of unwanted growth. As I’m doing this, I ponder what goes on in the bonce of someone who throws it out the car window…. but I can’t see into their heads. I don’t know how you fix them, short of mass euthanasia.

6th July 2020 Moorflies

To add that final layer of buoyancy to my ever sunny disposition, my Aga went out yesterday. It had been slowing for a few days, suggesting that once more the in-feed pipe was clogging with black crystallised looking muck, which current oil supplies seem to be so prone to producing. Some tank loads are worse than others, but all suppliers are the same. And it doesn’t seem to be much different whether or not we pay extra for some magical ju-ju magic additive. I’m fairly adept at stripping the stove down and cleaning out the feed pipe - not wanting to call out Mr Aga doctor unless there’s a problem, or something I’m unsure of. I generally have it back alight and warming the kitchen again before it’s got stone cold. It takes an hour or so. This time, however it appears to have blown out during one of the unseasonal gales when it was running down. So when I came to clean it at stupid O’clock the next morning, the supply had continued to just about weep through the constricted pipe, and capillary action had soaked the whole burner in fuel. This was not what I wanted to find. Using a syringe, I emptied the burner, and with copious kitchen roll dried everything as well as I could before I dismantled it. Managing to keep the kitchen free of oil, soot and such substances likely to cause comment, I got everything as clean as I could, re-assembled the old bus and fired her up. With the flame burning an even blue, I was thinking I’d be able to get on about my day. But enjoying a cuppa –from an electric kettle- and watching it warm, it soon ignited a smear of unburnt fuel hidden down under the back of the works, which then had to burn sootily off, coating the works in black gloop. I shut it down while this greasy black smoke seeped out, using an aged vacuum cleaner to capture the mess before starting all over again. Harrumph.

I don’t know what the oil industry has done to the kero, but by golly I wouldn’t regard it as progress. The old Aga goes for months on end without attention ordinarily, but not on what they’re selling now. Someone could make a lot of money if they could supply a fuel which didn’t cause these problems.

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Hey ho. With catchy weather holding up a stop-start fodder harvest, we’ve cracked on with some livestock work, and I have managed to get a few tonnes of granite chopped into shape for a pending order. This combination of tasks led me one day to go out gathering sheep, clutching my aluminium crook stick in a hand coated in fine granite dust. The resulting combination is a fairly efficient grinding paste, although I daresay it wouldn’t sell as a skin cream.

We managed to pull together a group of cattle for some PDs and a bit of pre-movement TB testing. One of the old bulls was due to move on, with some cows and calves, which found me at Clartycombe Auction Mart socially distancing as I presented some beasts for sale. The old bull –Fergus- is generally a very biddable fella, but was distinctly twitchy as I came to load him. Looking in under his tail revealed a swarm of what we’d call ‘moorflies’. I can’t tell you their proper name, but should your horse get one under its tail when you’re out clip-clopping, you’ll soon think of some new names for the wretched things. And ole Fergus had a whole load of them. Hence, I was to be found in the pens at the market reaching in under his nether regions, picking the sideways scuttling little swine off his bits, and squishing them one by one. They take a bit of squishing too. Happily, by the time his turn in the ring came round, I’d got the last of them, and he was more relaxed again, and is now sold to pastures new.

The episode did remind me of a conversation I had backalong, with someone of a medical bent. Always concerned with environmental matters, I was concerned to hear yet another species of natural fauna has become very scarce. It’s probably on some ‘red list’ somewhere, and there might well be a ‘protection society’ for it, and some ‘Friends of the endangered…’ group. The apparent reason for its demise is manmade habitat loss, as its natural home is razed in the interests of so called progress. This endangered species I’m told has become very rare is none other than the human public louse.

16-07-20 Kent Wildlife Trust



I see reports that the Kent Wildlife Trust is planning to re-introduce some European bison to woodland near Canterbury. And sure enough, all the hallmarks of such fantasists are there. They claim various benefits – which we’ll return to momentarily-, clinging to the idea that this will somehow help reset the clock on our burdened eco-system. The European bison – taller and rangier than its American cousin- is a large undomesticated bovine, which used to roam the pre-historic European landscape. Extinct in the wild a century ago, they’ve been bred up from zoo animals, and now live wild in 4-5 Eastern European countries – all with very low population levels, which in turn depend on whether 20% of the population is in fact currently locked down on a vegetable farm in Herefordshire.

The Kent Wildlife Trust are intending to hold these bison in an enclosure, apparently before releasing them into 1200 acres of woodland. I’m not sure what level of stupidity is required to assume they’ll stay put, because it is a dead cert that they’ll soon wander off. One of the busiest roads in Kent passes handily by, so you can reasonably presume that some poor hurried commuter is going to find out, when he slams into one at 70 mph one dimpsey morning, what it’s like to have a bison land in your lap. Fatal, very likely. And should they proliferate, and become established, it is a matter of fact that they’ll eventually run into bovine TB, and become part of the infection cycle. How they’ll react to meeting dog walkers and joggers in that untamed wilderness that is East Kent for remains to be seen. I think it’s reasonable to presume that an irritated 800kg wild bison grinding you into the floor is going to spoil your morning. Will those responsible be forced to take out enduring liability insurance?

Meanwhile on mainland Europe, where the rewilding lobby have had successes, the landscape is changing for those who actually live in it. Beavers alter river systems to suit themselves, and it’s come as a horrible surprise that these purposes don’t always match our own expectations, and suddenly you find what was a tree-lined river has become a vastly widened marsh.

Wolves abound to the extent that lowland shepherds in Germany are increasingly being expected to keep their flocks in high electric fenced enclosures, and the iconic summer Alpine pastures are now somewhat spoiled by the images of cattle walking about with their guts hanging out, and whole flocks of sheep dismembered and strewn about. The tourist brochures won’t be showing these pictures, but the herders would certainly rather you saw them to see what your thoughtless urban fantasies have brought about. In recent weeks, close to where I helped herd Tyrolean cows last summer, a bear has taken to attacking people. Unless it is dealt with it’s obviously only a matter of time before it kills and eats someone.

This isn’t in the empty reaches of the Alaskan wasteland, or Siberian tundra, but in densely populated, historically settled and farmed Europe. It’s notable that the organisation standing behind this bison project is the Wildwood Trust, who’re openly dedicated to ‘rewilding’ Britain.



Now back to the claims being made to justify this nonsense. To quote the Kent Wildlife Trust, ‘A wilder, nature-based solution is the right one to tackling the climate and nature crisis’

Really? Tackle climate change? Hang on a minute Maister…these yere Bison, they’m just big shaggy wild cows aren’t they? Well I’ve already got 300 head of something pretty similar, and have endured an endless barrage of people accusing them, and me, of causing climate change. The specific –and now completely debunked- allegation that their methane burps are causing global warming would surely apply to bison just the same? It would be funny if it didn’t mask such an insidious and fallacious implication. I’m right at the bluntest edge of what farming is, grazing hill sheep and cattle in a manner almost indistinguishable from much of their natural behaviour. We shape natural processes to reliably feed millions and millions more people…..in essence, that’s what farming is. And it’s how humankind is able to spawn uncontrollably across the landscape. It’s how the majority of humans are able to pursue other interests, like buying a new car, inventing more junk to order on-line, or hopping on a plane for a spot of winter sun.

