- Location
- Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
A long awaited dry week has had most of us up here making a dash for the last gasp harvest. I didn’t dwell too long once the high pressure rolled up, and cut everything remaining. We’re down to the last nail-biting teeth clenched piddly fields, clinging to the sides of the valley – 48 acres in 16 enclosures. It isn’t the number of bales that’s the problem, but rather the fag of all the narrow gates and road bridges, boulders, sidling ground, or aimless grockles dawdling in the way.
For all the threat of night-time frosts, and approaching equinox, the crop is turning up green and vaguely fragrant. A lot of it wasn’t laid up until June, so it’s far from gone over. I’ve started baling and wrapping some, but it looks like we’ll be getting it dry enough to call it hay in the next couple of days. Whoop! I might be spared 5-6 rolls of wrap after all. Later starts and earlier evenings don’t assist, with the window narrowing every day into September.
I’m sharing these September days with several strayed pheasants, and a very sleek young fox…who presumably just has to lie around with his mouth open until they fall in. There are flocks of small twittery birds in the hawthorns, which are laden with fruit, along with everything else. A pair of Roe deer are raising twins in one block of mowing ground, the buck watching me carefully from the bracken on the headlands. They’ve trampled a fair mess in the hay crop, and I’d knock him over and pop him in the freezer but for the fact that he’s been busily biting the flowers out of the sporadic ragwort that persistently appears just there. I’ve never seen a plant set seed, and religiously dig em out roots and all, but still they appear. Some places I only pay lip service to eradicating it, the battle already lost, but up here, it’s easily kept on top of. The sheep are the biggest help.
Oh, and the acres of Himalayan Balsam infesting the steepest valley sides have just reached the stage the South Devon cows like. Once the flowers are setting seed, so certain cows will negotiate the near vertical slopes, and dense bracken, hunting down the flowerheads which they evidently adore. If we could get them liking it earlier, they’d clean it out quite neatly, but it continues its onward march.
One of the bigger problems with this delayed finish to saving next winters fodder is that we’ve overrun into autumn stock work again. Lambs need sorting, weaning and clipping. Ewe flocks need going through and MOTing. Cattle need prepping for sale, although this might only be finding them and getting them pre-movement tested.
Then large numbers of us recently had to devote a day to gathering a bunch of feral ponies which have persistently evaded annual tidy ups. They’ve been cavorting over several thousand acres of open ground, across the Forest and several adjoining commons, vanishing into the ether whenever normal drifts took place. This meant youngsters weren’t being marked, and little boys were growing into bigger boys, perpetuating the situation. A concerted effort was co-ordinated from several sides, and a huge area swept up. Being the only driver with a reasonably complete mental map of boulders in the fields to be cut, I stopped back and despatched a few highly skilled operatives to this communal effort. I hear it was a big success, and well done to all concerned.
Probably better not to look at the costs incurred.
Hard on the heels of that were further multiple commitment clashes, meaning ‘Stupid O’clock’ starts and late evenings, juggling tasks approaching the crimson list. Tempers have been short.
I found some poor foreign lad was caught using his metal detector on my land –just where someone has lately been digging little holes searching for buried treasure. When he said the wrong thing to the grizzled farmer, he came within an ace of a very unpleasant experience.
Next, having gashed open a finger pulling a bracken stem while gathering Scotch ewes- one of my more bizarre occupational hazards-, one the of darling tibby baa lambs gave me orf in the resultant open wound. I’ve had it before, and recognised the flaming itch straight away. This time, a lymph gland came up like an egg in my armpit, developed a rash and started to itch as well. I kept the orf covered daytimes to avoid secondary’s, and carried on much as ever. The only real worry was that I had to take lambs to market, and there’s always some tedious little inspector very excited about finding orf in the lambs. Would he notice me, and demand I was to be removed from the premises? Ho-hum.
About the author
Originally published in The Western Morning News, these articles are reproduced for the enjoyment of TFF members World-wide by kind permission of the author Anton Coaker and the WMN
Anton Coaker is a fifth generation farmer keeping suckler cows and flocks of hill sheep high on the Forest of Dartmoor and running a hardwood and mobile sawmill.
