The Anton Coaker column thread

[Anton Coaker Blog]

EIP 23 and Debate

Despite being moderately busy with my ‘day job’ I’ve been doing a spot of light reading for you. Not in great detail, admittedly, but enough to ladle some meaty bits out of a turgid government broth called ‘Environmental Improvement Plan 2023’. This 262 page tome lays out how they intend to follow through on the ‘Environment Act 2021’, and you’d imagine it’s full of warm and soothing promises. New forests will be planted, wetlands restored, flowers and bees protected, unicorns are going to frolic and gambol in sunlit glades. You know the stuff.

And as ever, it’s in the nitty gritty that problems arise. And the first is that the goals appear to be at UK level, when the means of delivery is largely devolved. This halfway house splitting up of the UK will always be a problem, when England only makes up about half of the footprint. Perhaps Scotland will do the greening so England can slowly be paved right over? Happily, the document seems to slip between ‘UK’ and ‘English’ policy seamlessly.

Unsurprisingly, the real problem is main resource- the dirt under our tootsie-toes. The bold statements lightly claim government are going to ‘Restore or create more than 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitat’ as well as ‘restore or create 140,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitats outside protected sites’, and increase English woodland by 260,000 hectares. Taken at face value, you’d start to think we’re going to need a spare country to do all this – and in a very real sense we are. To do half of it, we’ll have to ‘offshore’ ever more of our food supply to countries less concerned. That would be insincere enough, but once you start to pick at the weasel words, you find how thinly the wallpaper is plastered over the cracks. Counting towards at least 80% of the ‘Wildlife-rich habitat’ target is ‘peatland restoration and biodiverse woodland’. Hmm. The peatland restoration is one of those new mantras, where they’ve got green tinted stars in their eyes. They earnestly believe sending fleets of shiny new excavators grubbing about on the top of Dartmoor will somehow save the world. In fact, the peat cutting and tin mining that gave rise to the drainage and damage ceased many decades ago, and many of the sites concerned have visibly repaired themselves in my lifetime. As for ‘biodiverse woodland’, that detail seems obligingly absent, although there is a promise elsewhere to ‘Implement mandatory biodiversity net gain from November 2023 for most developments in England so new developments create 10% more biodiversity’. Like that is ever going to happen!

It is the biggest lot of tosh you ever saw, and word from within NE – for they’re not all farmer hating rewilders- is that it’s completely, wildly unachievable. I’d advise against reading it for yourself…it’ll only depress you.



Onwards, but not unconnected, to the debate at Westminster on Tuesday. It was nice, for once, to hear politicians defending what I do for a living. And indeed, as a following speaker also alluded, I hope never to find myself facing Sir Geoffrey in court, such is his eloquent and compelling delivery. I was less enamoured that a former minister later seemed to say that my livestock were polluting the rivers running off the common. Perhaps he’s getting confused with the nitrates in rainfall, some of which allegedly arise from fertiliser usage. But seeing as my hill grazing stock doesn’t use any fertiliser at all, and said nitrates are also being generated by burning fossil fuels everywhere else, that’s worse than disingenuous. He might be confused, but that hardly excuses daft allegations like that. In fact, the self-same fellow was also on telly recently claiming Dartmoor was being ‘overgrazed’. Never mind how you define the term – and I would say it rests on whether the volume of uneaten vegetation is annually increasing or decreasing- he seems to have forgotten that for several years the grazing has been done under his ‘watch’. We were mostly stocking at levels dictated by ‘agreements’ with a department he headed. Durrr!

As ever, the devil will be in the detail. There seems to be an assumption that we’ve agreed to accept, and help pay for someone to carry out an inquiry, and then act as a ‘facilitator’. That isn’t wholly accurate, as I don’t recall being asked, and I certainly wouldn’t readily be willing to help fund such a notion unless I were doing the hiring. And therein lies the problem. One individual has supposedly already been approached, but he’ll be seen as hopelessly biased against us.

Meanwhile, whatever was said there, NE are still trying their damnedest to get our stock off the commons.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Calving Galloways


It’s that in-between time here. We’re still almost feeding a full winter ration, just getting the first few young cattle away to grass off the moor. They’re sharing with the replacement ewe hoggs for a week or two, who will in turn soon be coming back to join their mums and aunties on the hill. Silage stocks were destined to run out this week, so I’ve had a last lorry load of bought in hay delivered. We could nearly have eked out what we had… but I wouldn’t sink the ship for a ha’penny worth of tar. A couple of grand was a pretty reasonable insurance payment in the grand scheme of things….and with a cold week slowing new growth up, I’m glad I committed when I did.

I aim to conserve enough fodder to get us through, but mowing ground is scant up here, and we’ve miles of rough to stock through the kinder months…it’s simple enough maths. I quit bagged nitrogen last year, thanks to our friend Vlad-the-Invader, and in the New World Order plenty of poop out of the cattle buildings is the most fuel the fields will see. I would’ve pitched the stock numbers about right but for the drought, but I’m not clairvoyant. Well…I say that. In fact, last May I guessed what was afoot, so after everyone else had stopped feeding I tracked down 25 tonnes of old hay and hid it away like a squirrel caching acorns. One of my better plans!