Popping a few quid in the rewilders collection tin is not going to undo the damage human behaviour is doing. It might salve your conscience for a moment, but their farmer hating fantasy is about as stupidly ugly as a mindset can be when you dig right down to its core.

23-07-20 I try not to let stuff bother me

I try not to let stuff bother me, especially big things I can’t resolve. You know, finding world peace, or an end to hunger, or euthanizing anyone involved in reality TV shows. I can’t fix them, so I can let them go with a gentle serenity. However, this doesn’t mean I can’t froth and boil over the smallest stupidest thing. I’m sure it’s good for my blood pressure. Needing some bale cord when I first pulled the rubber band baler from its shed, we phoned the farmsupply shop. Now I know I’m a dinosaur, still using string to tie my round bales, when the world and his uncle went to netwrap years ago. They chortle at my old baler, gloating that they’re able to spit out a bale 10 seconds quicker than me, which is certainly true. Unfortunately they need to, as the wrap costs quite a bit more. In fact, careful bean counting suggests there’s nothing in it…..you gain a handful bales per hour in output, but spend as much extra as they’re worth to pack. Oh, and spread over the 19 year life of the baler to date, the extra cost of the netwrap mechanism would’ve added 13p per bale. And although that’s coming down as the baler continues to work, the interest on the saving adds up at about the same rate. Put together, it would be about 18p a bale….just to have the luxury of spending more on netwrap. Hmm. Bearing in mind that cattle lose money, seems that being able to go faster feeding them is only going to lose it quicker. Perhaps my abacus is defective.

Anyway, it doesn’t bother me one jot that I’m such a dinosaur. However I was somewhat vexed when my assistant phoned to check there 20 packs in store to pick up ready to start harvesting. She was assured by the operative at ‘Foal Tally Farmers’ that they no longer stocked this string, as it was a ‘discontinued line’. Humbug! said I, on hearing the news. Clearly my museum of a lifestyle was catching up with me. However, said assistant – looking as lovely as ever- carried out a spot of inter-netting, and soon hooked us up with a mail-order supplier. The string was a bit dearer than we’d been used to, but I was happy I’d be able to continue making fodder for my hairy little friends using the 19 year old contraption. A courier dutifully dropped a load, the sun came out, and off I went baling.

Now a week or two later, I mentioned this to a pal who runs a similarly elderly baler –several of us do up in the peasant wastelands. ‘Eh?’ he said, ‘I got mine from Foal Tally, same as ever’. Hmm. Somethings afoot here we thought. A bit of research revealed that, in the name of progress, this cord is no longer measured and identified, in feet – 23,500’ per pack- but rather in those pesky fangled meters. And hence the computer now lists it by its ‘new’ length – 8000 and something meters- which must be a completely different product. This would be fine as long as the staff could work out what was going on…which they didn’t. That’ll be progress again.

So that’s sorted now, and the ole rubber band baler has been rolling again. It’s grown-up net-wrapping contractor cousins have done various off-lying batches, but its somehow done good service here again, and has packed several hundred to date without incident.

On the subject of string, and the small things that irritate me. To try and save the dolphins and unicorns, and stop using quite as much plastic, I did try and source some organic cord I could use. Sisal or somesuch comes to mind. Now youthful experience suggests you couldn’t rely on it if the bales were to be left lying outdoors, and I’m not 100% sure whether it’d survive being shrink-wrapped in silage. However, the rubber band bales hold together pretty well anyway, so maybe we’d look at it. Unfortunately, the ‘bulk buy’ pallet load price was still two and half times dearer than oil based plastic, so the enquiries stopped.

It did get me thinking though. Why aren’t we using wool? The raw material is worth almost nothing at the best of times….circa £1000/tonne most years, but far less this year. The answer is that oil, and hence plastic, is worth even less. Crude oil is about £200-300/tonne, and as we’ve seen this year, it’s gushing out of the wells day and night whether we use it or not. This makes my renewable solar powered wool worthless.

On balance, perhaps we should be taking a deeper look at what we do.

28-07-20 Stop start harvest

The stop-start weather has led to several fairly hectic sessions harvesting fodder. Trying to judge how big a weather window each week, I’m mowing just enough to cope with- while making the best of each opportunity. I’m grateful to whoever ordains such weather cycles that so far we’ve had the chance to save the fodder pretty well….although I’d far rather be able to get on for 10 days on the trot, and get bigger chunks done.

To date there’s 700 odd round bales put safely away in one form or another, and it’s looking like we’ll have another go this week. Last week included a 195 bale day for the rubber band baler, mostly off 9 little fields 6 miles from home. Getting them carted back and put to bed then occupied my attention for a minute or two. To my happy surprise very little needed wrapping, despite some being cut Monday, turned twice, and baled fit for hay on Wednesday. I’m not sure how that happened, but I am grateful for the cost savings.

Worrying me in the small hours is 12 acres of oats we’re hoping to silage. Despite a very inauspicious start, drilled in the baked dry spring, it’s now up past waist height and looking like a serious lot of bales. But in my mind, I’m already seeing every rat for miles around is tucking their little napkins under their furry chinny-chin-chins, ready to feast on this unmade stack of round bales. There are several strategies being considered to keep the little blighters at bay, but I know in my heart that they’ll still trash several. The finer detail of when to cut it is still under consideration, as there hasn’t been much more than husk to the heads until now. You want to get it once the grains have filled out, but before they harden off. And then, the longer it’s left, the more likely the losses in dropped grains could rack up, balanced against the easier transport as it weighs less when the stems dry out. This last is a real consideration, being 11 miles down the hill from base.

We have briefly considered letting it fully ripen and getting Mr Combine Man in. But apart from how and where to store the crop, he gently reminded me that with it being undersown with grass it wouldn’t want to go through the combine. Ah! Anyway, it’s fodder we’re needing, so bales it’ll be. Something else that has caught my attention was the results of a couple of sacks of the seed oats I scat onto some poached ground back here. I quickly rolled them in, and plastered the area in muck…but 50 corvids were still gorging on them for days. Yet somehow, there’s now a mass of plants showing between the recovered grass- and inevitable docks. Better yet, because I deliberately left stock on the field for several weeks, it got eaten off as it showed its head and has tillered out to an extraordinary degree. Each plant is now a multitude of stems, all heading up and making bulk. It’s made me wonder what I would have had if we’d got in another of our rural chums…Mr Friendly Slot Seeder/Drilly thing Man. I might explore that another year mebbe.

Elsewhere, I’ve been listening in on the sidelines of a discussion about something called ‘fixed costs’, where farmers apparently reckon they can pluck out these details, and give an indication of how profitable a business might be. I do so enjoy watching clever folk analyse such things as if you can bank on them.

In fact, it’s almost impossible to rely on these figures unless you really know an operation inside and out. The constant cash and effort input needed to maintain and upkeep a farm business can be manipulated in finitum, making an accurate snapshot almost impossible to take. It’s easy to juggle the figures up or down depending on how you keep up infrastructure and machinery, and with livestock whether you let age/quality structure of herds slip up or down. I don't know much about arable- as indicated above- but presume the same must be true with soil structure, organic matter and nutrient indices.

I freely use manipulation of our own costs for my own purposes. If I think we're going to be drawing too much unwanted attention from the Chancellor and his taloned inquisitors, I might pump a bit more in. Alternatively, if I've lately done something ‘rash with the cash’, and made a big purchase, I'll let it slide for a year or two, and lean on previous inputs. And I’m afraid it’ll only be one person that knows what’s really going on…and it’s not always that many.

