The Anton Coaker column thread

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Gathering and Collie

It’s that ‘ovine time’ again, when the ewes have to be fetched in, given a bit of a wash and a spruce up ready for rumpy pumpy with the tups. And with a growing list of daily cattle work due as well, daylight hours just aren’t long enough. It isn’t helping my tired bones that 2 of my key operatives are about to be temporarily lured away by whatever the attractions of turkey bothering might be. For it’s also a busy time for turkey farmers, who draw in seasonal workers from far and wide.

While some of our sheep are relatively biddable creatures, living in what you might recognise as fields and are more or less civilised and domesticated, others live far out on the peat, barely knowing what people are. Wild as hawks, and sublimely tough and self-reliant, they’re the archetypal hill sheep.

Gathering them involves first finding the little bleaters. For while they each have their ‘lear’- the piece of hill where their mother reared them, and which will always be home-, they aren’t exactly chained to it. Then they have to be shed out from neighbouring flocks. The etiquette at this time of year is, generally, that odd ones belonging to neighbours, which have strayed from their own lear, ought be fetched in and returned. If they get left out, away from their flock, their owner might not find them. And while the sheep might run cheek by jowl with other flocks, the road journeys returning strays are often many miles.

Then these scattered sheep have to be pushed together, and headed home, trit-trotted down into the valley toward the moorgate. If the cloud base drops below 1300’, we’re cooked, as the sheep simply vanish into the fog. Driving rain makes the work less pleasant and the peat squelchy underfoot, equally testing waterproofs and resolve. The many tiny streams suddenly become raging white water, and the even smallest get dangerous to cross. Decisions are made on the hoof regarding these crossings. While the summer gathering for shearing is often during low water, the November gather is a very different kettle of fish. Long diversions can put hours onto the work at hand, rather than risk having sheep founder in seething torrents.

Gale force winds also bring problems. As well as the sheer work of trying to stand upright –especially if you want to climb onto a large boulder to get a better view- they also mean the poor dogs can hardly hear what’s expected of them. Luckily, my boy has got a bright young collie who can pretty much read his mind. My somewhat portly senior hound is belligerent and bone-headed, but she too shows moments of near clairvoyance on occasion. Somehow, it’s all coming together, and we’ll soon be into the final round of dipping, and the tups can go to work.



And on the subject of just how clever collies can be, and how close they are to those they work with, here’s a story for you- which I have been given kind permission to repeat.

I – somewhat vicariously- know a bright young lady who grew up living a very similar existence to such as described above, albeit on a storm blasted moor on the Scottish borders. Her Dad is a pretty hard bitten fella, working an equally hard bitten flock of blackface sheep across miles of exposed hill ground. It’s the kind of back country marked on the map as ‘There be dragons here’. Now circumstances and the tides of life have found this girl setting up home with her young man in North Wales, chasing dairy cows for a crust. Once there, she’d obtained a collie pup from a farmer near Aberystwyth. And the photos I’ve seen suggest this sharp little dog could very nearly learned read and write. Much loved mostly as a pet, ‘Pip’ only has 6 sheep and some dairy cows to work. Now, the narrative moves along, and settled into her new life the girl found this little dog was ailing somehow. Not recognising what was wrong with her beloved hound but sure something was amiss, she took Pip to the vet. After running through the symptoms, the vet quizzically asked whether there might be an in-pup bitch in the house, because the dog appeared to have a phantom pregnancy. And this, my friends, is when the young lady of the tale realised that she was indeed herself unexpectedly – and only just- ‘expecting’.

My goodness they’re brighter than we realise aren’t they? And now, some months later, Pip has a new pack member to be besotted with, and all is well.

Right, onwards. What’s the forecast for the day?

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

West Penwith

According their own blurb, ‘Natural England’ are ‘Government's adviser for the natural environment’. Technically, so says oogle google, they’re ‘A non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by DEFRA’. I’m not altogether clear how that works, as the various bodies combined under DEFRAs wing all seem to overlap, interfere with each other’s direction of travel, and generally combine to widdle us peasants off. For, as you can probably guess, the common denominator is that they – and there’s thousands upon thousands of them- are pretty positive that they know best. Certainly better than us mere peasants, who might scarcely have a PhD to our name.

NE however, have moved it up a notch in recent years. Unable to stop the total destruction of the natural environment where urban people do their thing, they’re increasingly putting the screws on the farming community.

The latest is a travesty in the making. As you may have heard, a new ‘Site of Special Scientific Interest’ is being created in West Cornwall, covering much of the West Penwith moors. These are on a windswept run of ground facing the Atlantic, typified by the protruding granite strata, mosaics of tiny fields- oft bounded by field boundaries dating back thousands of years. Gorse and bracken infest the little areas of common between farms, and stone built farmsteads hunker beneath the Sou’wester gales. Many of the families farming locally would be able to trace their connection to the landscape ‘since the clergy learned to read and write’. Landscape and community combined are indeed already a national treasure.

But the way NE see things, they must be forced back toward some barely identifiable ‘natural’ state. The ‘SSSI’ won’t just cover areas of undrained unimproved commons and headlands, but will include many long-improved and worked fields. There’s a list of things the farmers won’t then be allowed to do, including spreading lime on the acidic granite soils. And for those of you who don’t realise what this means, it will- over perhaps a decade- see these ancient farms revert to ground so poor it’ll hardly be worth farming. Some farms are currently milking 200 cows, turning the rich grass on these storm lashed hillsides into valuable dairy products. Under Natural England’s demands, their businesses will simply collapse. I know very well what it’s like farming over granite –albeit at a higher altitude. And I assure you, those folk can’t realistically milk commercial scale cattle off the acidified ground that NE plans will give rise to.

It’d be laughable if they weren’t serious, and real livelihoods weren’t at stake.

You might argue in favour of protecting the bits of the patchwork that remains unimproved. But fields that were improved under direction of the ‘War Department’ in WW2, or by Victorian ‘improvers’, and have been farmed since? Where is the sense in that? In fact, it’s deeper…more insidious. I don’t doubt for a moment the inhabitants have been carrying seaweed and sea sand up onto these fields for centuries unrecorded. Millennia in fact.

Natural England – and this comes right from the top, in the persons of Tony Juniper and Marion Spain- are trying to displace the guilt people feel about urban destruction, fuelled by ever-expanding cities, airports, supermarkets, transport routes, factories et al, by tinkering with the places least spoiled.

On Dartmoor, we’re seeing a steady ratchetting up, to the point where, for the first time in my life, I’ve had to ask permission to graze the land I farm - land my direct forebears have grazed with the same families of ewes, cows, and mares, for centuries. Again, like my peers down West, we predate local church records. The SSSI designations were put on this land years ago…curiously, after some centuries of our having worked the landscape. You can imagine how insulting I find the concept of interfering over-educated outsiders, threatening me with the big stick, because modern society has trashed the planet.

The situation on West Penwith is even worse, where land being designated includes a lot of far better ground. It’s a bit like a government ‘compulsory purchase’ of the productive capacity….only there’s no compensation.

NE will point to their various foundering post Brexit environmental schemes as a source of revenue…but to date, they’re a comprehensive failure, and in no way replace what is threatened.

I’ve long seen that to thrive, any society must have a good degree of personal property sanctity. You need to have a fair idea that what you work for will be yours tomorrow….else, why would you work for it? For some, this is about to be stolen by NE, and this needs to be stopped before they get any more out of hand.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

As Daylight hours

As daylight hours pull sharply in, I find myself fighting a job list which depends on being able to see. Some tasks can be carried out indoors, or under floodlights, but many simply can’t, and I need sight of that burning ball of hydrogen that barely seems to have crept up onto the Southern horizon before it’s plummeting below decks again. As I’ve oft mentioned, I adore being out in the open, immersed in the turning of the seasons. But that also means I have to try and love the weeks running up to the winter solstice.

Some of my tasks involve working with livestock across rough ground, where they’re not easily rooted out in full daylight, ne’er mind when the light is failing. Annoyingly, the little beggars can also evidently see in the dark better than I can- happily the dogs can also see in the dark. Still, jobs involving stock away from the yard- like worming lambs or fettling ewes on off land, is best planned to be finished, sheep back in the field and tools back in the truck, before things get too dimpsey.

Other work involves machinery which patiently waits for a moments lapse of concentration, whereupon- without a seconds hesitation- it’ll crush, burn, or sever bits of me. Bits that I’d generally prefer to maintain in full working order. Trust me, such jobs simply mustn’t be done without good light.

One nasty little surprise I was warned about long ago needs to be held in mind. Various electric lighting systems might look like they give off a constant glare, when in fact they’re flickering at a very high frequency. This flickering is barely perceptible, and certainly needn’t inhibit your working under such floodlights. However, when using high speed machinery it isn’t unknown for the frequency of said flickering light to synchronise with the speed of the whizzing parts of machine…..giving them the appearance of being stationary. I’ve never had any that have looked actually motionless, but I can easily see how it’d happen. Be careful kids.