With the South Devons now mostly calved, and the Galloways not really started, I’ve taken the chance to get a lot of the dung spread while we’ve had a chance. That should see something of a crop of hay for next winter. The lambing sheep would likely prefer I didn’t paint as many inbye fields brown, but if it gets left much later and the rain dries up, it won’t get washed in fully. Then we’ll still be looking at it when we pull the mower out in July. Things always crash into one another for a week or two on a hill farm in late April, and this year will be no exception. I’d love to be able to tell you it’s hi-tech tricky-dickey stuff, this farming lark, but the reality is rather more prosaic.

Still, I’m looking forward to one of the highlights of my calendar, an annual treat…calving the Galloways. They’re not far off being feral for much of the year, adrift across sprawling miles of peat plateau and steep valley sides. And despite their inclination to have nothing to do with people while they’re birthing, I foster as close a bond with them as it’s realistically possible to maintain. And, to abide by regulations, when it comes time to get tags in the calves ears, I’ll put my life in their hands, and go in amongst them, alone, on foot. I’ll have a crook stick in one hand and a pair of ear tags pliers in the other. There’s scant of thrills or glory in tagging the South Devon calves around the yard- the cows are mostly dopey old things, and if they do get agitated, we simply slip calfy behind a gate to work. There’s usually an extra pair of hands close by to help too. But with the Galloways, it’ll just be me, the skylarks, and my hairy friends, a mile from help or refuge. And I can scarcely convey the peace it’ll bring to my soul. It doesn’t all go swimmingly of course. Some will carefully hide their calves until the little beggars are several days old, by which time I struggle to get close enough to get the crook around their fuzzy little necks. Then they’re also more inclined to bawl -lighting the blue touch paper, which only spoils the moment for all concerned. First calving heifers tend to be flighty, and given to base urges to attempt to grind the monkey with the stick into the ground. Best will be the older cows who’re well used to proceedings, and will almost be pleased to show me their new calves. I often process the these on the very morning they’re born, sitting them up between my legs still damp as Mum leans in and licks calf and me alike. I talk softly, the cows low quietly back. It is a sublime moment in my year, and the world’s troubles fade away like the mist at daybreak.

I don’t know if I’ve described this all adequately enough, but trust me, when it’s just them and me, and the wind seething through the gorse and whortleberries…I am truly the luckiest man alive.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Alex Thompson and Hedges

I’ve been thinking about hedges. I’ve hardly got any at all here- virtually all of my field boundaries are drystone walls. However, I do have some land off the moor, bounded by Devon hedges. And a quick look at the maps suggests I’ve got about 4 miles of hedges to maintain. Yes. 4 miles. Think on that if 30 feet of privet at the bottom of the garden gives you grief.

This has been on my mind since I caught Channel 4 news last week, where reporter Alex Thomson presented a piece on hedges, bemoaning their disappearance. He eventually got around to reporting that losses now are generally down to ‘development’, deftly forgetting that farmers haven’t been allowed to grub hedges out for decades. Along the way, he’d implied farmers were the cause of the terrible loss of this ‘natural environment’. The baseline statistic was that in the last 100 years, such and such % of UK hedges have been lost, and the inference was so biased and anti-farmer, it needs addressing.

OK. First, people like Thomson need leading by the hand and gently shown that hedges are NOT a ‘natural’ feature of the landscape, but rather the creation of livestock farming. They’re field boundaries, constructed and maintained over generations, primarily to contain farmed livestock. It’s like that other beloved ‘natural’ landscape feature, the carefully rebranded ‘wildflower meadow’. These used to be called ‘species rich hay meadows’. And before that, simply….er… ‘fields’. The renaming is to divert attention away from the fact that it was exclusively livestock farming that created them. In the case of the hay meadows, the often quoted period of ‘destruction’ is since the 1930’s. What is seldom mentioned is that this was because the ‘War Department’ insisted they were ploughed for arable and root crops, as Hitler’s ill-advised world tour threatened our food imports. The penalty for non-compliance was that land would be seized. Then afterwards many remained in cultivation, or were returned to short-term more productive grasses. Blaming farmers for this loss is hardly reasonable. And like hedges, implying that their origin is ‘natural’ is pretty ignorant.

Back to hedges then. Some may very well partly originate in strips of land that were not cleared, or ‘broken’ for farming, and were left as boundaries. But the vast majority were deliberately sited where they were wanted, and despite popular belief, their layout has always been fluid…nothing is ‘forever’. The function was often more diverse than just stockproof boundaries. They provided shelter from stormy weather for both livestock and crops. They demarked ownership divisions and provided domestic fuel, small roundwood products and hedgerow fruits. Indeed, you might remember my happy discovery that some long ago hand had carefully ensured there were bushes bearing delicious bullace growing on each side of the internal gateways on a farm I occupy. They certainly weren’t there by chance. But, in the main, hedges were created by farmers, to aid animal husbandry.