5-8-20 Yet more stuttering harvest

Yet more unsettled summer weather has been testing my patience. I’d love to get the fodder harvest wrapped up –ha ha- and the baler put away, but each weeks window of opportunity stutters and hiccups along. In a settled year, I’m not unknown to get upwards of 50 acres of hay on the go at once. But this summer, I’ve been afraid to mow much more than 20 acres- which is making for slow progress. What we have saved has all been fetched in under pretty good conditions, and saved about as well as could be, but still has very little nose to it. I would guess recent low temperatures are the problem…I don’t suppose there’s much sugar in it. Hey ho. At least there is something to cut, and it’s saved safe. The cows will be fed next winter.

The catchy weather has allowed us to get right up with stockwork. The sheep are all clipped barring the cheviot ewe lambs, and odd strays – I could do with finding another half a score of blackfaced ewes yet. I haven’t bothered booking the wool in yet, not having heard very exciting reports on the price this year. A lot of colleagues are saying they’re either chucking it on the dungheap, or maybe holding it over for a year. I’ll take my chance with the Wool Board. Whatever improvement in trade there is will be reflected in their top-up price next year…and if you haven’t sent this years crop in, you won’t get even that. Those selling to private –mainly Irish- buyers on such a poor trade are surely going to get stung, as those fellas won’t be topping up next years payment one groat. But some people can’t see beyond the end of their noses.

It’s a sorry reflection on our selfish short-sighted nature that such a versatile natural renewable product is worth almost nothing, yet we continue to consume oil-based plastics like there’s no tomorrow. We deserve a pandemic, and one far worse than covid 19 I’m afraid.

The cows are all happy with their bulls, as long as we can run round behind the moronic walkers who leave gates unfastened. Calves are growing away, although some of the cows are evidently making heavy weather of milking without the sun on their backs. Older South Devons look dry coated, and the youngsters tending to a bony rakey appearance. Without much rocketfuel fodder put by, I suspect it’ll be a year to take the calves off fairly early, and allow the cows a rest before winter. Their hirsute shorter Galloway cousins simply shrug their curly shoulders, and keep chewing away on the rough.

Another sign of the dry spring and cool summer is tree growth. I haven’t had a really good look yet, but glancing in over various plantations shows some rather disappointing conifer ‘leaders’. I’d say it they’re not going to be laying down a very big ‘increment’ this year. Coupled to that, several species are suffering from a wide variety of pestilence, disease, predation, and general misery. I’ve got some pretty unhappy Beech trees, the Ashes are mostly dying on their feet, and the mill has seen a lot of Sweet Chestnut logs from growers panicked by a variety of threats. Squirrel activity is everywhere, and the only place I’ve got young oaks undamaged is where there’s an ample supply of tastier morsels for them to strip the bark from. I’ve a plantation- on bought in ground- with a lot of field maple. From my perspective, it’s wasted space, as the trees are slow yielding, of rubbish form, and the timber has very little demand. However, the squizzers adore it, and don’t seem to be bothering the adjacent oaks. There’s a lesson right there. Elsewhere, I know professional foresters who’ve reversed the drive to rid native oak woodland of invasive sycamores…for the same reasons.

The one highlight in my own plantations has been a very late load of Eucalypts I put in. They were ‘cell grown’- each in its own little pot- and I held off through the dry spring until the rain returned. Despite it being 100% the ‘wrong way’ to go about things, unless flopsy bunny managed to grub under them and pull the plug of compost and root out, they’ve all survived. Just about every single one! These all went in with 4’ tubes, as the previous plantings have proved irresistible to Bambi when they poked their heads out of 2’ tubes. Bambi hasn’t killed many off, just kept them nibbled at the top of the shorter tubes. This is a nuisance, but on the upside, it’ll allow me to fill the freezer with ‘cough drop flavour’ venison!

12-08-20 Baking week

This last baking week has been a trial, wilting in a tractor cab, chasing more rows of grass around the countryside. Wanting to get it done, I’d cut everything when the forecast was good, only for it to suddenly become a panic as the Met Office changed their minds. As an organisation, the MO must be female… using the metaphoric prerogative as they do. With the odds rapidly turning against me, I set to baling 8 fields of grass at home on Sunday afternoon, with another team in charge of 12 acres of oat silage on lower ground. As various breakdowns and minor calamities slowed me down, and negotiating the throngs of visitor’s cars abandoned at local beauty spots between fields caused temperatures to rise further, I managed to keep focussed. Pushing on asthe sun slid down behind Princetown radio mast, I was planning to go on in the dark until we’d got everything baled. Thunder showers were predicted anytime from 11pm, and believe me, there’s nothing to spoil your slumbers like listening to a downpour in the night spoiling your unbaled crops. This plan relied on the headlights functioning on the old bus pulling the baler, and as it turned out….proved to be unrealistic. When they failed, it was full dark. Pulling every fuse by torchlight failed to find the fault, and I was wondering what to do, when I chanced on a relay which the helpful diagram suggested might be relevant. Swapping it for another one which I reckoned I could live without, hey presto! I could see again. With swarms of moths and bugs batting against the worklights on the back of the cab, I worked on steadily into the night. I had to slow down a gear or two, watching for lumps in the shadows which might choke the pick-up, and as the dew made the grass a bit sticky, I had to be careful it didn’t build up on the rollers and ping the balers knicker elastic. The last row filled the chamber one last time just after 1.30am, and I dropped number 177 in the yard when I finally got home and put the baler to bed.
Monday morning and we started all over. The oats had been successfully packed into bales, but needed wrapping on that site first. What I’d baled at home at home was almost hay so it wouldn’t be heating much, and the bales out of the rubber band baler hold their shape, so they could wait. With the panic on Sunday, everyone had been baling like the clappers and the wrapping team that were due to deal with the oats weren’t available until late in the day…meaning those bales might go out of shape. This means they’d then jump alarmingly off the wrapper, which spoils your day somewhat. More panic. As luck would have it, a pal didn’t have a lot planned for his wrapper, and could meet us there at 10am. This would’ve been the ticket, but for the fact the baler leaving in the dark the night before had locked my padlock out of the loop. So there we were, locked out of the yard where we needed to be wrapping these bales. Goodness but we’d miss mobile phones if they became extinct!
Having eventually got that crew set up, I hustled back to get started draying bales to the platt at home. Some were within easy reach, and could be shuttled in as fast as I could wrap them. 79 of them however were 2 miles away, the other side of 2 wretched narrow bridges over cool burbling streams…. And on hot sunny days they draw large numbers of the ‘Selfishly Irresponsible Parking Club’. I think they might’ve been having their annual convention. It’s trial enough getting large equipment over the narrow bridges at the best of time – I consider it a deliberate form of social engineering to constrict us like this-, but when every swing out and lay-by has 4 cars squeezed into it, they become impassable. My only option is to cart bales before the muppets have got away from their breakfast tables, and then again when the sun has dipped and they’ve gone back to their nests. Even then it was trial not to get shouty and bad tempered when I couldn’t get through by midday.
I would complain that their blocking the road was a threat to safety should my house catch fire, but since Trumpton has stopped keeping tenders that can get over the bridges anyway, in that eventuality my house will burn to the ground whether the roads are blocked or not.Hey ho.
Anyhoo, barring a bit of 2nd cut, that’s me and balingdone.