Another little problem I’m experiencing at the minute is the sheer physicality of what I occupy myself with. The host of stock work to do as we head into winter involves a lot of getting up close and personal with the little dears. Wrestling bullocks, sheep and ponies involves various combinations of being kicked, bitten, stamped on and just being bodily slammed against handy gates/walls/posts. Without a steadying hand, gates get walloped in the pens, and swing back round alarmingly fast. We keep the stock as quiet as is commercially practical, but there’s still a daily tally of bashes and bangs.

In the mill, as well as a reasonably healthy order book given what is clearly a slowing economy, we need to generate a lot of material for use ‘in house’. Our fencing crew has eventually rocked up to do some work which has been waiting for months. They too have hard, skilled physical work, exposed to the fullest extremes of the weather. As ever, I hadn’t taken the precaution of having all the posts and stakes ready to hand. They’d soon used up the stockpile I’d put aside, while we were busy wrestling the sheep through the dip. So there was suddenly a rush on more oak fencing. I’m happy enough to make time, as this utilises smaller logs and short ends that won’t make higher value beams for more genteel clients. It’s a good use for the raw material, and they’ll last far longer than the inadequate tantalising we’re forced to use nowadays. But that doesn’t change the simple reality that the stuff doesn’t pick itself up and run itself through the saw. And while big oak beams have, by necessity, to be mechanically handled, oak stakes are difficult to mechanise….so it’s manual labour. Honest straight forward work, involving cold and dirt, such as not many folk queue up for any more.

While we’ve been juggling these things, an order for 15 tonnes of cropped granite slipped quietly in while I wasn’t looking. Like the stakes, I try to keep a ready stockpile of worked facing stone, but having been ill with covid through October, I was behind. And the curious thing about shoving and bullying 15 tonnes of granite through the process is that it’s heavy. Heavy as rocks in fact! You’d think I’d have noticed this before.

And lastly, with a unerring predictability, DEFRA have demanded a long list of information regarding our enviro scheme- or it’s big stick time. Astonishingly- and I know you’ll scarcely believe it- this started the very morning after I’d been critical in last week’s paper. Goodness, what a coincidence.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Trip east

My lovely little wife and I had cause to slip up to Londinium last week. We had some old friends and rellies to visit, and a function at which to air the glad rags. Anyway, it’s always fun to expose this country mouse to the town mice- or possibly you could read that the other way round. Indeed, we hadn’t even set sail before the phenomena had started. Just slipping into a larger town down here to renew my one suit- which had inexplicably shrunk around the waist – revealed the pattern. While my needs were soon dealt with in some sprawling clothing barn, Alison also needed a fresh top. So after a dutiful session saying ‘oh that one’s nice’ I was parked on a chair outside the changing rooms. I exchanged knowing nods with another old fella likewise waiting. And sure enough, we were soon sat beside one another, engaged in conversation. I forget how many degrees it is that separate us from anybody else in the world, but in this case it wasn’t many. He’d formerly been on a dairy farm in Sussex…who’d a thought it! By the time the girls re-emerged with their choices we were setting the world to rights. Seeing we were happy, they each went off to settle up. And here’s the thing. While our respective spouses instantly recognised we were content, - and indeed, less likely to misbehave while sat gassing - the attentive staff were greatly amused, tickledthat 2 strangers might fall into conversation thus- while you or I might regard it as perfectly normal. In fact, I’d find it pretty odd not to strike up conversation left like that.
So, with new apparel stashed in the back of the old truck, we left brown windswept moors behind and sallied East. And while I find the slow creeping expansion of urban footprint bad enough down here, as you get sucked into the distortion of space that is London, so I found it even more jarring. Before we hit the endless blanket of humanity’s mark, I was affronted by the traffic crowded onto the grimy roads. Indeed, the roads themselves grow, with stretches of woodland clearfelled, signalling yet more tarmac is needed to accommodate humanity’sfootprint. Remember, my profession is being called upon to abandon food production so we can mitigate this destruction. I found it quite difficult to get a hold of thisjuxtaposition.
Soon after negotiating the M25 car park, we were pulling up into a friendly driveway, where a catch up with some loved ones over a meal and a few sherbets found us ready for the next day’s foray into town.
Suited and frocked, we took a train in the following morning, using swiped bits of plastic to pay. Indeed, I found it hard to pay for anything with my accustomed hard coin of the realm. I wouldn’t say I’m agog when meandering amongst the cultural spectacle of iconic historic buildings and streets, or especially uncomfortable in the density of human beings, but I was metaphorically far from home.
Beneath and between all the concrete and steel, crossing a bit of park, I scuffed my smart shoes in some nice well-drained loamy clay explaining the strong growth of the plane trees- which seem to shrug off the smitch and grime. If you could rewind the clock somehow, it’d grow some major league oak. Sadiq’s congestion chargessimply mean only rich people drive big smelly cars.
Anyway, we attended our function, enjoying ourselves very much, thanks to all concerned. Afterwards, eldest offspring had taken the afternoon off work nearby to joinus, and we meandered off in search of a coffee and a sit down. Passing her office, I hadn’t really appreciated just how right in the thick of it she is.
Returning to our lodgings we 3 took further public transport, me engaging with strangers along the way, although Agnes advises if you can’t see the crazy on the bus…it’s probably you. Happily, the weirdest one I had to sit beside was only moderately deranged. To the snickering delight of my earwigging loved ones, he was soon reading my paper with me, pointing to pictures and asking inappropriate questions. Bored with my failure to take the bait, he then progressed to phone conversations into his imaginary hands-free headset. We got to our stop, which was the last on the line, but he stayed in his seat. For all I know, he’s there yet.
Reflecting later, back in the wilds, I decided I wouldn’t shed one single tear if I never saw the overcrowded filthy place again. There are simply too many people now, and we can’t grasp the reality.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Net buiodivesity gain

How nice, hundreds more delegates have flown half way round the world to discuss how we’re destroying the world. This time, they felt compelled to wring their hands specifically about the loss of biodiversity. And rightly so, it’s criminal what we’re doing to this spinning ball of magma on which, against all odds, we can breathe the atmosphere, drink the pooled precipitation, and endure direct exposure to rays from the local star. For sustenance, we’ve evolved to eat all manner of the things which grow, graze, hop, swim, or flap about the place. It’s all marvelously convenient, and you’d think we’d take a bit more care preserving all these wondrous things.That we don’t is a repugnant and shameful stain on humanity. And flying about in jet planes to talk about it is pretty much at the top of the tree in the hypocrisy stakes. Like the fatal flaw with communism, everyone wants to be a little bit ‘more equal’ than everyone else.
As far as the loss of species and habitat goes, I suppose you could reasonably argue that since living things are constantly evolving into slightly different living things, all those niches will eventually be filled again. Unfortunately, there’s 2 things wrong with that logic. Firstly, we’re destroying stuff a whole lot faster than it can evolve to match new surroundings – the African elephant is a nice big example. It shows signs of evolving smaller tusks – those with big tusks are much more attractive targets for ivory poachers, and hence get to spend less time making baby elephants. But it’s not happening anything like fast enough. Secondly- getting back on track- new habitats and species can’t find their way through life’s murky maze, because there’s 8 billion of us humans standing in the way. We’ve occupied, or simply eradicated the niches. Pointedly, wild elephants and settled humanity don’t exactly go together very well.It’s ironic. We’re currently evolving faster than we have for tens of thousands of years, but our very presence suppresses the evolutionary opportunities for other species.
The damage is often so diffused and incremental, it’s difficult to single out one cause. Overall pollution damages bits of the chain, weakening things elsewhere, and so the collapse continues. The salmon in local rivers are a good example. I’ve heard every kind of excuse why they’ve disappeared, ranging from Irish trawlermenfinding their migration routes returning across the Atlantic, specific pollution incidents in individual rivers, altered ph in the headwaters of said rivers, and everything else you can think of. Clearly it’s not just one of those things. They may all play their part, but in my own life I watched the whole ecology of these rivers change drastically – and there’s not much happening upstream of me to directly cause it. So there must be wider environmental damage – air and precipitation borne pollution. Where do you place the blame?
Some of you may’ve heard of another clever wheeze that’s the coming thing. I was tipped off 3-4 years agoabout ‘Biodiversity Net Gain’. This is the brilliant idea where a developer has a legal obligation to replace what habitat he destroys. This he achieves by paying someone like me to ‘improve’ my biodiversity. I’d plant a few trees so he can concrete over half a parish somewhere else. Essentially, he’s buying the right to destroy habitat. Unsurprisingly some problems arise. Firstly, there’s no certainly that the trees planted in one place will replace what habitat is destroyed in another – indeed, it’s hardly a realistic expectation. And secondly, this trade- which is now growing, making land agents fat- gives me the specific incentive to rid myself of some biodiversity asap, so as to have a blanker canvas to sell later. I have direct financial incentive to scalp as much of my land as I can, so as to take this lucrative shilling. I know enterprising young chaps who’re already cashing in. It’s a complete farce.
And yet nowhere in all of this nonsense is the simple truth being talked about. There are far too many people, and we all ‘take’ too much. Outside some scientific communities, it is scarcely mentioned. Going to thatconference, paying the green levy, putting the sticker on your electric car, and wringing your hands will not save our bountiful beautiful home. Grasping what the root problem is will be our only hope.
You want a smiley Christmas message? Don’t worry,everything’s going to be OK. Eventually, the ecosystem will simply shrug us off like so many lice. If it’s all a bit much, pour yourself a hefty dram, listen to some Neil Young, or that Hawaiian lad singing ‘Somewhere over the rainbow’, and chill.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Birdsong

With an almost uncanny accuracy, the birdsong about the farmyard had changed by the 23rd December – just 2 days after the solstice. I suspect it would’ve been quicker, but for inclement weather keeping their little hatches battened down on the 22nd. By golly they’re clever. A more knowledgeable soul would tell you which birds it is singing to announce the sun’s return, but I’ve always got my eye on whatever task I’m about and seldom pay much heed to which tweet comes from whose beak.