And Thomson’s claims that they’ve been decimated during the last century need some context. As farming mechanised during the first half of that period, the whole world changed. Several things have happened regarding hedges. Firstly, and most obviously, field sizes and shapes had been governed for centuries by working methods that evolved around working horses and oxen, and manual labour. When you’re hoeing rows of crops by hand, it doesn’t a whole lot of difference whether your row is 100 paces long, or 500. Indeed, you might well be grateful for a breather sooner than later. But once you’re sat on the seat of a tractor, suddenly a short run is a nuisance.

And then the loss of hedges was further tied up with the vanishing of both labour from the land, and heating houses with sticks. When you lived by working the land, and heated and cooked with wood fuel, the constant paring of hedges by hand was simply part of your existence. But nobody lives like that now, and no-one can afford food grown in that manner….it’s hard work, you get wet and cold doing it, and you’d never be able to afford a mobile phone/overseas holiday/car/telly or pretty much any such luxury. The world changed Alex old chap, not just us wicked farmers.

We now maintain these miles of hedges, and keep them from spreading out-encroaching- onto farmland by use of mechanical trimmers. It is a constant task, to keep the land farmed. Without it, civilisation is over. Oh, you can imagine we’ll hug bunnies here, and import all our food….but that’s just offshoring our footprint. And pretending hedges are automatically some kind of ‘carbon-capture’ miracle is just a puerile fantasy.

For goodness sake Thomson, grow up.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Ganga Rolf


I’m afraid I didn’t get overly excited about the corrugation- I was busy working right through. Although I’m a staunch fan of the King, I really can’t be doing with all the pomp and ceremony. I’d be just as impressed if he were crowned with a simple unadorned ring of beaten Cornish copper, in a field under an aged oak tree. But hey ho, if that’s what people want, good for them. And while I accept that other people don’t want a monarchy at all, and that they have a right to say so, I don’t consider they have a right to deliberately spoil the day. So I’m absolutely fine with the Met police having deftly collared a few malcontents before they kicked off. Anyone disagreeing should’ve been carted off to Moscow this week, dressed in an ‘I hate Putin’ T shirt and a ‘Free Ukraine’ hat , and dropped in Red Square on the morning of his big parade. See how that works.

As it goes, I’ve been thinking this kinging business. You’ll recall I’m something of a scholar of the Norse sagas, and their tales of stroppy farmers taking issue with Norway’s emerging strong-arm kings a millennium ago.

Rognvald, comes to mind. He was the 9th century Jarl of More in Norway, related to the dominant king Harald Fairhair. Accounts vary, and the story is disputed, but it appears that while his elder son was busy hacking off a lot of heads in Orkney, a second son, Hrólfr, set sail for France. Nicknamed ‘Ganga Hrolf’ -or ‘Walker Rolf’- because he was too big in stature for their ponies to bear, he strode about the place. Unable to repel him, French king Charles the Simple ceded the lower end of the Seine and a run of coast to Hrolf, converting him to Christianity along the way. He was tasked- ironically- with deterring further Viking raiders, and under the name ‘Rollo’, was the founding Duke of Normandy.

And if you’re wondering where we’re going with all this, you’ll recall that 5 generations later, his descendant William sailed from Normandy, defeating English Saxon king Harold Godwinson at Hastings. And it’s from that point that we trace our monarchy…albeit along a somewhat winding trail. In fact, I’ve always felt poor Harold was arguably the better man. 19 days previously, he was in Yorkshire, where he roundly defeated an 11,000 strong invading army from Norway. Weary from that battle, he had to march his men 270 miles South to face William’s Norman fleet. I reckon William was lucky on the day, because Harold came within an ace of driving 2 invading armies back into the sea that year. If he had triumphed, he’d be revered yet, and 1066 remembered for very different reasons.

But that’s the way the cookie crumbles, and how we got to where we are.

Anyway, I wish our new king every success in his reign.



Something else I’ve been thinking about this week is cow burps. As you know, the great and the good are still determined they’ll be the end of the world, and suggesting I feed my cows seaweed or magic beans or something, to stop em belching. If only they knew the beautiful miasma that comes from a cudding cow…but you need to be up close and personal with our bovines friends to appreciate this. By default, anyone whinging about cows evidently hasn’t spent time in amongst them, as they’re the most biddable and endearing creatures.