19-08-20 Dung beetles

Now they’re something I haven’t given a lot of thought to, but I acknowledge my attention to dung beetles has hitherto been lacking. The topic is fascinating in itself – did you know there are species specific beetles, as well as generalists? Or that when Europeans took livestock to Australia, the native beetles were only used to marsupial poop, so matters soon went Pete Tong. It wasn’t until we sent some of the right beetles that the system could begin to work. However, I’m lately been told that over half of the UKs dung beetle species are now badly on the back foot- many on the point of extinction. And unless you want a landscape covered in poop, this isn’t an especially good thing. The nuts and bolts of their actions –and importance- are that they habitually grub around in animal poop, dissembling it and taking it down into the ground. When it comes to the grazed animal/carbon cycle, they are as much part of it as the cows and sheep. On the one hand, they can take carbon based material back into the soil, building soil organic material, or in their absence, it sits there in the weather for weeks…partly releasing methane back into the atmosphere. And since the grass the cows ate yesterday was grown using carbon dioxide that was floating about the sky the week before, this system is a very good thing indeed.

So what is going wrong with the dung beetles little world? Their chief problem is the medicines we use on the livestock upon which they rely. Hardly surprisingly, wormers which clear out parasites from a bullocks guts, acting for some days and weeks, get passed out the stern end of the beast, and then do for anything which ingests the poop. Top of the guilty pile are ‘ivomectin’ based drugs, which are particularly tenuous. This is a good thing as far as controlling parasites in the farm livestock, but not so hot for the poor dung beetle.

Now despite my endless curiosity, and vague awareness that this is an issue, it’s only now come to my attention that there is a committed campaign to ban all such products, championed by, among others, a group including ‘Chris-they shoot-lapwings-don’t they- Packham’.

This group care not one jot for how I earn my crust – their crust is collectively earned by throwing stones at the likes of me, from what they portray as the moral high ground. And because they sing a tune beloved of urban modern society, with scant grasp of how human civilisation works beneath the metaphoric surface, or relates to the wider environment, they’re gaining traction. Simplified, there are people who feel guilty when David Attenborough shows them heart breaking footage of a baby dolphin choking on a fast food wrapper, and so, on their way down to pick up a takeaway, they throw tuppence in the wild-life charity begging bowl. This guilt-displacement has become a lucrative industry in itself.

Once cashed up, some of these groups are then hiring legal advice on how to go about hitting us with the stick. It’s a brilliant whizz, as the very actions brought can be publicised, and bring in further donations. Bigger sticks can be bought, and more easy targets found. The bigger picture doesn’t matter once the gravy train is rolling.

Anyhoo, back to the woes of poor old dung beetle, and its various little wiggly friends. What can we do? My source advises that your pour-on wormer will be active for about 4 weeks. So it’ll be a good idea not to treat your beasts just before turnout then! I never used them, but I’d guess those slow release boluses must be a problem. Be thinking about it; don’t just keep splashing the stuff about any old how. I did ask, and Sods Law indeed dictates that while all kinds of livestock parasites are evolving a tolerance toward the treatments –hence we have to rotate our wormer groups from season to season-, but this doesn’t seem to be the case for the beleaguered dung beetles.

Further, we ought start giving consideration to what else is going to be affected –I’d guess the fantastic blow-fly preventative treatments that have revolutionised sheep farmer’s summers will come under closer scrutiny. While none of us want to lose lambs to maggots, are there further consequences?

The Kiwis and Australians have done a lot of work on selectively breeding for worm and maggot resistance, utilising science to select rams rather than whether or not a tup has got a bonny head, or a rosette from the show. We’d do well to take a leaf from that book.

OK, onwards.

25-08-20 In the interests of research

In the interests of research, I’ve lately been experimenting in physics, and testing the theories of Sir Isaac Newton. For it was he, you’ll recall, who said ‘Ow, that soddin apple hurt!’, or somesuch.
To run these tests, I did what science might call a brief ‘field trial’. My equipment included a short ladder, a wall, a cordless impact driver, and most essentially, a spectacular degree of stupidity. I say brief, as knowing a falling object accelerates at 32’ per second squared, and that I only fell 6’ during this impromptu experiment, I can’t have accelerated much on the way. Can I? I would hardly have been travelling downwards much faster than a walking pace….surely? Well, it felt like I was doing about 90 mph when I landed…especially as what I landed on was a very knobbly ladder. This ladder had previously been gainfully employed holding me up while I did a spot of DIY, but for reasons not altogether clear to either of us, decided it no longer wished to remain propped against the wall, and shot out beneath me.
Quite apart from the gravitational business, there are rules governing time and conscious thought that I don’t altogether get. For I initially had a brief interlude where I scrabbled at the passing wall, half thinking I might grab hold of something to slow my progress. I can’t have had time to process this thought, but I certainly recall trying to catch hold of something…anything. But all it did was remove a few layers of skin from my hands. And then, in the milliseconds before I came to rest, I distinctly recall thinking ‘Oh well, this won’t be too bad’. In the next confused moment of time, I did indeed hit a very hard floor, cushioning my landing with the aforesaid fall with the ladder. Regrettably, there weren’t any casually scattered mattresses or bales of straw below me. But then, I am profoundly grateful there was nothing bigger or sharper than the ladder on which to come to rest, knowing that my mass and momentum might well have been greater than either the tensile strength of various limb bones, or the puncture resistance of various of my soft bits.
So, there I am, lying on the floor, hardly having time to congratulate myself on surviving such a fall with no more than a few interesting bruises, when my travelling companion, to whit the impact driver, caught me up. And here was another little physics lesson. We had travelled much the same distance, leaving at approximately the same time, on a very similar trajectory. It had started its journey over my head, at an arm’s length. With me so far? So I wouldn’t have given its presence much thought…we flew downwards more less together, so our relative speed to each other wouldn’t be of any consequence would it? Ah, now that’s where you and I are wrong. You see, I had got to the terminus of our journey first, and come to an abrupt halt as describedabove. When the impact driver caught me up, I was more or less stationary again – possibly even bouncing back up fractionally. So the wretched thing hit me at the same speed as I’d just hit the floor. And also like me, it didn’t have time to find a soft bit to land on, but rather struck the first thing in its way……the top of my head. Happily, the Earth’s rotation hadn’t caused it to start counter rotating noticeably during its flight, so it struck me pointy end still facing up. None the less, it made an impact commensurate with its title.



A suitably impressive amount of claret was spilling about the place as I stumbled to my feet, reaching for a handkerchief to try and staunch the flow. I note that I unthinkingly immediately removed myself from the drop zone, suggesting that even in my stunned state, I was worried further rains of handtools might be imminent. It was with hand clutched to head that I besought the ever patient Alison to clean and dress the wound, and offer equal levels of sympathy and admonition. Stitches would probably have been a good idea, but she was too busy to take me 30 miles to town, and I wasn’t fit to drive. Ne’er mind…a bit of scarring will only make me more handsome.
So… lessons to be learnt from this foray into the world of applied physics? Do get someone to hold the ladder, you muppet. And understanding the basics of the physicsthat governed the incident doesn’t insulate operatives from stupidity, nor make it hurt any less. I only relay all this to prove to my beloved that I haven’t got concussion.
Stay safe kids.