A prodigious writer and regular correspondent for The Western Morning News, NFU and The Farming Forum, Anton’s second book “The Complete Bullocks” is available fromwww.anton-coaker.co.uk
For all the threat of night-time frosts, and approaching equinox, the crop is turning up green and vaguely fragrant. A lot of it wasn’t laid up until June, so it’s far from gone over. I’ve started baling and wrapping some, but it looks like we’ll be getting it dry enough to call it hay in the next couple of days. Whoop! I might be spared 5-6 rolls of wrap after all. Later starts and earlier evenings don’t assist, with the window narrowing every day into September.
I’m sharing these September days with several strayed pheasants, and a very sleek young fox…who presumably just has to lie around with his mouth open until they fall in. There are flocks of small twittery birds in the hawthorns, which are laden with fruit, along with everything else. A pair of Roe deer are raising twins in one block of mowing ground, the buck watching me carefully from the bracken on the headlands. They’ve trampled a fair mess in the hay crop, and I’d knock him over and pop him in the freezer but for the fact that he’s been busily biting the flowers out of the sporadic ragwort that persistently appears just there. I’ve never seen a plant set seed, and religiously dig em out roots and all, but still they appear. Some places I only pay lip service to eradicating it, the battle already lost, but up here, it’s easily kept on top of. The sheep are the biggest help.
Oh, and the acres of Himalayan Balsam infesting the steepest valley sides have just reached the stage the South Devon cows like. Once the flowers are setting seed, so certain cows will negotiate the near vertical slopes, and dense bracken, hunting down the flowerheads which they evidently adore. If we could get them liking it earlier, they’d clean it out quite neatly, but it continues its onward march.
One of the bigger problems with this delayed finish to saving next winters fodder is that we’ve overrun into autumn stock work again. Lambs need sorting, weaning and clipping. Ewe flocks need going through and MOTing. Cattle need prepping for sale, although this might only be finding them and getting them pre-movement tested.
Then large numbers of us recently had to devote a day to gathering a bunch of feral ponies which have persistently evaded annual tidy ups. They’ve been cavorting over several thousand acres of open ground, across the Forest and several adjoining commons, vanishing into the ether whenever normal drifts took place. This meant youngsters weren’t being marked, and little boys were growing into bigger boys, perpetuating the situation. A concerted effort was co-ordinated from several sides, and a huge area swept up. Being the only driver with a reasonably complete mental map of boulders in the fields to be cut, I stopped back and despatched a few highly skilled operatives to this communal effort. I hear it was a big success, and well done to all concerned.
Probably better not to look at the costs incurred.
Hard on the heels of that were further multiple commitment clashes, meaning ‘Stupid O’clock’ starts and late evenings, juggling tasks approaching the crimson list. Tempers have been short.
I found some poor foreign lad was caught using his metal detector on my land –just where someone has lately been digging little holes searching for buried treasure. When he said the wrong thing to the grizzled farmer, he came within an ace of a very unpleasant experience.
Next, having gashed open a finger pulling a bracken stem while gathering Scotch ewes- one of my more bizarre occupational hazards-, one the of darling tibby baa lambs gave me orf in the resultant open wound. I’ve had it before, and recognised the flaming itch straight away. This time, a lymph gland came up like an egg in my armpit, developed a rash and started to itch as well. I kept the orf covered daytimes to avoid secondary’s, and carried on much as ever. The only real worry was that I had to take lambs to market, and there’s always some tedious little inspector very excited about finding orf in the lambs. Would he notice me, and demand I was to be removed from the premises? Ho-hum.
About the author
Originally published in The Western Morning News, these articles are reproduced for the enjoyment of TFF members World-wide by kind permission of the author Anton Coaker and the WMN
Anton Coaker is a fifth generation farmer keeping suckler cows and flocks of hill sheep high on the Forest of Dartmoor and running a hardwood and mobile sawmill.
A prodigious writer and regular correspondent for The Western Morning News, NFU and The Farming Forum, Anton’s second book “The Complete Bullocks” is available fromwww.anton-coaker.co.uk