And, speaking of said inclement weather, as well as a strong driving wind, the previous weekend saw two rain gauges locally take 3 ½” and 4” respectively in one 24 hour session. Humdinger, that was wet.

Nevertheless, while it’s hard on both man and beast, such storms do bring me a solace - a peace in my soul that’s hard to measure. The very off-putting nature of such grim days mean there’s no-one much about to bother my hairy charges and I. When I find them hiding amongst the gorse bushes, or stood rumped behind the wall beside a round feeder, they’re all the more pleased to see me. It’s a rare day foddering cattle on the hill that I don’t spend a few moments talking to one or other of the bulls, burying my nose in the thick curly hide over their necks as I scratch the folds of hide under their throat. Some of my beasts are more or less indifferent to my presence, wanting nothing more than the grub and my absence. Others however, are happy enough to see me…as long as the bale is nice today. There’s close symbiosis evident through the winter, and the worse the weather, the stronger the tie.

The youngstock, and cows with young calves still at foot are housed, and likewise I enjoy being in amongst them. We ‘bed up’ by hand – instead of using a tractor mounted straw chopper which blows the bedding into the pens. Whoever draws that task is working in amongst the cattle, brushing against them, smelling their grassy burps.

I’ve been lucky over the festive period, in that there’s been someone helping each day, even if it’s just getting the bedding done. If I’m on my own, it’s less fun, having to remain absolutely focussed to get all the daily work done. Moving from one barn to another, or across to the tractor, I need to remember to take a bag of grub for that bunch of ewes, or this wadge of hay for those calves. A few slip ups, and having to double back for anything, or hunting for a missing cow, and the daylight is gone. But it’s worked well this year…I’ve even managed to get in an hour or two in the mill each day.

And like the birds, I’m singing to rejoice in longer hours of light!



Ah! I have received some admonishment for being such a ‘grumpy grouch’ in last week’s column – with some critics being less kind and thoughtful than others mind. And I’m sorry if my analysis wasn’t pretty to behold. I only raise the observation so as to promote discussion about remedies for our malaise. If it would please you better, I’ll direct you to what seems to have happened to elderly actor William Shatner. After portraying spacefaring Captain Kirk all those years, he was finally actually taken- albeit briefly and only just- into space by some tech billionaire, as a marketing gimmick. Immediately on his return, Shatner was evidently very emotional and barely stringing words together. Once he’d got his metaphoric breath back, it seems he’s had something of an epiphany. He admits that after years playing the hero of the ‘Starship Enterprise’, he’d imagined space would be wonderful, while the reality turned out rather different. Instead of sparkly galaxies and stars, he realised space is blackness and death. Looking back down, he saw that Earth is a tiny oasis in all that blackness, with a gossamer thin layer of breathable air ….and yet we’re busy trashing the place like there’s no tomorrow. It’s seemingly had a profound effect on the man, and he’s written extensively about his revelation. Admittedly he’s mostly been saying we should all go on such a trip so we understand the enormity of it.

I understand all too well where he’s coming from, and can only respond by saying –all together now- ‘Beam me up Scottie, there’s no intelligent life down here’.

With that, I’ll wish you all a peaceful and happy new year. If you don’t have cows of your own to talk to….well, I’m sure you’ll find your own way to connect.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Strikes

I suppose we could talk about the ongoing public sector strikes. And let’s get it out. I struggle with the concept, given I work in conditions few in the public sector would even begin to contemplate, for wholly unreliable remuneration- often none at all. If I stop working for any reason at all, I have to pay someone else to do my work. I’m surrounded by likewise self-employed folk who are in exactly the same boat. ‘Striking’ simply isn’t really on our radar. The idea that someone would force their employer to increase wages by industrial action, instead of simply voting with their feet is alien to me.

Rather worryingly, I am old enough to remember the 70’s, and how the trade unions were dragging the country down before the Thatcher era. It was obvious, even to a spotty youth, that they were digging their own economic graves….and for most of them, so it came to pass. One example sticks in the mind. I recall hearing about the decline of the Clyde side ship building industry. One of problems ‘management’ had was when a machine was invented with which one man could do the work of 10. Obviously, unless you’re going to multiply the whole business by 10, getting such a machine means 9 men will no longer be needed…..that’s the reality. But the unions were insistent that as many as they could negotiate for should be kept on. I take it that whoever nicked all the ship building work must’ve simply been laughing their pants off. The unions were effectively making members work less profitable….leading to the eventual demise of the entire sector. To save the 9 jobs, unions would throw the entire workforce under the bus- because there were other jobs at risk, beside the one and the nine.

So I’ve never been a fan.

Obviously, matters are a little different with public sector jobs. But I strongly suspect modern trade unions aren’t much better and the likes of Mick Lynch(spelling?) would happily adopt the same lack of pragmatism. I couldn’t tell you for sure, because I don’t believe either side’s version of events.

My opinions were somewhat coloured by a matter a few years ago. You’ll recall a furore when that MP chap Mitchell allegedly made some crass comments to some copper as he left Downing Street one night. It then looked to me very much like the Police Federation- their equivalent of a union- tried to do a number on the man for their own reasons. Over the next few days, some were shown to happily lie through their teeth to blacken his name.

On the flip side, I absolutely detest the way some of the public sector was sold off. The concept that trains, power supplies or telecoms should be profiting private investors – which so inevitably leads to conflicts of interest- is just stupid. It was clearly stupid when it was done, and we’re now left with fractured systems not fit for purpose. You should try having a telephone line out in the sticks…. the messed up situation is just an embarrassment.

It’s certainly true that the management of the public sector needed serious reform and management drive brought in from outside, but allowing private investors to suck money out of such businesses is stupid and counterproductive.

Another major problem that bothers me is the colossal pension disaster. A whole generation of public sector workers are somehow able to take early retirement, and walk off with eye-wateringly good pensions. I won’t point fingers at any one department, but I know of plenty who’ve been able to simply stop working in their 50’s and live very well off the state. They say that conveyer belt has been shut off now, but I’m afraid that’s not true. Again, union demands have played a large part in this.

Then there is a societal problem, where we’ve allowed value to be placed on wholly superfluous jobs. From the puerile celebrity culture, through endless pointless paper-pushing jobs where low level graduates can never once get dirty hands dirty, or actually contribute to the national effort, to the fact that the official ‘Essential workers’ definition omits all manner of roles upon which civilisation actually relies. We allow our own kids to laze at desks doing nothing useful, then have to pull in migrant labour to do the real work.

In the end, we all want too much, we all think of ourselves first, and when we get together with our pals, we can quickly talk up a heady froth of importance and entitlement….Yeah, right on brothers. Power to the workers! Our system of expectation is divorced from reality, and it shows.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Distant from Nature

I consider we’re increasingly divorced from the natural world- the very biome from whence we sprung and upon which, through careful manipulation and management, we still rely. And this metaphoric separation gets ever wider.

A couple of things snagged in my mind this last year which illustrate the gulf. First take your mind’s eye back to the drought last summer. Dust flew, vegetation curled up, we all sweltered, and a TV news crew was dispatched to the countryside to show us all how bad it was. As the camera panned across a yellowed landscape, a presenter wailed about the state of the drought-struck countryside. Encompassing the vista in a sweep of her arm, she explained how all the grass had withered away leaving just these bare dusty brown fields. Regrettably, the landscape we were shown was in fact fairly typical lowland English farmland in late summer. Broad fields of barley stubble were indeed bare and yellow, because they’d just been harvested. They’re supposed to look like that. It hardly took ‘Hawkeye the trapper’ to note that the hedges were still green, and it was a perfectly normal July vista. There certainly was a drought, but this clot couldn’t find it. Ne’er mind eh?

Then, just before Christmas, I heard a snippet of chat on the radio as I was trundling about foddering my beasts. Someone, and I couldn’t say to whom this massive intellect belonged, cheerfully announced to listeners that they’d got a plastic Christmas tree this year, because it was ‘better for the environment’. Think about that. They imagine there’s some kind of problem with cutting down a baby spruce tree for seasonal decoration. It would almost certainly have been planted for the purpose – by buying it, you haven’t robbed some future world of a towering redwood. It’s made of carbon, which it cleverly took from the atmosphere using sunshine, dirt, and some rainfall. And when you’re done with it, it’ll soon rot or burn right back into its component parts in an endless natural cycle. Instead, apparently, this complete numpty imagined it’s better to pump oil from some distant well, ship it half way round the world, refine it into –amongst other products- plastics to make a fake tree. When you’re finally done with it, it’ll likely languish in a landfill for…well pretty much forever. Perhaps one day we’ll mine these landfills for the hydro-carbons from such wretched products.