1 September 2020 Fly



I’m feeling much better this week thankyou, after last week’s foray into gross stupidity and falling off ladders. I should say I got quite a bit of feedback after describing the sorry affair, ranging from very kind messages of sympathy, through to hooting derision from the less cultured of my acquaintances. I think it was jolly brave of me to admit it all, if not as clever to blame my lovely and long suffering wife for not getting the Grand Canyon in my scalp stitched. That cost me- not unreasonably- some ear bending. However, her tender ministrations and dutiful dressings have started to allow it to close up satisfactorily.

Onwards then.
As you know, I keep a motley collection of hounds about the place. There are the house dogs, which are a… well, whatever the collective noun is for a quartet of Jack Russells. ‘A Frenzy’? A Yapping’? Outside, there’s currently 3 collies. In charge –so he thinks- is doddery old Gyp, still wobbling about the yard which has been his domain for 15 years, barking at the sky in a hoarse broken woof. Hard of hearing, and slower to dodge, we’re waiting for him to go under a truck wheel one more time…he’s been run over at least 3 times while biting tyres in his younger days- but I reckon the next time will be the last.
At the other end of the scale is his bouncy great granddaughter – Johns ace little bitch Mag. She’s as sharp as a tack, and promises to be a fabulous help as she matures.
In the middle sits my current working bitch, ‘Fly’. She’d be the 3rd or 4th Fly I’ve had, as such names keep un-imaginatively going round. This one is a beaut though, if not for all the right reasons. She’s big, smooth coated and belligerently bone-headed. She works fairly well, with plenty of power, a reasonable presence, and an almost total disregard for where I might want to drive sheep. This is sometimes a problem, but at least allows me to explore my reserve of invective terms for a hound. When left out, she guards the yard meticulously…rather too assiduously sometimes. So she’s on a chain nights, and in a basket in the house most of the day.
She loves to go driving, and will sit in the back of the Landrover or the lorry cab for hours on the off chance it might go off out. And indeed, it’s her fondness for motoring which has brought her to the top of my attention this week. See, she learned long ago that Transit vans turning up in the yard, to collect sawn timber from the mill, often contain unsuspecting carpenter’s lunch bags. And these are filed with interesting snacks. Backalong, a pair of young lads arrived early one morning for a load of oak beams, and while they were strapping down, Fly had slipped quietly in the open cab door, and was soon scoffing the foil wrapped hot breakfast rolls they’d been saving for when they were loaded and ready to go. The poor lads nearly wept when they discovered their loss. I felt so guilty I brought them into the house and knocked em up some replacements. Indifferent to the scolding, Fly sloped off about her business smacking her lips happily.
However, this behaviour has backfired. One of my blokes took the lorry out last week, calling at a farm supply shop for various requisites he also took the chance to pick up some wormer for his cat. Fly had accompanied him, happy to see a bit of the world beyond the farm boundaries, and more than happy, when his back was momentarily turned, to scoff this packet of cat wormer. As usual, this theft didn’t seem to have any outward effect, and it was long after the event before she got home and out of the truck. So we thought little more about it.
Until I came in from work 2 days later that is, when eventually there had been something of an effect. Sitting in her basket inside the backdoor, Fly seemed perfectly happy, although a rank smell that assailed me like an almost solid wall suggesting that she had been distinctly unwell. And indeed, behind some shelves, I was greeted with evidence of what happens when a collie eats a packet of cat wormer. We won’t dwell, but suffice to say I don’t want that to happen again, and neither would you. So she’s firmly back out on her chain for a few days, where the hose reaches should there be further need.
Alison was out at the time, and it’s probably better that we don’t tell her about this little incident, OK?

9-9-20 New Housing Estates

It always saps my normally perky spirit when I read about yet another housing development spilling out from some local market town. Covering up what were previously green fields, and inevitably housing yet more people who’ll soon be wanting to come and bother me somehow.

And anyway….this new estate of 1000 houses, for which there’s already a waiting list of inhabitants- all with gainful employment. What effect will they have locally? Well, after the industrious Eastern European lads have banged them up- utilising the finest chipboard and snot- and moved on, they’ll be housing maybe 3500 people. And, thinking about it, it’s inevitable that these people will be wanting stuff done, and to be able to shop, and work, and play.

In fact, just the 750 school age kids moving into these houses will be needing 20 teachers, a deputy head, a janitor, 2 cooks and a whole new building at the local halls of education. This is on top of the 278 pre-schoolers that need occupying. The local health centre will need 2 new nurses and a fresh faced GP to join the team to cope, and the dental surgery will be taking on another driller and filler. Both the local car dealerships and the tyre shop will be taking on a couple of extra lads each to cope with the 1500 cars and their needs, and the Councils pothole repair team will be hiring to fill in the extra road repairs the traffic generates. In fact, the Council are going to be busy, because they’ll need to organise 3 new housing officers to deal with the various social needs arising, contract out the refuse collection – sorry, recycling- to a couple of extra lads, as well as a couple of office bods to cope with all the extra paperwork.

Some of the older and less able new residents will want to hire someone to mow the postage stamp sized lawn, and trim the bushes planted along the boundaries. That’ll be 5 jobs right there. And the local glaziers will have a chap on constant call repairing the broken windows generated by the 150 bored youths loitering about. The Council are soon going to be running back down to the recruitment agency for some poor old beggar to push a broom along, sweeping up the mess, and the chief constable will be lobbying for 2-3 extra bobbies to feel some collars. The water company will need extra staff to ix the leaky infrastructure that was hurriedly installed. The local hairdressers and the nail salon will be wanting 2 more staff each, there’ll be 5 new bus services, 10 taxi drivers, and someone to drive the ‘Sunshine community mini-bus.

The ‘Mini-quick-corner-mart’ supplying the groceries will employ 8 staff, along with 1-2 extra each for the filling station at the end of the road and the newsagents. As some of the bored youths are prevailed upon to get themselves into further education, the college down the road will be needing 10 new lecturers and associated staff. And as activity behind the bikesheds generates a new supply of customers, so the maternity unit will soon be recruiting again. Social services will be short staffed within months once more.

The various courier companies will between them be hiring 3 new van drivers to deliver the endless supply of packets and packages which households need to survive the week, and likewise the post office will need a new van and postie to make sure the post gets through. Not all of the purchases will get paid for, and the local debt collecting firm will soon be needing a couple of hefty lads to go knocking on the doors. The doors themselves, not having been built of the most durable cardboard, will doubtless require rehanging and fettling. In fact, overall, ongoing maintenance of 1000 houses- built to the lowest specification feasible- will require 15 tradesmen on constantly trying to keep them together. And once you’re a few years in, the pathetic design life expectancy means they’ll need wholly replacing at a rate of 25-30 annually. There’s work for a score of lads, plus builder’s merchants, transit van dealers, and a couple of jobs in the local quarry. We haven’t got onto the demand on the vet’s surgery for all the pets, the care workers for all those who need their noses wiping, and the myriad of incremental jobs all of this activity generates. But I daresay, when it’s all tallied up, we’ll soon be needing another 1000 houses to accommodate the workforce the first lot require.

You know on balance I consider we should, as a society, concentrate more on ‘Border Force’ funding, and generously staffing the family planning clinic.