And it’s not cows you need to worry about, if methane is your concern. It’s coal, gas, and oil fields oozing the stuff. Now we know how to read satellite data better, we’re finding more and more, which seems to explain the sudden spike in atmospheric methane. Some are suggesting the jump has followed the rise of fracking, although I wouldn’t know. Certainly, poor maintenance of post-soviet infrastructure is a major problem. And this applies to the latest discovery of plumes of methane spewing from a couple of oilfields in Turkmenistan. Together, just these 2 operations are emitting more global warming gases than the UK’s entire emissions. That’s not them burning the fossil fuels, but just by the careless extraction. Paradoxically, if they were to ‘flare off’ the excess methane, converting it to CO2, things wouldn’t be as bad. And in the wonky world of GHG/carbon accounting, it would be even better if they captured the surplus methane and sold it. Stepping back momentarily, you might

conclude it’d probably be better to leave the stuff in the ground. But this former Soviet state, supplying China, is instead expanding operations.

And you’re worried about my cows?

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Birdlife and food summit

I don’t know whether I was intrigued, amused or just bemused by the No. 10 ‘Food summit’ this week. Richi engaged in one of those almost bizarre verbal gymnastic displays that politicians specialise in. He simultaneously claimed he’s wanting to support British farming, keep up production, and keep down food prices. These sound reasonable in their own right, but are somewhat contradictory, and not exactly supported by actions. Invited to the carefully staged media event – I take it there were some actual business talks going on- were both farmers and supermarkets. And all the warm words in the world don’t cover the chasm between the two. While there are some very large agri-businesses, most base level food production in the UK is carried out by small family based operations, whereas the big supermarkets are behemoths, controlling huge swathes of trade, with turnovers, budgets, and assets that make us peasants but dust before the wind.

To put it into focus, you might observe that, despite all the talk of food inflation- indeed, this was the chief reason Richi called the summit- farmgate prices of cereals and milk are now pretty much back down where they were before the Ukraine crisis kicked off. Most of farmers inputs have gone up and stayed up, while output returns have dropped right back. A lot of commodities have likewise rollercoasted, and there can be precious few farmers who have any confidence in medium term market returns. Whether Richi had a quiet word with Tescos et al about suspected profiteering remains unsaid.

Allied to this issue are government policies. You’ll recall the post-Brexit trade deals which pretty much opened the door to free trade around the world. We buy food from just about anyone, produced using methods and chemicals that are – rightly or wrongly- banned here. And what financial support the government are offering farmers is concentrated around non-farming environmental stuff. Planting trees and wildflowers if great, but it yields very little that people want to eat. We are being actively discouraged from producing food. Then, allowing migration to fill an over-populated country, while failing to discourage larger families, presses housing needs. This allows huge housebuilding firms to discreetly grease the rails with cash bungs to allow obscene new developments across ever more green field sites- or farmland as you might call it. Perversely, because Brits won’t go out in the rain and pick cauliflowers, we need to import ever more migrant labour who will. Regrettably, I note we don’t export the lazy toerags who won’t.

The consolidation of the abattoir industry is another aspect, with news lately coming out that one of the largest remaining family owned UK abattoir outfits has allegedly been bought out by one of the two Irish corporates that now completely dominate the UK trade. This unhealthy dominance is obviously going to have massive implications for the livestock sector in the end, but is apparently unchallenged.

But it’ll all be OK, because Richi has invited lots of farmy and food industry types round to Downing Street, and written a warm and loved up open letter to British farmers, which doesn’t actually say anything at all.

Unfortunately, actions speak louder than words….and this beano appeared to be mostly photo opportunities and warm words.



Meanwhile, at peasant grazier level, we’re pushing on with spring work. Sheep are being shuttled from in-bye and hay fields out onto the rough, in the vague hope that there’ll be some grass to bale dreckly. The Galloway cows are calving like the clappers, and as predicted, I’m spending happy hours amongst them, tagging calves on windy hillsides as the doting mothers decide whether they’ll tolerate my intrusion. I’ve only had to beat a strategic retreat once to date, as a bellowing bulging eyed cow told me very clearly that if I didn’t let go of that calf, she was going to grind me into the dirt. Mostly, it’s been a sublime experience, with cows sniffing me all over, lowing quietly as I apply rubber rings to the boys, and matched pairs of ear tags.

As I go about these tasks, I’m surrounded by an astonishing array of avian wildlife. Despite Natural England’s claims that my livestock have destroyed Dartmoors birdlife, we’re seeing or hearing all the normal birds around the yard you’d expect, along with Blackcap, Redstart, Stonechats, House Martins, Willow Warblers and Chiffchaff. Cuckoos abound, and I’m not sure if I was looking at a Windchat or a Wheatear the other day. The Ravens noisily tend their young, and Alison’s phone app tells her she heard something called a Cetti’s Warbler last week. Best of all, I’ve several times heard Curlew once more. Beautiful.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Gambling

Due to my industrial grade thrift, the only TV that beams into Chateau Coaker is such as hits the dish for free. As such, seemingly most of it seems to be ‘reality’ shows, where celebrities I’ve never heard of scamper about in a variety of locations, fake or inflated egos and body parts alike bouncing merrily away. In between shows, endless glossy adverts enticingly promise I can only be fully fulfilled if I gamble online. I too will be youthful, desirable and happy if I only try out the introductory starter deal, where I can gamble for free. Of course, there’s more on TV than that…but this pretty much sums it up. And I have pretty much zero interest, beyond a reluctant acceptance that I must be sharing this ball of rock with a fearful lot of extremely gullible morons.