I admit to harbouring unkind thoughts about some people’s suitability to be allowed to reproduce.



Meanwhile, and connected to the above, one of the kids and I slipped into town to see the latest ‘Blue space monkey’ sci-fi movie. ‘Avatar: The way of water’ if you really must. Spoiler alert if you haven’t seen it. It’s an interesting film on several levels – not least because it panders to some rumbling unrequited yearning to live in harmony with nature, against the odds of technology, urbanisation, mineral exploitation and –striking the motherlode of the genus - commercial whaling.

The skimpy plot re-introduces most characters from the first movie, set on a faraway planet where humans can’t breathe the atmosphere, and hence utilise a mental fusion with vat grown versions of the indigenous inhabitants…their blue space monkey ‘avatars’. There are obviously plot opportunities to explore the interface between the human controlled avatars and the actual natives. I’m not the only person to have noticed an uncanny similarity to a 1950’s sci-fi short story, although I believe director James Cameron assures us it’s not the case.

Some characters from the first film have been re-incarnated as avatars, and our heroes have been busy breeding their own family of blue kids to fill out the cast. Sigourney Weaver’s character is somehow reborn as a teenage avatar girl in circumstances never really explained. Themes of racial and species intolerance are explored, with various familiar ‘tribal’ and ‘native’ imagery and hackneyed ideas at play. The natives live as one with nature, while the invading humans want only to destroy it. A distinct American thread runs through this, further visible as the human’s military elements are once more reminiscent of US marines, complete with references to the Vietnam war. I notice that the big yellow bulldozers with which the wicked humans flatten the jungle are absolutely not sign written ‘Caterpillar’, suggesting some kind of reverse product placement.

The director trawls ideas and stunts from several of his previous films, including ‘Titanic’ ‘Aliens’ and ‘The Abyss’. The concepts explored and visual effects are once more arrestingly good, and worth a gander. After much drama the goodies prevail and the baddies come unstuck, albeit notably surviving for several pre-planned sequels…hmm. It is fun, but for me, wears thin.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Old Enough

I’m going to lead you along a meandering thread of thought this week, so try to stick with me if I dawdle, or more likely get distracted.

Some of you may be aware that Exeter City Council have decreed that they’re going to try and make all food served at meetings plant based…IE go vegan. Their principal reasons are that they imagine it’s better for the environment. And not unreasonably this bothers me somewhat, as from my admittedly prejudiced position on a rainy hilltop, where my livestock mostly live off fantastically bio-diverse carbon capturing native pastures….that sounds a lot like hooey.

But before I could take issue with ECC, others had piled in, and in fairness, discussion is ongoing. However I then noticed a news report that Cambridge City Council were doing the same. So, fearing a shortage of sheep and coo farmers within their vicinity, I’ve started asking them some pointy questions, and have received some interesting answers. It appears their decision has been led by their ‘Environment and Community Scrutiny Committee’, which in turn has been using information gleaned from an outfit called ‘Our world in data’. This learned organisation, in turn, relies heavily on a scientist called Joseph Poore. And it hardly takes much digging to reveal that Joe is a bit of a vegan enthusiast- I don’t wish to be unkind, but it rather looks like he’s a bit fixated. Subsequently, he appears to dedicate his research time to prove how wicked it is to eat a cow, and how much nicer the world would be if we all lived on ‘plant based’ diets. And rather than focus on what I suspect the bottom line really is – that he can’t abide the thought of slaughtering and eating doe-eyed creatures- he tries very hard indeed to show how bad farm animals are for the environment. Climate change is one of his more useful hobby horses, where he can lay the blame for all the world’s ills squarely at my door. Again, unsurprisingly, I’m inclined to take exception to this. Measuring the carbon lost when the Amazon rainforest is felled, as he does, is hardly a reasonable way to calculate whether my cows and sheep are causing climate change. And no, they don’t eat any soya products. None at all, and whatever he says, I’m not atypical.

I’ve taken this point up with CCC, as others are taking it up with ECC, and while we’ve been comparing notes, we’ve found several other municipalities are doing likewise. It would appear that an orchestrated campaign somewhere in the shadows, allegedly funded by- amongst others- a well-known animal rights group who’re famous for telling little fibs to further their extremist views. And by carefully using data from a hugely biased source, it doesn’t take many gullible twits to repeat the nonsense before it achieves traction.

Well I’m here to tell you otherwise. You can twist the science anyway you like - quick Professor Bruce, run…get your pen ready- ruminants in this country are more or less carbon neutral. They eat plant matter grown within the previous few months, burping and pooping the components back out for the plants to utilise again next summer. The animals grow, we eat them, and but for the fact a lot of our waste ends up in the sea, the cycle is more or less laudably neat and sustainable. You could reasonably argue that wretch Anton uses some diesel in his tractor, and plastic in his silage wrap, and I wouldn’t argue. I might point out that perhaps you might look at your own lifestyle before you poke me, because by just existing in the vast hive of humanity we’re all contributing.

Think about this. I’m old enough to remember sheep and cattle commonly being shepherded on horseback. Thousands of tonnes was raised on Dartmoor by folk who burnt no more fossil fuel to do so than the coke used in the farriers forge…and the fan that forced air through powered by a crank handle turned by small farm-lad, as I once was. Indeed, I’ve reared hundreds of sheep myself with no more expenditure than some boot leather, kibble for the collie, and a fresh stick once in a while.

The idea that local authorities consider local grass raised beef and lamb could in some way be worse for the environment than say imported almonds, avocadoes, soya or palm oil products, brought from distant fragile landscapes, is simply naive. I’d advise you to ask questions, consider the basic chemistry yourselves, think about the source of that tofu burger. And mostly, ring your local councillor and remind them upon which side their bread is buttered.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Wild Camping Case

You might’ve noticed there’s been a certain furore about some court case relating to so called ‘wild camping’ on Dartmoor. And, as ever, the first casualties in reports have been the facts. Reports have almost all suggested that you could – until now- camp anywhere on Dartmoor. There’s scarcely ever any distinction made between where you can – or at least could- wildcamp, and where it’s never been allowed. And that, my friends, is the problem in a nutshell. No-one has cared, or asked too carefully what is really permitted, while the National Park top brass have taken it upon themselves to promote the free-for-all concept. Oh, they’ll squeal, and claim they’ve taken great pains to help steer wild campers to the right places, but it’s a lie. They’ve deliberately promoted the idea nationally, with no mention of any rules. They might as well have carefully whispered the rules down a well.

This has led to a wall of assumed entitlement- as is certainly manifested by a lot of people I meet in my day to day work. My encounters with them are frequently difficult, and often unpleasant. Sometimes such meetings are extremely unpleasant, and I will leave to your imagination how I feel about the officials in the Park who have fostered this idea of entitlement. I’m desperately sorry for their foot soldiers, the rangers, who have to try and keep the peace. And I make a determined effort not to allow the aforementioned encounters colour my view of humanity as a whole. I endeavour to greet each stranger on my land as if they’re lovely people, with only the best of intent, on the basis that many of them are just that.

But it isn’t always easy, and it hardly comes as a surprise that an owner of one common has finally taken the matter to law.

The case in the news was brought by an estate that own one of Dartmoors many commons, and yes, ‘common’ land is owned by someone. Everywhere is. Ownership of, and indeed the whole concept of ‘common’ land goes back many centuries, when ‘Manors’- whole districts, often outlined by parish boundaries- were won at the point of a sword, or gifted by a monarch for sword wielding antics elsewhere. You can look back beyond the Norman invasion, and ask how land was acquired and held, you can argue the rights and wrongs of it, but we are where we are.

The rural manors and/or parishes generally included everything within them… enclosed and improved fields, woods, and the unimproved ‘rough’. The improved land might be farmed in hand, or let to tenants – and there’s a tonne of history about this relationship between landlords and their tenants, about which some folk cling to bitterness as if it were a precious gem. Land that was unenclosed was often grazed, and used as a source of fuel and building materials by the peasantry- a perk of living within the parish. This use was sometimes abused, as were powers of landlords, so both sides steadily became subject to various complex law.

Again, you don’t have to like it, but it’s sensible here to consider that the security of property ownership and tenure is one of the cornerstones of what makes a civilised country.

As years went on, some Manorial landholdings were gifted, subdivided, gambled away, married into and out of. Likewise, the farms and cottages which held ‘rights’ to use the ‘common’ were traded away from the estates, and some commons themselves were subsequently sold separately.



Our very understanding of commons and commoners rights has generally become hazy. There’s confusion about who is a commoner. In this context, it’s someone who occupies property more or less adjoining a given common, whose predecessors registered their rights upon the common at varying times – most importantly in 1965. They were then reviewed again locally under the 1985 Dartmoor Commons Act, and it is this Act upon which the recent ‘wildcamping’ case centred.