16-09-20 Well that warm dry spell was a pleasant surprise

Well that warm dry spell was a pleasant surprise, giving me a chance to scratch up a bit more grass to bale. Two different blocks of off ground yielded up a respectable shear of second cut, along with the last drop of first cut, which had been sulking in a very dry parish since it got baked in May. That particular field hadn’t been helped, if I’m to be totally candid, by the fact the little bunch of cattle nextdoor had evidently been sneaking in through a hole in the hedge right down in the back corner. The deer had flattened the fence, and created a clear space in the hedge…none of which anyone had noticed. The cows had to go back through to water, so seldom dwelt…but this explains why their grass held up so well, they looked so sleek and glossy, and why, off course, ‘mine shaft’ and ‘shady field’ didn’t seem to be growing much of a shear. Anyway, we got the mower under what was there, and the two sites yielded another 150 bales between them – better than I was anticipating.
On a less salubrious note, while carting bales back to the other block, I discovered the rats have found the oat silage stack. There wasn’t any visible damage 10 days previously, and now there’s loads. I can ill afford to waste the grub, but don’t have anything needing supplemental fodder yet. It’s a conundrum. The current thinking is to cart it home ASAP, re-wrap some- if it looks like they’ll stay on the wrapper, and stack it as a fifth layer pitched right on top of the main heap back here with the sawmills telehandler, and feed some straight away to the South Devon cows who’re raising spring calves. They inevitably start to find life hard work in the next few weeks, so it’s not that the food will be wasted. But what will they say next month when that stuff runs out, and the bales stop turning up mornings? I can hardly feed them from September right through to next May. Hmm.
On the upside, a couple of loads of straw have rolled in and been put to bed. And apart from one lot having evidently been properly soaked in a stack somewhere, with the top bales half ruined, the rest of it is a reasonable colour….given the year. I did have the difficult conversation with my merchant, where I had to point out that it would be better for both of us if I paid more, and he didn’t bother carting the bales of compost all that way. I completely understand that the logistics of snatching crops between thunderstorms through mid-August were very difficult, but when I’m paying nearly as much for the straw as the barley is worth, it genuinely baffles me that my part of the crop can be left out in the rain, where the barley is whisked back to the shed the moment the combines tank is full. Why don’t they tip the grain in a heap in the field, and rush my straw back under cover? It doesn’t make me feel very valued as a customer if I’m to be frank.
As it goes, I suffered from a very scary case of farmers lung as a young man- the only time I’ve been hospitalised since infancy. For management reasons, we bed everything by hand, rather than use one of those cow-scarers that chop and fling the bedding, and I simply cannot afford to re-excite my lung complaint. Not wanting to be overly dramatic, but it could very easily kill me another time. Nor would I wish to inflict the problem on other younger members of the team. So I have to have the conversation with my man every catchy year.
Hey-ho.
Because I’ve so much spare time – ah, time….the old enemy! I’ve been putting in spare days in the sawmill. With an order book overflowing with customers chasing framing and roofing timber, we’re hard pressed. I’m trying to make sure I’m running the mill when sawyer Barrie is on a day off…the poor machine hardly has time to cool down. I would like to get a lot of stock re-stacked and put away properly, but there’s scant time for that either. With the half decent weather allowing the walling team to crack on with a drystone wall rebuilding session, and 2 of the boys completely refettling the main cattle handling pen, it’s been a touch busy of late. I daresay it’s good for the local economy, but by golly there’s some wages going out.
When I finally get my head on the pillow nights…I then can’t sleep for worrying about everything that needs doing the next day.

24-09-20 I've Done a bad thing


I’ve done a bad thing. See, what it is, I enjoy a bit of the old ‘social media’ of an evening, chatting with doubtful strangers and far flung pals. On one rather obscure platform I participate under a pseudonym, while on another more mainstream site I use my own name. On this latter I generally have little to do with folk in this country- so don’t waste your time sending me a friend request, or be offended if I don’t want to interact. You and I can see each other in the pub…well, maybe. Instead I use it to converse with ‘friends’ and groups I’d otherwise not come across. Some are people I know from my travels years back, while others are cattle breeding pals from distant continents. Some aren’t my ‘friends’ at all – quite the opposite- and I use the social media to watch what they are saying…. I seldom engage with such folk, but find their chat informative. Some groups and individuals I follow are just for a bit of fun, and cultural exchange. Chatting live with an Inuit, trying to use ‘Zing maps’ or whatever it’s called to zoom in on each others actual locations was a lot of fun. And I had to heartily congratulate him lately when his primary school aged son killed his first seal. Indeed, it’s through such obscure correspondence that I found myself herding cows – and drinking schnapps- on a Tyrolean alp last year.

However, it’s led me to notice a phenomena I’m not proud of, but intrigues me nonetheless. There I was chatting with some American and Canadian lumberjack types, talking about their recent wild fires. It’s become very much a thing for electro-spectators to offer heartfelt congratulations gratitude and respect to the roughie toughies who’ve been out fighting these fires. And while discussing some technical stuff about forest fires with some of them, I inadvertently let slip that I too was on a fire fighting team locally. It’s hardly as macho as working in blazing forests of towering conifers against the backdrop of the rocky mountains….and I certainly didn’t paint it as such. But the admission still immediately caused a female onlooker to simper a bit and bless me for me bravery. I think she might’ve been throwing her electro-knickers. I departed the discussion toot sweet, but do wander what I attributes I could claim if I were feeling mischievous!

Meanwhile, when I’m done with that nonsense and with evenings pulling in, I’ve started up my ‘fruit leather’ production line again. You might recall this involves destoning and skinning various hedgerow fruits, and drying the resultant mush on the stove overnight. It started last year, when I discovered I had an unexpected surfeit of what turned out to be bullace, growing on a hedge on some ‘off land’. These look like big sloes, but aren’t nearly as tart – to the point that you could just about eat them straight from the bush. There’s a lot of stone and not a lot of flesh, but I had so many I couldn’t bear to waste them. One day, after I’d checked over the heifers grazing the fields, I filled a 3 gallon bucket without much effort. And after a bit of experimenting, was soon preserving tupperware boxes full of the dried flesh. It lasted as a treat until well into this summer

This years crop isn’t quite as mad, but it’s still bountiful. And I’ve got the knack now. I keep a big jug of fruity gloop in the fridge to make some more each evening, adding whatever comes to hand when I’m out and about. Too much blackberry makes it a bit sharp – and needing more apple to give it some body. Haws from the thorn bushes add body well, and I guess they must be stacked with pectin - you could use them in concrete- but it’s tasteless stuff whatever that chubby survival expert on TV says. Conversely I’ve one apple tree on the lowland ground that yields up very sweet fruit, but which don’t keep 10 minutes before they’re rotten…so they’re peeled, mushed, and go in the mix. That stuff is really good, and not much gets saved to the box in cupboard. I’d experiment further with plums, pears and all sorts if I had the trees – I couldn’t bear to buy fruit for such nonsense. I might have to invest in some saplings of the right bent. Certainly I’ve every intention of taking the saw with me and removing the competition from the bullace over winter. As I noted last year, it’s growing either side of 2-3 gateways, and has clearly been thoughtfully set there by some long ago hand.