However, as I go about my days, I think about those gambling adverts. You see, while I genuinely couldn’t care less whether most of the human race wake up tomorrow morning at all –obviously you, dear reader, are honourably excepted- I am bothered that some of them will in fact wake up addicted to online gambling. And this will very possibly lead them to penury, damaging their family’s chances of contributing to society as a whole, and liable to be a burden rather than an asset. And ultimately, that costs me.

The slick adverts suggest that the companies need ever more victims, of whom a known % will fall into the misery of gambling addiction. And for every one that some charity manages to carefully counsel away from the clutches of their weakness, yet more must fall in. This in turn leads me to ask why such wicked businesses are allowed to spend such lavish amounts on their recruitment drives. The matter supposedly comes under government scrutiny, but continues much the same. Just as the online gambling companies must know the %’s of twerps who’ll fall into their clutches, so too must someone in government. Anti-gambling charities are quick to supply the data, and the personal stories of despair, yet the adverts continue to beam their carefully cheery poison into homes around the country.

History shows that you can’t effectively ban gambling. Prohibition of most kinds only feeds even worse illegal activity. And then, there is the actual nature of what is ‘gambling’. I myself gamble constantly. I gamble on the weather, on the price of cattle against the input costs of rearing them. I gamble on the hidden quality of batches of oak or cedar logs, or the heritable qualities of a given tup I’m bidding upon. I chance my arm on whether this piece of machinery will fulfil its role before that crack needs welding, or that fence will hold these cattle in the field for another season without repair. We- all of us- take risks every day, weighing the odds and taking decisions based on barely conscious assessments without even thinking about it.

Games of genuine chance with some element of skill are a distilled version of this I suppose. Like life, your ‘luck’ is likely to be rather better if your maths, memory and logic is good. Careful assessment of the odds is the watchword. And if elements are beyond your control and understanding, you’re a fool to continue. And gambling hard coin against professionals just for the sake of it is shockingly naive. They do it for a living, and very carefully set the odds so as they always win in the end. Doing so online, where you’re ‘gambling’ against a machine pre-programmed win? You are already a victim.

Which leads us to the question of why don’t we halt the constant feed of enticing advertising? Likewise, why isn’t education on the dangers of gambling better set into school curricula? Failure to properly address this matter leads me to only one inevitable conclusion. I strongly suspect that money is changing hands to ensure the industry continues unfettered. When so many above board ‘political donations’ show you can buy influence, then it is hard to conclude otherwise.

I suppose you could take the hard line that some stupid people are going to be victims of their own gullibility whatever you do, so you might as well skim a bit off the top. Indeed, I enjoy various lottery funded projects, while never contributing to them myself. But ultimately that doesn’t stop victim’s misery being spread about downstream. The online gambling industry is a wicked and destructive business model, and failure to rein it in speaks loudly of how our system operates. I wistfully wish a courageous politician would explode the dirty secrets. Hey ho.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Supermarkets cap basics

It’s very kind of that Rishi chap to try and force supermarkets to cap the price of basic foods. Although I’m not sure how this plays out with his desire for farmers to be able to grow more food and operate profitably. And since government also want us to spend a lot of time hugging bunnies, producing food at third world prices using first world input costs….I suspect there’s a disconnect in the thinking. But it’s a nice idea Rishi.

Meanwhile, out in the real world, it’s that time of year when wool is at the forefront of my mind. While it used to be a money spinner – and as well as being a bit of a pun, I suspect that’s a clue right there- as a bulk commodity wool is now a liability. I can remember the wool paying the rent, and in that ever diminishing pool that is ‘my older colleagues’, there are men who remember fortunes being made by those who held wool crops over to exploit a better market ‘next year’. But now, the wool doesn’t pay the shearer’s. Sheep need to be shorn, as the dense overcoat we’ve bred onto them is too hot and uncomfortable in summer, and left unshorn, eventually becomes an encumbrance. Worse, sheep in their wool can’t detect the delicate landing of flies looking for somewhere nice to lay their eggs. These flies are drawn to the smell of a woolly, and preferably slightly grubby sheep. Their eggs are soon hatching into grubs which initially feast on the grease on the sheep’s skin. That wouldn’t be so bad, but the smell of the grubs at work draws yet more egg-laying flies, and subsequent hatches are soon eating into the sheep’s skin. Unchecked, within very few days, matters escalate.

Some farmers are circumventing the whole business by selectively breeding ‘shedders’- sheep that throw their fleece off naturally as soon as the weather warms. This looks a right mess to many eyes, with wool hanging off the ewes, and then adorning fields and fences for weeks. But I suppose if it works, it works, and the chore of shearing is spared.