Those who laid out and negotiated the Act needed the consent of the common owners, because amongst other goals, the Act was to enshrine the right of everyone to walk and horse ride on the commons. And as a judge has lately ruled, this permission did not extend to include making camp. There was a tacit understanding that most would allow such things as the Ten Tors and the Duke of Edinburgh scheme, and such few backpacking campers as used the commons, as evidenced by the fact that a handful of owners were allowed to have their commons specifically excluded. But this has been grossly abused, and the failure to moderate usage has led to the current state of affairs.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Crypto

Is it just me? Am I the only one who hears the early morning radio news, when I’m stumbling about looking for the other sock and when more sensible people are still abed, and thinks ‘Don’t they hear themselves?’ Actually, I generally react with some spluttered profanity, but we’ll discreetly gloss over that. This time, it was the cheery newsreader firstly telling me that world financial experts are predicting the UK economy will contract further than expected, in the current financial malaise. Then, immediately thereafter was the report that the government are going to enshrine extra protection for nature and wildlife, creating lots of new nature reserves.The former is intoned so as we think it’s a bad thing, while the ‘butterflies and flowers’ bit is a happy newsitem.
I don’t know about you, but I rather thought the degradation of the natural world was almost wholly down to ‘economic growth’, the endless fixation we have with spending more money and having more stuff. We only have one source of material from which to extract all this ‘stuff’, and it’s the big wobbly ball of molten rock beneath our feet, spinning away as it wings its annual way round a bigger ball of burning hydrogen. And it’s a certainty that just by existing in ever greater numbers; we will deplete resource available to other species. Add in our vast technological exploitation, and the nature of our desires, and the idea that the natural world can prosper while sharing space with us is just a fantasy.
The grim reality- and it is pretty grim I’m afraid- is that if you really feel it’s a shame there aren’t as many species living on the planet today as there were, and you feel the need to act, then you need to stop buying stuff. You need to stop buying 2 foreign holidays a year, you need to stop buying the occasional new car, even if it does have a ‘save the whales’ sticker in the window. No more renewed kitchen or bathroom suites because they look tired, or the colour doesn’t match any more. When you see the glossy ads on TV, you need to see theproducts for the greed and waste they represent, and learn to despise what they stand for. Don’t admire or envy people who have the latest gadget or biggest toys…. You need to regard them as stealing your grandchildren’s inheritance. Slowly building a hatred for them is the logical progression.
You see? If you really grasp the problem, and really feel you have to do something…then it quickly gets ugly. Real ugly. Pretending you can stop the destruction by putting aside a couple of acres of green space is futile. Worse than futile, as it condones what’s happening elsewhere.
Myself, I’m a lot more relaxed about all this. Oh I lament what is being lost, and what’s yet to be lost. But I know we’re not going to stop. I recognise that we don’t have the self-discipline, and we won’t vote for leaders who will make us do what has to be done. And that it’ll very likely be Mother Nature that dumps us in the end. All such over populated monocultures fail soon enough.Hence, I’m still able to pause to smell what roses remain along life’s highway.
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On the subject of picking leaders, I note an effect of picking a leader who allowed his wife to play the tax system to their mutual advantage, and when found out wasn’t immediately contrite, but was instead angry they’d been found out. Unsurprisingly, an effect is that other politicians under him have been allowed to do similar until they in turn are found out, and even then don’t get dropped until it is simply untenable to continue to allow them to hold high office.
I’m not sure how anyone can expect fairness in society when, instead of closing tax loopholes, and pursuing those who exploit them, we allow such people into roles of leadership. Given their different set of moral values, it’s unrealistic to expect them to make changes. I understand well enough what drives such men to seek great personal wealth, but don’t understand how an electorate can give them free rein to run the country.
My favourite this week is an announcement that government are going to protect those who invest in crypto-currencies- which by definition aren’t backed by a country’s government-otherwise they’d just be…well.. currencies. So, those who greedily gamble on something that’s by definition an uncontrolled insecure bit of ethereal nonsense will be protected from loss by….well, presumably by those who don’t. Please, pretty please, don’t be so naïve Rishi.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Calving

I wear the changing seasons upon my back like the granite boulders wear the lichen. And I love the first inkling that spring might be upon the way. For while we might have months of winter weather to contend with yet, nothing can hide the little signs that the calendar pages are turning. The older ewes have been full in the belly for some weeks, the courting ravens were tumbling a couple of weeks ago, empty ewe hoggs gambol when they’re moved, and the cows are beginning to show little changes suggesting that they might indeed bring forth new life in 6-8 weeks. Being in amongst them feeding up is a private and secret pleasure, barging around me at the feeders while I destring their bales. They breathe their beery breath at me, and allow me to push them and their expanding bellies aside. Some days the weather is foul, as another gale blasts rain at them and I both…but that only heightens our closeness. Goodness but I adore my beasts- certainly I prefer them to most of the people I come across.

And as it happens, I know that they’ll be bringing forth new life barring mishap, because we had the vet PD most of them this winter. After the drought last year, and my sudden allergy to buying nitrogen fertiliser at 300% inflation, I was looking at some very small stacks of round bales. So, we deduced, we’d better be rid of any passengers. Irony of ironies, the one year I wouldn’t mind moving a few on, yon vet could hardly find any to go. As it happened, I had kept the last of the ‘Neospora positives’ away from the bull, not wanting to replicate that nasty little bug, so they’ve been steadily shipped out through the back end of last year and numbers were already down.

This high tech bit of vaguely forward planning did make me chuckle when I opened one of the farming glossies last week though. I’m always keen to learn new tips how to hone my proficiency- well, I used to be, honest. So I lapped up this particular piece, focussed on getting more calves out of a given number of cows by avoiding bad calvings. Apparently, not every cow in Christendom gets back in-calf every year, which I’m sure is a shock to all of us. I was soon educated about various aspects of a job I’ve done all my life. Included was news that I should really have my vet – or more properly, a vet who has a lot of experience in the matter- measure my replacement heifer’s internal dimensions, to see if they’re adequately proportioned to shove a calf out safely. This concept has always rather amused me, as I’ve never been inclined to spend my time and money thus, and yet seem to have a fair record of breeding cattle without many calamities in this department. Indeed, now the instruction is to carry out these measurements twice – presumably in case the vet wasn’t quite as qualified as he’d implied? There were various other technical tips to avoid difficult calvings, mostly involving getting the vet in every other week. Oh, and it did mention selecting an ‘easy calving’ bull.

But nowhere in the piece was mention of one variable I have found to make the biggest difference of all.,..the condition of your cows during pregnancy. It’s hardly a new bit of cow science that overly fleshed cows struggle to get calves out. Some of it is that they’ve had plenty of reserves to make a big calf, but I suspect most of the problem is simply that blubber is blocking the escape chute.

An example? After Foot and Mouth, I bought replacement heifers from trusted sources, and used a bull I’d managed to squirrel away. These first time calvers arrived on a farm loaded with grass, since we’d had no stock all summer. They got fat, and we had multiple calving problems with them. The bull came from a very good and responsible breeder, who wouldn’t dream of keeping a difficult calving line, and in subsequent years, we hardly ever saw his calves born.


And lastly, I must draw your attention to an online ad campaign by some loved-up woodland charity. The slogan goes ‘Want to feel less crisis-y about the climate? Plant more trees.’ This sums up the ‘save the world’ tree planting nonsense in a nutshell. It’s no better than advising putting your head in the sand, or running round with your eyes shut, yours hands over your ears, and shouting la la la’. It might as well be sponsored by Shell.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Fair Criticism

Readers are asked to forgive me if I speak in my defence this week. You see I’ve come in for criticism for apparently being ‘anti-tree’, and for farming my land to ‘within an inch of its life’. I’m fairly relaxed about being criticised for the rubbish I write as a rule…it wouldn’t be a very interesting world, or indeed much of an opinion column, if we all agreed with each other, eh? In this instance however I think we need to explore this further.
I farm a footprint of something like 1700 acres, plus grazing several hundred acres of common land. Suggesting it’s all neat grazed grassland is something of an absurdity, given that hundreds of acres are barely controlled moorland scrub. If my critics are worried about the lack of biodiversity on land under my care, I might point out that about a third of my ground and most of the common is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, apparently of ‘international importance’. My family have grazed it for over a century. The recognisably ‘grassland’ I do farm- something like 250 acres- is virtually never ploughed, and most would qualify as ‘species rich hay meadows’ if I were to invite the attentions of some bobble hatted twerp. We have populations of very rare orchids and butterflies – some of which are now functionally extinct elsewhere.
As for carbon capture and storage, we’ll gloss over the deep peat under some of my grazing livestock. Althoughthat’s storing vast quantities of carbon, it’s also extremely liable to loss due to climatic changes, and can’t really be relied on. I would stress that planting native broadleaves – with one or two exceptions- won’t capture any more carbon than grassland does, and the long term storage potential of a rowan or a birch tree is effectively pretty much zero. They live for 30-40 years, then die and rot again. Suggesting that planting them will counter the release of 350 million year old carbon by burning fossil fuels is, at the very kindest, puerile self-delusion. In fact, you don’t have to reflect long to realise the concept is worse than harmless fantasy…it’s a dangerous distraction. The loved- up woodland charity I called out are busy encouraging the British public to plant trees on productive arable land. You might’ve seen their warm and fuzzy ads, showed keen smiling volunteers setting off across a beautifully tilled piece of cropland with a spade and an armful of saplings. This precious land was hitherto producing crops which will subsequently have to be grown somewhere else. In a very real sense, by planting that English field, you directly cause further species loss in the Brazilian Amazon, or the dislodging of some more poor orangutan on an obscureIndonesian island. Pretending otherwise is something I find pretty offensive.
And then…by planting non-productive species of treehere, you’re simply pushing yet more of our domestic demands onward to other countries. Perchance places where environmental regulations mightn’t be quite as stringent as our own. With 8 billion souls all wanting resources, we simply don’t have enough land to allow such self-indulgence.
So…am I anti-tree? Not at all. I’ve planted trees all my life, up to and including new mixed woodland on what was formerly poor and steep grazing. I’ve put shelter belts in, planted standards, fruit trees and laid neglectedhedges. I’ve run a sawmill cutting locally grown hardwoods for over 30 years, turning captured carbon into buildings and heirlooms that could well be safe for centuries. I’ve put over a million quid straight back into the local woodland economy, promoting positive management and further planting. I’ve felled, milled, and utilised trees that I grew myself from saplings planted by my own hand- which is a privilege granted to precious few men.
I’ve done battle with armies of nibbling rabbits, suffered repeated attacks by browsing deer, and am engaged in an ongoing war of attrition with grey squirrels. These latterenjoy nothing more than waiting until my oak saplings are 20 feet high, as thick as my forearm before they ring bark them at head height. They seem to take pleasure in selecting the straightest ones. I’ve foregone the income on some of this land for decades because it’s the right thing to do…thank you so much for the unfounded and ill-informed allegations.
But if you think I’ll stand by and let an urbanised society currently releasing more CO2 than ever pretend that planting some silly bushes is going to make everything better, or that unicorns will frolic in these fantasised woodland glades, you have misread me by a significant factor.
By supporting this pretence, YOU are the problem.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Toasted Ticks