1st October - 2nd Round of Lockdown

So, after 7-8 months of turmoil we’re struggling to face another covid 19 ‘lockdown’, and as yet barely 10% of the population have had it. I’ve a reasonable grasp of simple maths, and it strikes me that unless a vaccine becomes available to large chunks of the population very soon, we must have got considerably more than a year of this still to go. There are variables I’ve little grasp of. What level of infection will give us effective herd immunity –when so many people had got over it again and are no longer infectious, so it ceases to be able to spread-? I know Boris got shot down for mentioning it early on, but it is a pertinent question. Then, how many of us would be vulnerable to re-infection, and over what time frame? If the number is fairly low and the time slot fairly long, it’s not a big deal…it merely increases the lead time for herd immunity. Because it is so ‘novel’, these are all unknowns.

I’m thinking about these basics, because I have my doubts about whether society is prepare to live under the discipline that effective transmission suppression requires.

Our youngest has gone back to uni, and having visited her after a week or two, I can’t see how those youngsters are going to manage social distancing. Making them stay in their own groups until they’ve all had it is probably a better bet…it would create a big chunk of the populace ‘inoculated’ required for herd immunity, without too many of the unfortunate fatalities.

This might very well be a covert part of policy for all I know, although admitting it would be pretty risky. And it exposes those working with them who might be more vulnerable to a heightened risk. We mentioned that she and her chums might not be allowed home for Chrimbo, and it came as quite a shock…they hadn’t even thought of it as a reality. Bless em. And remember, this is a group of 2nd year university students doing grown up subjects. What grasp ‘socially less advantaged cohorts’ – to use a carefully selected label to describe the hard of thinking – will have is anyone’s guess. Effectively none until someone near to them is gasping for breath I would venture.

In the absence of a vaccine, maintaining low levels of transmission has only one long term benefit. It allows the health care industry to better cope with the sick. And it’s been easy to forget that the early panic was borne of from evident suppression of information from China and Iran, and then frightening reports coming out of Northern Italy, of what it looks like when a lot of people need intensive care all at once. Poor bumbling Boris took more flak for his apparent over-reaction, ordering rushed manufacture of extra ventilators, and setting up emergency hospitals and morgues. Yet he was only responding as well as he could to information that was coming at him. I don’t think he acquitted himself too badly in those early days.

The whole business of leadership in the West is fraught with opinion polls, PR…and reliance on advisors whose chief job is to keep you in power. Given his own advisors were flouting the spirit of policy, you’ve got to wander what hope there is. It’s a bit like the fundamental problem with socialism – where it’s human nature to look after yourself first- and our attitude to the threat of climate change and environmental breakdown, where everyone is concerned but still want the benefits for themselves.

There isn’t much chance of lucid rational response, so hold tight…this isn’t over, not by a long chalk.

Onto more important things then. In response to request, we’re going to talk you through making fruit leather again. Starting with what comes to hand, wash em and rinse, then extract the flesh from the stones/pips/skins and such. I mush small fruits in a bowl with some water, using the potato masher, and sieve out the bits to do the same again, until there’s only skin and stones left. Or in the case of apples- and by gum there’s loads of them about-, I’ll peel em, and run them over the finest side of the grater, so they’re just juice and mush. This can be mixed with the gloop from other fruit, and stored in the fridge till you’re ready. If it’s too tart, add some sugar f you must. It’ll keep for days fine. I dry thin layers overnight on some clever non-stick papery stuff on a baking tray, on top of the stove. You don’t want it to cook, just dried to the point where it’ll roll up and store in an air tight container. And it’s yum!

4th October Carbon

For a few weeks, I’ve been resisting the temptation to write more about carbon/greenhouse gases/’plant a tree’ guff. But it’ll wait no more.
It can’t have escaped your attention that the world and his uncle are blabbering on about planting trees to counter global warming, rewilding everything from ‘wildlife corridors’ up to entire upland landscapes, and generally gaze wistfully out of the window imagining that we can fix the eco-system’s problems by hitting me and mine over the head with a green stick. David Attenborough points out our shortcomings, but rather than look at where the real damage is being done, everyone points the finger where, paradoxically, the least damage happens. Instead of voting for a party who will tax aviation and plastic usage to death, we elect politicians who wanteconomic growth, and pay the wages of furloughed airline staff while covid rages. Even worse, we endure wealthy rewilding nut Ben Goldsmith, who has simply bought his way to power in DEFRA with inherited money. And now pontificates from on high as if he’s some kind of saint….it make me sick.
Let’s cut to the carbon chase. They’re carping on about planting trees, ostensibly to lock up some of the carbon released by burning fossil fuel. Some of them –no, really its all of them- think these forests will be native broadleaves, and that red squirrels and otters will scamper endearingly, as wizened old peasants shouldering bundles of sticks watch unicorns frolic. Sadly, the reality is that such woodland is rubbish at grabbing carbon from the atmosphere, and completely useless at holding onto it. Thecarbon held in such systems reaches a peak very quickly – 50 or 60 years for most of the species being planted. It then emits as much carbon as it catches. The only good thing you could say of it is that it’s temporarily beyond the doings of modern commerce. But as far as using land to counter the damage being done…it’s an utter waste of time. All it does is artificially salve the conscience of people like Goldsmith. Meanwhile, the damage being done by humanity will carry on, with more tarmac laid, more metals smelted for stuff we don’t need, more fuels burnt, and ever more carbon chucked into the atmosphere.
Pretend science is wheeled out to say how wonderful it all is, and how my cows and I are the work of the devil. They’ll keep talking about methane from cow burps, despite the fact that it’s recycled out of atmospheric gas in less than a decade. In a nut shell, there’s scarcely any more methane in the atmosphere now than there would be if there were no cows at all, and what there is, is part of a short-lived natural cycle.
It’s a red herring, repeated by the ignorant and prejudiced.
Talk of businesses, industries –even airlines, somehow keeping a straight face- going ‘Carbon neutral’ is just lies. If you’re claiming to be countering your fossil fuel usage by vicariously planting a tree which will grow, die, and rot again within a single human lifetime….you’re lying. And I’m calling you out.

I’m immersed to my eyes in rural life. I graze livestock across vast tracts of moorland, I plant and nurture new tree plantations, and run a busy sawmill cutting locally grown timber. I might be a bit part player, and a 2nd rate one at that, but my days are spent out in the rain, dealing with people who actually make all this stuff happen. And where we’re standing, what’s being said is just fantasy stuff. It isn’t going to feed or house people, it isn’t going to give anyone long term employment. And as sure as I’m sitting here, it isn’t going to hold onto the tiniest fraction of the carbon being released.
We need, as a species, to see that CO2 levels are rising, and will lead to a quickening of the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps melting. If climate changes meantime don’t mess us up too badly, rising sea levels will change humanity as we know it. Hundreds of millions of people are going to either move house, or die. Most will die. We can look at how to take CO2 out of the sky – and I can see how it could be done- but if we don’t stop releasing ever more, what we’re playing about with is futile window dressing. And while I personally don’t care how many million faraway strangers die, I would prefer my own offspring had a future. I don’t care how Goldsmith, Gove, and the Blue Sky Thinking Club delude themselves, as long as they don’t tell people I’m the baddy, and lie to cover for their own selfish lifestyles.