In the Antipodes, I understand they’re going in another direction, and there’s some success in breeding sheep that don’t exude the pheromones that attracts the flies in the first place. Regrettably, the breeds they’ve worked with aren’t exactly suited to grazing on the top of Dartmoor, so this isn’t about to catch on here just yet, although it makes me wonder.

The price of wool is dictated by various factors. The real problem is that fossil fuel based plastics are so stupidly cheap. They’re ubiquitous in the clothes we wear, and in just about every fibre around us. And then, happily for the oil industry, moths aren’t inclined to eat them. It’s a sore point that Alison and I are currently carpeting a property that’s had moth problems, and we’re understandably using plastic based products in case of further difficulties. It doesn’t escape my attention that scattered around the field adjoining the property is some of last year’s wool, much of which was just left where it was clipped.

In fact I’ve just cut the same field for silage, hopefully to be baled today. The round bales will be held together with plastic, when they very well be held together with a wool-based product. But there’s no incentive to resolve such matters. It needs outside intervention to make it happen, and is probably a metaphor for wider affairs. In fact, trying to do the right thing, I did cost using sisal – plant based- string in my round baler, and the cost was about double. It was also a fag, tracking down someone who’d supply the right grade in the right spool size, and then needing to buy a pallet load. The bigger problem was that it is known to degrade just a bit too quickly, whereas plastic string doesn’t degrade at all!



Taking a lead from my experiences in timber, there are natural products that could make wool less prone to degrade or be eaten. I can generate all the oak tannin you could ever want, and not much eats that. Likewise, there must be a way of extracting the oily resin that makes cedar smell so good…that certainly deters moths! And, apparently, some clever company now pickles softwood in a vinegar type substance which protects it against rot and infestation. It’s all there to be explored, but none of us bother, ultimately because plastic is so cheap.

Happily, this is all above my paygrade, so I’m concentrating on getting wool off the sheep’s backs, and the grass baled.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Review NE

As some of you will have clocked, the review into the grazing levels on Dartmoor has been announced. This was brought about by hostile reaction in the farming community to Natural England’s attempts to force further drastic cuts in stocking levels. Some scamps suggest MPs were more stung by the wall to wall outrage amongst the wider local community when details came out. The review is to be chaired by David Fursdon, a highly regarded Devonian stalwart, who will be seen as a very steady pair of hands. The rest of the panel is as yet unannounced, but they’re to report on the matter in hand by the autumn.

As an interim measure, while the review is being carried out, it has been broadly agreed this year to leave existing stocking levels as they are under current environmental agreements. I say broadly, as despite other stakeholders readily agreeing to the premise, Natural England fought even this ceasefire measure all the way, and are still pushing several groups to reduce their stock immediately. Some have already been forced into cuts. Despite my own area of SSSI being deemed in ‘favourable condition’ – NE omit to mention some Dartmoor SSSI parcels are in favourable condition- they have still insisted on a 100% winter cut, and 40% reduction for the rest of the year.

Meanwhile, as well as laughably implying the 12 month moratorium was their idea- it came from the commoners- NE are pumping out a steady PR message, talking about all the terrible damage, defending their plans…..and openly talking to commoners about the cuts they’re going to introduce next year. I’m advised against calling individuals outright liars, so let’s say they are being less than wholly truthful. One – the regional director- was on national radio the other day, claiming NE have a very good dialogue with the farmers. Well, it’s true that some commoners are still prepared to actually sit in the same room as them, where duty dictates they have to. And I’m sure there are some wealthy blow-ins who’ve bought a little place in the National Park, read everything there is to read about rewilding and regenerative farming, and have secured a few rare breed sheep, so they can be part of the revolution in the way England is farmed…they’re probably talking to NE, in between mouthfuls of quinoa and tofu. Most of us however- the grubby herberts who actually go out in the weather and feed the cows, fettle the sheep, and make things happen- want nothing to do with NE, and …how can I phrase this? Would rather they all went far away.

How the review will pan out I can’t say, but it’s very clear to those of us involved that the infatuation on removing yet more livestock has little to do with protecting damaged SSSIs- my own experience brings that into sharp relief. The individuals pursuing it are clinging to the ‘rewilding’ ideology, ignoring the reality that the SSSIs were designated during, and after decades when there was far more livestock on the hills than there currently is. Claiming the changing nature of the environment is due to the beasts that have always been there is obviously a nonsense.

Likewise, there’s an overlapping group who’re desperately clinging to ‘peatland restoration’, where actions in centuries past – tin working and peat cutting- must now be redressed. Those of us with decades of recollection on the land can point out that the damage is steadily repairing itself, but we’re ignored. I can well recall, from my youth, the peat cuttings being plainly visible, the linear faces of bare peat still about 3’ high. They’re gone now, barely discernible, presumably as the higher face has slumped and/or the bottom of the workings has grown once more. Drainage ditches dug before mechanical diggers have likewise disappeared. Again, I well recall some drains that would’ve been dug in the late 1800’s for tinning operations, still 6’ wide, arrow straight, and 2’ deep after a century. They’re no longer visible, the moss in them now spread across the now soggy landscape. But whether or not you can-or should- force peat to grow where it no longer wants to on its own volition is a good question…but one no-one is asking very loudly. Not when the multi-million pound gravy train is rolling, and fleets of shiny new diggers can be employed making muddy puddles.