As you’ll know, my tight fistedness is widely revered as ‘weapons grade’, and rising household bills have lately seen me gulping, before gasping ‘how much?’ Alison tries to shield me from the worst of it – or possibly, you might say she’s trying to shield the rest of the family from my reaction. To counter these inflationary issues, I’ve instigated various economy drives about the place. One of these is gently ‘suggesting’ some rules to those drifting in and out of my kitchen- for this is quite a cast some days, which I’m assured would make a highly entertaining play if the dialogue were but recorded. The latest decree is that cooler hotplate of the Aga can be used to toast the bread. The simple rationale is that the electric toaster costs every time you push the lever down, while the Aga is burning oil whether you utilise it or not. You can argue that this trick cools the stove somewhat, although since the lost heat is then floating about the kitchen easing my aching bones, that’s debatable. There is the additional downside risk that you might forget your thick sliced, and it very quickly becomes charcoal. Then you have to scrape 30% of the thickness off to find something edible.
Now as long time readers and most country folk will know, the Aga serves many functions in our lives, from cooking, heating the water, reviving cold lambs and calves, drying anything from neatly folded socks and undies through to draped soggy overcoats. And famously, it’s the final destination for any ticks removed from the house dogs – or indeed me. This latter is one of our favourite pastimes…to whit, seasonal ‘tick jumping’contests, as the little beggars tend to ping alarmingly off the hotplate when physics determines they’ve thermally expanded beyond their capacity. Experienced competitors- and wise spectators- tend to make sure their tea mug or simmering soup pan is beyond the fallout zone. Favoured jumpers, for those of you considering entering this brew-up pastime, are the small to mid-sized candidates. You need to get them before they’ve had their fill and got fat and round. The bloaties tend to justsit there and fizzle, rather than pop excitedly into the air.
So, to return to the aga-toast economy drive, here’s the thing. As I scoop up my nicely browned toasty seeded bread with the butter knife, I often deftly retrieve any of those delicious whole grains which have fallen astray…yummy! They’re the best bit you know. And as the weather warms, and our bitey little tickyticky friends start crawling up the vegetation, looking for a passing host to latch onto, it’s only a matter of time before I inadvertently discover exactly what fat toasted tick tastes like. Like some looming medical procedure, or pendingtax bill, I’m not looking forward to this inevitable event but will face it stoically, like a little man. I’ll report backwhen there’s news, rest assured.
And all of this talk of unwelcome creepy crawliesreminds me. Another feature of our lives just now is the antics of one of my enterprising urchins. Having clipped the ewes last year, he’s now busily trying to market the wool. All kinds of bright ideas for what it could be used for have occurred. As well as the obvious spinning and knitting type uses, there’s insulation, and weed suppressing mulch around your shrubbery. Then, while we were having a cuppa after some open class bullock wrestling, the visiting young vet had a brainwave. Would this stuff be suitable, he wanted to know, for making merkins?
These useful wig type devices you’ll recall were devised in ages past, when ladies of ‘negotiable affection’ shaved their body hair to deter insect infestations. Apparently they’ve now achieved something of a comeback under current social fashions. Straight away –once the concept had been explained- enterprising offspring No 2 is speculating whether he’ll need to find some herdwick wool. In fact he realises, fleeces from differing aged sheep could be factored in– they start out black and go grey with age. There’s clearly an opportunity here. As long as he doesn’t use my computer to research his market, I’m relatively relaxed about this.
The discussion did in turn lead me to recall a conversation I had with a lady of a medical bent backalong. The subject of the aforementioned social fashion, and pubic lice came up, and she explained that they were now becoming an endangered species, due to classic human-driven habitat loss. There…every day’s a school day. I note the global nature charities and local wildlife trusts don’t seem to be lobbying for this biodiversity loss to be reversed. Curious.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Supply Chain

In a fit of conspicuous consumption this week, one of my offspring set out some hors durve type snacks for dinner guests, including….wait for it… a whole sliced tomato. I can tell you, the guests were pretty impressed. Never mind handing it round with some nibbles, I thought we should’ve got it posted for sale online for £50 plus carriage.

Notably, the same sprog likes a bit of fruit with her breakfast, and I have lately seen strawberries that had somehow found their way here from Morocco, which is daft enough. Then, some blueberries which had winged their way from distant Chile to reside in my fridge. Given that such fruits are almost entirely made of water, while the vehicles carrying them most certainly aren’t fuelled on H2O, I have ‘strongly mixed feelings’ about this.

These matters obviously overlap with current national food supply problems, which gave me cause to think. In the first instance, I’d remind you that this is a classic ‘first world problem’. Not having a wide enough choice of summer produce in the backend of winter is a pretty facile thing to be worried about. Indeed, looking at the shape of a lot of people I see if I venture into town, I strongly suspect that it would be a shortage of pizza and buns that would create the real furore…cos not many of them look like they know what salad is. And indeed, I’m informed by those who understand the mysteries of the world which elude me that the salad is mostly needed to make ‘sides’ you get with your cheeseburger- but don’t eat, or perchance to pack out the bacon in a BLT.

I couldn’t tell you the specifics of why there’s a glitch. It sounds like candidates include bad weather in North Africa knocking supply, Brexit complications making us the least attractive destination once produce is rolling Northbound, and producers in some cooler countries not growing as much stuff under glass due to the cost of heating the glasshouses and polytunnels.

More fundamental are questions about the very nature of what we expect, in our profligate ‘I want everything, right now’ culture. Supermarkets have revolutionised the grocery/food retail industry. Just about everyone shops in them. A great many drive to them, and park in the free and capacious car parks. Compare this to traditional high streets, trying to park, then hauling groceries from one premises to the next…who wants that faff anymore? No, we want to park in one place, and get our weekly shop in one place. This happened 3 decades ago, and the supermarkets development of their attractive consumer led model was the death knell for smaller businesses.

Then, with steadily improving logistical possibilities they nurtured an explosion in choice, until we imagine we can have anything we fancy, any time of year. Cheap fossil fuels powered the whole thing, without our noticing. Their growing dominance simultaneously allowed the supermarket giants to steadily tighten a stranglehold on primary producers and processors. Because if you think they’re nice friendly folk, like the smiling staff in the ads, go and talk to the folks supplying them. The trading conditions are often abhorrent, with vile practises screwing the poor grower/processor down to their knees commonplace. Really, it doesn’t take much digging to find shocking tales. But, and here’s the thing, no-one wants to explore this behaviour because the supermarkets will rightly claim that this is what keeps the price of food down, and if you dent that a tiny degree, the panic is almost instant. Remember there are something like 30 million Brits we cannot feed…. without that extended conduit of chilled articulated trucks snaking across the country distributing imported food, the bulk ships chugging into Tilbury and the whole network.

Farmers only have the NFU to fight their corner, but what hope have they got against such corporate monsters? The power of businesses with such colossal turnover makes them more or less unassailable. It’s also impossible to imagine them not having huge sway in the corridors of power.

They’ve provided a dazzling array of consumer choice, and recent incremental inflation notwithstanding, at prices held lower than ever. Seasonality and perishability are all but airbrushed out of our shopping habits. The supermarkets have dominated how we unthinkingly find our sustenance, to the extent that successive generations now ignorantly assume ‘food comes from supermarkets’.

We’ve built this complex web, us consumers, with our spending. And its fragility is nobody’s fault but our own. I see little hope that we’ll wean ourselves off the supply, certainly not as long as nobody is asking ‘why would you expect a tomato in February?’