Water 14-10-10

‘Water, water everywhere’, said Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner in his tedious ‘rime’. And it’s hydrogen and oxygen that’ve been taxing me this week, when combined at a ratio of 2 to 1.
The supply system on the main farm is sourced from the spring outside the old longhouse door. All of the old longhouses that persisted locally were built on such a supply, nestled under the best loamy inbye ground. You’d never gamble your fortune on ground that wouldn’t grow decent fodder for your stock, and you wouldn’t want to be carrying them water very far through the winter. Those that dug leats to convey their water expended labour, and exposed their kids health to whatever was getting in the leat along its length. Evidently, it wasn’t something you did by choice. The spring in the yard here is uncommonly sweet, if acid enough to eat copper.
However, in the 80’s, it was decreed that we needed a modern system, and a team came to run poly pipes everywhere, putting troughs in all the fields, and pumping water up to a new tank up on the brow. They also decided the spring wasn’t up to the task, and sunk a well down beside the river. The premise was that the water would be filtered through the sandy alluvial riverbank. However, the clever engineers –who manifestly were neither farmers nor practical men, failed to notice that when the river flooded, it overtopped the well housing and filled the well with muck. It’s also ‘physics’ that pumping water an extra 100’ in height will incur cost. So for 25 odd years, we endured filthy water and endless expensive pump problems.
Enter rural hero, handyman, farmer, and raconteur, the much missed Dick Norrish. Dick would come and help me sort out the various issues the set-up led to, each time shaking his head, muttering that this wasn’t making him happy. Eventually, he he said ‘Look, this is alright fer the bullocks. They’ve only got to last 10-15 years. But I want you to last 70 years and more’. So, after a bit of head-scratching, he duly despatched another unsung rural hero, Malcom the digger driver, to replace the defunct crumbled brick housing over the old spring in the yard with gurt concrete rings 10’ deep. Bringing the pump up from the well by the river, and plumbing into 80’s pipework, and bingo! We had cheaper pumping, and clean water again. After we’d cleaned out the 2” of peaty sludge in the reservoir, the job was a good’un. Our only real problem is the acidity is right up again, and the bath grew a coppery green ring as the hot water tanks were steadily eaten away.
But like everything in life, things wear out and fail. The pumps only last so long between repair, and troughs are always getting bashed about –bullocks have got long boring hours to fill. And the storage reservoir is built of very crumbly 1980’s blocks, and generally resembles a concrete sieve. We know somethings critical when the tap on the rising main in the house starts to splutter, leading to a search of likely offending weak points.
And here’s where we get to my troubled week. Suspicious the pump was the main problem, I’d had an engineer check it out last week. In the briefest of visits, he assured me it absolutely fine, so I looked further afield. There’s something like a mile of buried pipe, and twenty or more troughs and standpipes, but looking in the almost empty holding tank revealed a fresh hole in the rendered blocks. It didn’t seem to losing that much, but it had to be the problem..surely? However after yet another hurried ‘rapid cement’ repair- promising myself I’d get around to rebuilding it properly eventually- we still couldn’t hold water in the system. Lying awake nights worrying, I was wondering whether it was just the age of the pipework, every underground joint seeping a bit, and we were going to have to get serious.
Trying to find an answer that didn’t involve excavating the entire farm, I mentally eliminated easy options. Thinking I’d best double check the pump – which was working almost constantly to keep pressure in the system- I turned it off, and went to shut off the stopcock at its head. As I reached into the well, I could hear water rushing…which stopped as I turned off the stopcock! Sure enough, the reservoir then held 24 hours worth of water. It was a tuppeny halfpenny one way valve in the wretched pump. The euphoric feeling of relief was palpable.
I’ve still got to do something about the main tank at some point…but not today kids. There’s stock to tend.

Liz Bonnin 20-10-20

I’ve a little bit of news that might have passed you by.
Several months ago, the BBC aired one of those expose documentaries that convince you the end of the world is nigh. In this one, entitled ‘Meat: A Threat to our Planet?’ presenter Liz Bonnin flew around the world to show viewers that eating meat was environmentally pretty much the same as strangling baby pandas and hammering bungs in the blowholes of dolphins. It was the same old tripe –forgive the pun- slickly packaged up and sold to the Beeb. And despite howls of protest from the likes of me, it went out into the public domain through that most trusted of sources.
And here’s the news. The NFU went after the show through Ofcom, complaining that it was implying all meat production was like those systems shown, when in fact British farming is generally far removed. Unsurprisingly, Liz hadn’t shown viewers grass based beef farming, with cows standing in fields such as you might find hereabouts. Instead, she concentrated on US feedlots, where cattle are given hormone implants that have been illegal here for decades, in vast open pens by their thousands,and stuffed with corn until they’re fat. Then we were whisked off to the Amazon basin, where she asserted that the jungle is being chopped down solely to grow soya, so you can have another McWhopperburger.
And just for once, the NFUs complaint has been upheld, and the BBC have had to admit that their unbiased broadcasting standards hadn’t been upheld. They’ve subsequently taken the show down from their techno ‘watch-it-again’ facility. Now whether it’ll go any further, because you can be sure they’ll whisper all this down ametaphoric well, and it remains to be seen whether Liz apologises for 'dissing' me and mine – doesn’t she think it hurts when broadcasters put out such twisted garbage? Personally, I think she and the Beeb should be pursued through the courts for defamation, and hit for damages. If it can be shown that programmes like this hurt the values of the livestock I raise, then I consider she should be hurt right back in kind. But hey –ho. Just knowing that she’s been caught out helps, and presumably comes at an embarrassing moment as she’s now hooked up with poor old David Attenborough in some new show. Perhaps she’s turned over a new leaf, and will try truthful reporting for a change.
As a coda, and curiously, I recall she’d filmed a section for the original documentary showing a grass based system – touting it as a novel alternative that might be part of the answer. I’m pretty sure I found it on-line somewhere at the time while researching a column, although why it got cut I don’t know. Never mind that it was toe-curlinglynaïve –suggesting that such a method was new and clever when it’s actually as old as keeping livestock- I suspect it simply didn’t fit with the entrenched prejudice. I’d love to know.

Onwards. Another little bit of news you’d be forgiven for missing is the goings on in Nova Scotia, on Canada’s East coast. Whatever your views on native land rights, and whether we Europeans really had the right to steal an entire continent from the original inhabitants, this is pretty ugly. The local tribe – the Mi-kmak -have been enjoying the right to take a few lobsters. Their catch is dwarfed by giganticmainstream commercial operations, much of it being for sustenance rather than financial gain. And while I’m sure the commercial fishermen will tell you a different story, the fact that they took it upon themselves to very publicly go mobhanded and steal the natives catch and burn their gear is hardly a balanced attempt to live alongside the natives. What is far more worrying is that the RCMP attended the scene, but stood by and did nothing to stop the intimidation. They claimed later that they ‘kept the peace’, although from what I saw there wasn’t much peace left to keep…I don’t where the Mounties hid it, but it sure wasn’t on view.
The natives’ claims to land rights date from the original treaties, and subsequent legal cases, and are complex, controversial, and get muddled by their often poor social status. It hasn’t helped that they’ve sometimes bent rules massively to their own advantage. When I was there as a lad, the Great Lakes groups were using their assertion they could ignore the US/Canada border to then ‘smuggle’ goods for tax benefit, which didn’t exactly paint them in a good light. But this shameful episode, where they’re clearly being treated as second class citizens, hardly does modern openCanadian society justice.