Those pursuing these goals live modern lives, attracting the scuff marks of guilt about the environmental damage we’re all doing, but are blinkered by their attempts to salve their battered consciences. And while I ordinarily couldn’t care less how they delude themselves….I do wish they’d go and do it elsewhere.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Midsummer

Writing on midsummer’s morning, with the early orange rays of sunlight coming in the farmhouse window from the most oblique Northeast angle, I can almost taste why men dragged rocks around thousands of years ago to mark the solar calendars passing. I was out in the yard after 10 last night fetching one of the terriers back in so her granddaughter could go out for a widdle- they cannot be trusted out together, or they’re off hunting bunnies for hours. And despite the more arresting sight for most people being the gruff old farmer stomping about in nought but a pair of plastic sandals and a towel round his middle- this followed bathtime- I was enchanted by the haunting prolonged half-lit dusk, with the palest bit of the horizon being the northern quarter, as the sun was just skidding down out of sight for a few hours. I try to soak up as much of this as I can, to counter the long dark winter nights.

While on my nocturnal excursion, I enjoyed another heady draught of the heavy scent of the elder blossom still going strong up here. It’s finished on the lowland sites where I was baling lately, having scented my evenings shuttling bales in. But a thousand feet up the slope, it’s still going strong. It’s part of the same connection for me to enjoy the changing blossom and fruiting around me. The pale green sycamore blossom around the yard was very good a few weeks ago, almost translucent on trees alive with feeding bees before falling as a carpet underfoot. The leaves of these useful shade and shelter trees had become shiny, covered in sticky goo in the hot sun with no rain to wash them clean. Now, several of the trees are setting crops of winged seeds. Likewise, the sea of white and pink hawthorn blossom everyone noted recently has started turning into trees covered with tiny green beginnings of a huge crop of haws. We’ll see. The laburnums in the yard bore their short lived cloak of yellow blossom, falling in drifts which then lasted for days in the settled dry weather.

A more exotic aroma has filled the kitchen this week, after I’d been tending some trees in a plantation I put in a few years ago. Having speculated that a changing climate and pest threats might make eucalypts an increasingly useful forest crop, I planted several hundred. Obtaining commercial numbers of transplants- with the attendant price reduction- was aided by a pal ‘upstream’ who had similar thoughts. He brought seed of several novel varieties in to be propagated. Selecting on frost relative tolerance, potential timber qualities, and yield, I mapped out where each had been planted in the plot to watch what happens. Mostly what happened was that a site where deer hadn’t been seen at all suddenly developed some roe. It being a domey bit of landscape has made controlling them very difficult- they need to be stood in front of a solid backdrop for the deer stalker to be able to take a safe shot- rather than a distant campsite or trunk road. I’d guarded the saplings against rabbits- with which the ground is also overly blessed, but Bambi simply ate the shoots as they came out of the top of the tubes. So I’ve steadily been replacing tubes and stakes with more robust items, and allowed coppiced shoots to take the lead. With continued knapsack sprayer efforts at grass suppression – saplings don’t like competition- we’re suddenly making headway. A couple of ‘nitens’- or Shining Gum- down over the bank have shot away, and are suddenly 15-20’ up without my really noticing. And starting some judicious pruning, to ensure they grow into single straight knot free poles, has allowed me to bring home some lime green foliage which makes the kitchen window cill smell of cough drops, or possibly koala poo.

Back here, the bulls trumpet their magnificence, as the South Devons have gone to work, and the Galloways pace round digging up their paddock, awaiting the off. Shiny oily coats show the sun has brought the nutrients up with what grass they’re finding, and stopping to scratch the backs and chat, as I do when we’re met, leaves my hands covered in grease. The downside is that the flies are also prospering, bringing a constant threat to the sheep, an abundance of ticks lifting off the ground to hitch a ride and a feed from man or beast, and horseflies unnumbered bite as we work. I sometimes wonder what those animal rights loons do when a horsefly alights on their arm and sinks the harpoon for a drink. Hmm.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Morgan Freeman

So what happened in Russia last weekend? Putin was faced with some kind of uprising by a mercenary force he’d nurtured. With the heavily armoured rebels rapidly advancing, shooting down helicopter gunships as they rolled north toward Moscow, Putin hurriedly had a dirty great trench dug across the main road, and agreed to some kind of amnesty if they turned round. And then when they had been stood down, he apparently let the leader Yevgeny Prigozhin walk away free. I’m not sure I buy that at face value, and some reports suggest it was actually threats to the families of some Wagner leaders that really stopped them. Either way I certainly wouldn’t be offering Yevgeny life insurance. Putin isn’t exactly famous for forgiving and forgetting. Having been bad mouthing the regime over their special military operation in Ukraine, you’d think the Wagner bloke already had a marked card. But after years of state sponsored thuggery, I wonder if he has a lot of embarrassing dirt on Putin. With the details safely deposited elsewhere with trusted friends- to be revealed, say, upon his untimely demise- he might be more dangerous dead than alive. It certainly sounds like he’d be in a position to tell some pretty grubby secrets. But still, if I was him, I don’t think I’d be paying many annual subscriptions up front, or even ordering too much metaphoric milk. It’s an ongoing saga, and I note the apparent amnesty already looks like toast. And what will happen to his private army now settling into Belarus remains unknown.