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Eliminated


There’s only one story on Dartmoor this week, and that’s the emerging news that government agency Natural England intend to drive my hill farming culture and our livestock from their historic pastures, eliminating centuries of what we’ve done.

I realise this sounds unbelievable, and I’ve been hesitant to report it, as they’ve lately hit me very hard for speaking out about West Penwith last December. But it’s here, now, and you need to know.

Natural England will deny this, claiming that a few marginal cuts here and there are needed where some particular precious habitats are being damaged. We’ll come back to the underlying reasons for this smokescreen, first we’d better deal with the lie itself. Much of Dartmoors open land was legally designated SSSI – Sites of Special Scientific Interest- decades ago. More SSSIs are being planned, and as our colleagues in West Penwith have discovered, nowadays designation comes the clear intent to change the landscape, rather than preserve what’s there now

Sticking to Dartmoor, it hardly takes a very elastic imagination to realise that if something was precious enough to be so designated decades ago, and livestock had been grazing them for centuries previously, then the livestock themselves are probably part of the matrix. Now consider that in the last 20 years numbers of animals grazing Dartmoor have been roughly halved. After the Foot and Mouth culls claimed vast numbers of our stock, we were ‘encouraged’ into agreements where we accepted money not to fully restock.

And after 20 years of continuing incremental cuts, Natural England are now talking about a 100% reduction of remaining winter grazing sheep. This would be bad enough, as there is a nucleus of tough hill ewes who live out on the hill all year round. We’ve very carefully bred these resilient hardy sheep to persist on the poorest land. Bringing such flocks down into the ‘hay fields’ for the winter, or heaven forbid, indoors, would change the very nature of what they are. Managing to keep them on their acclimatised ‘lear’ miles out on the peat wilderness for a short summer season would become very difficult.

However, as we struggled with this news, one of our number asked to see the calculations for the rest of the year. And discovered, buried in NE’s paperwork is the clear intent to remove circa 80% of all livestock through the rest of the year. Effectively, a 90% reduction altogether.

This would be the end for many of the small family farms who run these flocks and herds. Straight forward working hill farmers who produce lamb and beef off beloved unimproved moorland pastures. I’ve oft pointed out, I gather a lot of mine on foot. They have a carbon footprint when they leave here of zero.

As I say, NE will bleat about this being necessary to protect and restore damaged habitats. Well, curiously, when a neighbouring farming family recently challenged such a draconian cut, they hired an ecologist to report on the area in question. He found that the damage was little to do with over-grazing, but a result of historic factors and a changing environmental – I’ve often observed, airborne pollution and warmer winters has changed the habitat around me.

After our friends had contracted this ecologist to do their study, NE unknowingly also approached him to survey the same SSSI. He rightly demurred, as he had already been retained. So, their own choice of expert is saying it isn’t the livestock that’s causing the change in habitats.

Another thing NE will soon raise is all of the money we’ve been paid- some of them sound like it comes out of their salary. In truth, we’re forced into their schemes- I once suggested I might not sign up for the next round… and was suddenly subjected to ‘random inspections’. My aforementioned friends declined the latest agreement, and were quickly told to remove their stock, agreement or otherwise. It’s not ‘carrot or stick’, it’s ‘stick- with optional carrot’. And it’s happening across the country.

Why are they really doing this? Because a large slice of urban society want to pretend that they’re going to save the world by rewilding the hills. They want to continue to fly in planes, shop in concrete and steel supermarkets, and have every consumer luxury….but it’ll all be OK because they read a trendy book about rewilding/tree planting/bog rewetting.

I need you to help stop this gross injustice. Write to your MP today. Tell him who you are, and demand he specifically acts to change this insanity.

I’m already being targeted for speaking out, and my poor dear Alison has begged me not to write this piece. But I owe it to both centuries of my grazing forebears, and –hopefully- my successors.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Calving wild Heifer


It’s been a funny old week up on the hill. Cold sleet has somewhat dampened the spring in everyone’s pace around the yard, reminding me-as the cowboys say- ‘snow is kinder than mud’. But, as miserable as cold wet stuff blowing in my face has been, by golly I needed to see some moisture. Groundwater levels are at an unprecedented low, and if a man near Princetown tells you that, it is safe to assume there is a problem. I’m left with a philosophical conundrum over this. I don’t want a wet lambing and calving in coming weeks, but goodness we need rain. Blinking farmers…. they’re never happy.

I’ve been faced with some interesting juxtapositions in my doings. I’m inundated with support regarding Natural England’s assault on my community, thank you all. Friday I slipped off the moor to a meeting with some worthy folk to try and deflect these destocking plans. We were met on a dairy farm, where the worthiest present spoke to the assembly in the feed passage of the large airy cow shed. Covering various other topics of the moment, he briefly touched on trying to keep Irish beef from flooding our market….signally failing to notice that the nearest munching cow, whose head was 4’ from him as he spoke…happened to sport an Irish ear tag. Bless.

No sooner had I spoken my piece there than the mobile phone was bleating in my shirt pocket, with news that the heifer I’d left at home starting to calve was making no progress, and could I get on back. Perplexed, having left 4-5 capable staff around the yard at home, I jumped in truck and set off once more. Pulling up in the yard, I was informed that they’d fetched her in but she’d started getting a bit shirty, and I’d probably best calve this one myself. Lightwieghts! I ungraciously thought. So Rueben and I pushed her into the chute and got some cord on calfies toes to give it a tug. His presentation was good – they’re best arriving in the world like a leaping dog, feet first. His trotters didn’t look too big, so I was fairly confident he’d be slipping out without much drama. Before the heifer could sit down, I let her reverse back up out of the crush, and have some space. Thereupon she quite unreasonably started chase us round with evil intent. Ungrateful wretch. So, as Roo skipped in front distracting her, I started to apply some pull, and got calfie moving.

This sufficiently held her attention, and with 10 minutes steady work saw a steaming new bull calf delivered. Upon which she leapt up, barely able to decide whether to lick the calf, or pummel me into the concrete. Tactically retreating while we could, I left her to it and went for a cuppa. Waiting for me was an email from the Health and Safety people, warning me of the dangers of newly calved cows. Darn tootin’ Sherlock! I wouldn’t have worked that out.

The next problem was the forecast, which assured me a dump of soggy snow was inbound. She needed to be in under cover, or her spluttering soggy baby could well be a deadie by morning. We left them alone ‘bonding’ until last thing, by which time she had baby nicely dried off, but was in a mood to mash anyone that came near. Hmm. Now a lifetime of handling bovines leaves you with a fair idea of when they’re really going to flip, and her blue touch paper was properly lit. We weren’t going to just walk her down to a nice loosebox…certainly not without serious risk. So, after backing the livestock box up to the chute, I gently pushed her along from the safety of the seat of the telehandler. Once we had her in the crush, I stripped a bit of colostrum from her neat little bag, and we tubed it straight into baby…cos I didn’t think we were going to get near it again very easily.

They spent the weekend in the stockbox, with fodder judiciously fed in the vents. I wanted to see more colostrum in her calf Saturday, and worked out that I could swing the parting door across by dextrous use of a bit of rope…allowing access to her curled up treasure. She took this further indignity fairly well, and by Monday afternoon, we felt able to back the box up to a pen full of quieter cows and calves, and release ‘Loony tunes’.

Reading the HSE advice further, they firmly suggest we might carefully select our cattle to avoid keeping dangerous individuals. My goodness….whatever will they think of next?

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Rewilding

I’ve been writing this opinion column for about 13 years, seldom being shy of criticising government policy which impacts me. As grazing livestock have become targeted for supposedly damaging the environment, I’ve had to absorb a bit of chemistry, biology, and even grappled with psychology to respond.
Last week I wrote about calving a wild heifer because it interests those who don’t have to deal with such creatures- at least until they’re met at dinnertime, because it amuses my peers, and as I hope it puts a human face on how such things work. And you’ll be pleased to know the calf is up and ‘doing’, and mum has calmed down to the extent that my ‘cow whispering’ son has her eating out of his hand.
I write about environmental stuff not just because I care deeply for it, but because I’ve watched the rise of an urban culture which attempts to foist society’s eco-sinsonto my cows and I. This gross folly needs flagging up because it isn’t going to save the world from humanity. On the contrary, it validates or excuses the continuing destruction.
Connected is the concept that we can all carry on concreting everything and burning more fossil fuels than ever, as long as we set aside- or ‘rewild’- farmland. The latest government promise is that we’ll dedicate 30% for nature, and it seems I’m part of that target.

There is a huge cadre of people signed into this hokum. A ranking National Park employee famously summed it up perfectly, when he posted on the social media about a project he was working on. Seemingly straight faced, he assured his Facebook chums that he’d been poking some willow twigs in a wet patch on the top of Dartmoor, and if the wretched sheep didn’t nibble them off, they would soak up some carbon so he ‘could enjoy a guilt free flight somewhere sunny’. I promise you this is almost verbatim. He quickly took the post down again….but not before some rascal screenshot it.
Lately, a Natural England staffer has been writing a rambling blog on their website, and been making claims in the media, trying to counter what myself and others are saying about their livestock removal demands. He assures everyone he’s going to work closely with the farmers to help them sort out Dartmoor- although he only has one trick…to force the livestock off. In the blog, he accuses us of damaging habitats, especially exercised about the loss of some rare birds. First on his list is the Golden Plover, which has indeed declined rapidly on my farm. Ever since, in fact, we reduced the livestock numbers under NE’s instruction, and the short mixed pastures beloved by plovers vanished….soon to be followed by the plovers themselves. Oh, don’t worry. They’re safe and well, residing nearby on a newtake NE haven’t got hold of yet. You could say it’s my fault I suppose…I did sign their wretched agreement.
They were warned, formally, 20+ years ago when we first entered these agreements that these changes would happen, and that the fire risk was going to explode. But they wouldn’t be told.
The same NE man repeatedly stresses the agreements are voluntary, which is somewhat disingenuous if not an actual lie. The agreements might be voluntary but the stocking cuts are not. They are hitting family farms right now, as I type, demanding removal of livestock these people have tended for generations, creating the very habitat he claims he’s saving. His- and their- hypocrisy is sickening. Their intent isn’t being led by science, but rather the childish rewilding fantasy.
One of NE’s problems is that their pay is very poor, so many of the staff are youngsters looking for a transfer to any other department, leaving the evangelists to become entrenched to pursue their ideology. At the same time, Westminster has quietly formed yet another body to oversee and drive NE faster- The Office for Environmental Protection. It doesn’t battle against new runways or the pointless HS2, or endless consumer and economic growth you understand…no, it encourages NE to come round and thump me.
I wish from the bottom of my heart that I were making this up.

Don’t despair though. My colleagues and I have received a tidal wave of public support- thank you all. And some real heavyweights are quietly unlimbering the artillery.Unsurprisingly, when we started asking about for ecology experts who disagreed with the ideology, they were quickly forming a queue.
Your part is to keep at your MP. Request updates. An election looms, and you need to make your feelings clear. Then, look up what just happened in Dutch elections.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Coincidences are funny things.

Two or more quite unrelated things come along together, seemingly in unlikely synchronicity. Events that look uncannily connected sometimes just happen at the same time by random chance.

As you know, I graze upon various sciences, and remind you that it was long considered apparently just a coincidence that wherever homo sapiens placed their exploring outward bound feet after they left Africa, so the mega fauna soon disappeared. Giant land animals that had been lumbering happily about for millions of years vanished. For years, science tried to find other reasons, but it’s hard to escape the inevitable reality that it was mankind’s arrival, with fire, advanced tool making, and developing hunting and communication skills that did for all kinds of animals unprepared for us. So these extinctions weren’t much of a coincidence after all.

Another ‘coincidence’ to consider could be parallel evolution. Various big cat predators evolved across most of the world, but are obviously closely related. However, in Australia, where there were no felines from which they could evolve, the same niche was filled by a marsupial, the now extinct marsupial Thylacine, or Tasmanian Tiger. It could be argued that it was actually filling the niche that would otherwise have been filled by large canids, in the absence of wolves. Not that this detail matters. The fact remains that it evolved out of the same stock as happily grass chewing kangaroos, into a very toothy predator. Was that a coincidence, or not? Academics argue about it yet, but the advantages of body shape and habits are working the same, whatever the ‘base stock’. I would observe that the Thylacine’s mainland Australian demise seems to have followed closely behind the arrival of the dingo –or wild dog. That raises some questions in itself.

Weirdly, there have been odd disparate places where, in the absence of cats or dogs, giant flightless birds evolved into dominant land predators. We ate them too.

Onwards. Whether or not I’m allowed to see any resemblance between the extreme high altitude tolerant indigenous inhabitants of some Himalayan cultures, and those in the Andes, when they’ve presumably been sundered for tens of thousands of years… I have no idea. So I won’t admit to seeing that coincidence - but you’ve got to acknowledge I’m keeping you on your toes!

And since I’ve obviously lately eaten a book on evolution, I can’t help but notice the coincidences around poor old Charles Darwin himself. Having come up with the ground breaking ideas behind his book ‘On the origin of species’, he then hid it away for decades in fear of upsetting the clergy. Until some young buck out exploring in South East Asia – Alfred Wallace- sent him a paper to check over prior to publication. To Darwin’s alarm, the paper almost exactly mirrored his own work, prompting him to dust off his manuscript for publication. This wasn’t really a coincidence either though, as young Wallace had long been in correspondence with Darwin, and working along the same thought processes, had come to the same conclusions.

Still on the natural sciences and coincidences, but bang up to date, I find it hard not to see some kind of connection between David Attenborough latest adorable series about the UK’s wildlife, and a concerted publicity campaign by an array of wildlife charities and the National trust, poking your consciences into sending them money to protect any wildlife there might be left in this polluted human-infested country. How that is connected to the government’s recent announcements about protecting 30% of remaining wildlife, and arch rewilding enthusiast- and generous political donor -Ben Goldsmith’s prolific media campaign to demonise livestock farmers… I can’t say. Indeed his previous appointment to DEFRA’s board backalong is itself an all-time curious coincidence. Nor can I say whether there’s any connection between Natural England’s sudden accelerating attempt to drive the remaining livestock off various upland areas, and various eco-extremist group’s attempts to force their hand in this while public sympathy might be at its highest.

These must all just be those random coincidences.

Just like various DEFRA staff’s sudden interest in Alison’s and my paperwork, where we’re now getting an increasing stream of emails, each demanding different details and evidence that we’ve been good little farmers. Happily, their own schemes and rules are so insanely complex that their attempts to hit me mostly end up tripping over their own feet as they’re inbound. Responding is time consuming though, and the threat implied is demoralising. That this all started 9am, the very morning after I complained in this column about Natural England’s behaviour at West Penwith must indeed be just another one of those funny flukes.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Lambing

Lambing has properly started. As there’s always there were a few slip-ups along the way. 2-3 enthusiastic rams jumped walls to try and make an early start last autumn, and there were also accidental unions involving ram lambs who developed uncouth urges before they were weaned. Still, the main crop is upon us, with many of the ewes waddling about carrying great bellies. The big orange South Devon cows are also calving full-on at about 2-3 a day.

This was fine last week, when the sun shone, but by golly this week has gone downhill suddenly. Further rainstorms and gales from Monday have sorely tried us once more. My lad is in charge of the lambing, shouting when he needs an extra set of hands and fetching in any that need assistance. That’s gone OK so far, and he’s had one or two real successes, snatching several little victories from potential disasters- and anyone who’s lambed a flock of sheep will know the score. But this weather is going to weigh heavy on shepherd and sheep alike.

Meanwhile tending the cows falls to me. Annoyingly, there’s an older group by a particular bull, who milk very well but have now developed somewhat pendulous udders. It’s my own fault, as I had an injured bull a decade ago and needed to secure a replacement at short notice, so the usual background checks weren’t followed up. Now as they approach 10 years old, these cows are making more milk than the calves can manage, their teats then swell, and easily get covered in gloop as the cows meander up to the feeder for breakfast. So when the storm rages, and a dozen new calves are rumped up against a wall, hidden amongst dead bracken litter, or down against the plantation I providently established 35 years ago, I need to assess cow and calf outfit constantly. Any looking like they’re losing ground need fetching into the yard with mum. Then I get to spend an hour of quality time with the cow in the pens, on my knees in the porridge washing and milking her out, getting milk into the calf, and trying not to get kicked along the way. As it happens, most of my cows are stupidly biddable, and that surely helps. While the weather is bad, I’m housing such as need work, so the calves are dry and under close watch….but space is now at a premium, and the workload of keeping them in rises. It’s hardly glamorous, but such are the nuts and bolts of livestock husbandry. I’ve only actually calved one so far- a heifer who was stuck just on dark. Luckily, she walked back right to a strawed up loosebox as calm as could be, and was soon licking her steaming spluttering new prize.



Meanwhile, our dealings and relationship with Natural England- and their DEFRA chums- remain less wholesome. They’re piling the pressure on my household- and one or two vocal others locally- presumably trying to grind us into accepting their new world order- where we get rid of large numbers of our livestock.

Maybe I should explain the origins of this better. About 40 years ago an additional subsidy was brought about for farms such as mine. The rationale, as the late Professor Ian Mercer explained after helping initiate arrangements, was that we worked in very difficult terrain, which was at the same time beautiful and precious. What we did was valued, and deemed worthy of targeted support. Somehow, over the decades this has now morphed into a war of attrition, where those in charge of the schemes now regard us as an obstacle, and the landscape we’ve helped create isn’t good enough for them. This must be our fault. Demanding further livestock cuts of 90 and 100% on some ground, you’d be forgiven for concluding they’d be happier if we were now simply out of the picture altogether.

As soon as I spoke publicly about this, the complex agreement on our own land suddenly came under close scrutiny. When my beloved little wife pointed out one of the rules they claimed we’d broken didn’t actually exist…they thanked her very much and promptly changed the rule book so it did. The latest agreement, which they drew up- and we signed- last autumn is now seemingly somewhat confused. The stocking levels we signed for are thrown out the window, and the implication is that they’ll take us to law if we don’t abide by new ones…agreement or not. Payments appear to be destined for a 40% cut.

My advice to anyone considering entering any arrangements involving NE as they are currently operating is…don’t!