Moving to the other side of the Atlantic, I’ve been giving some thought to events on in the USA. Specifically, the somewhat parlous state of their political affairs-you could hardly make up the self-indulged self-destructive mess they’re buried in now.

Being an acute and renowned analyst of world affairs, I have the answer. It’s obvious really, they need to appoint actor Morgan Freeman as president for life. I’ve seen the movies… he always seems to make a better fist of it than their actual politicians. It won’t matter whether it’s an international diplomacy crisis, a terrorist threat, or an impending natural disaster…he’ll calmly cope. And by golly we’d all be happier listening to his reassuring tones than current incumbents and contenders.



Meanwhile, in the rather more mundane world of hill farming on Dartmoor, we’re trying to get some maintenance work done between seasonal tasks. The sheep are slowly getting clipped, although my lad is hardly ever to be seen, constantly away shearing elsewhere. He started down in the depths of the South Hams, amongst stalwart farming tribes like the Tuckers, the Darkes and the Kerswells- proper farmers on proper farms- and is working his way uphill. It’s a well-known fact that it’s good for a youngster to get out and see other farms and methods. John already knows his Dad is an incompetent twit in every way – indeed, he’s seldom fails to point this out- so it’s a good thing to see how things ought to be done! The difficult bit, after shearing in such lowland parishes must be having to come home to ‘Hardbitten Fell’ evenings. He is giving me the odd day on the in-bye sheep, and I’m sure we’ll soon be looking to moor for some Scotch ewes. And while the in-bye ewes have checked for lack of rain to keep the grass growing, the Scotch out on the peat look to be thriving. We’ll see. I’m also starting to eye the Galloway cows, thinking they’ll be wanting the bull soon. Fetching them back and sorting who sees which bull is a task I love. Just being in amongst my beasts brings a peace to my soul. Seeing who is raising what calves, and choosing how to take the herd forward is a privilege, and working amongst their glossy hides with flies abuzz and calves bawling is bliss.

Summer’s largesse has seen enough insect life for the birdies around the yard to raise lots of young, which is wholesome and lovely. You can’t dispute this can you? Well yes and no. Because I’m currently enjoying the house martins nested outside my bedroom window seemingly raising a fair clutch. I know this because the little blighters argue and chatter noisily half the night. I don’t know what they bicker about at 2.30 AM, but something goes wrong in their little mud house under the eaves, and they all suddenly wake up and start chittering away. I accept there are far worse things to be woken up by, but I do wish they’d just shuffle around, roll over and get back to sleep. Bless em.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Predated Martins


I am very sad to report some news this week. The house martin family which had been keeping me away nights with their shuffling and chittering won’t do so again. An unknown predator has ripped open their little mud house outside my bedroom window, and eaten them- or at least the chicks. Wool hangs from the gaping hole- they prefer scotch blackface wool I notice- and all is silent. I still don’t get a full night’s sleep, because I’m a bloke in my late 50s. But as I woke in dawn’s first dimpsey light this morning, it was to a sad silence from the martins. Chief suspect is a magpie, although we see a few jays nowadays, which we never used to. The magpies scoff blackbird chicks and the like in numbers untold about the yard, but this will be new territory for them. A walk round the house reveals 3 of the 8 nests appear to have been so attacked.

This had me thinking, before I dressed to slip up and check the 18 month heifer who somehow finds herself bagging up, unexpectedly expectant– the floozy that she is. A conversation with an unassuming lowland rural pal recently revealed he’d killed – I think he said- over 40 magpies in the last 12 months, and someone not far from him had done likewise. A farmer nearer me had despatched well over 100 in the same period. These aren’t game-keepering types, that you’d associate with tweedy toffs wanting to blast thousands of pheasants to pieces. These are steady countrymen who work quietly to do what they consider is right. Elsewhere locally, I know where much larger corvids are being discreetly controlled for a vaguely secret project that would be lauded at every level, but is kept moderately on the QT. I myself have a various chums despatching all kinds of furry and feathery wild critters on my behalf, for my own reasons. How you determine whether they ‘do it for fun’ isn’t my concern, but I am perfectly comfortable with their actions- and my place in promoting it. I’m pretty sure there are plenty of people who will already be shocked, and call me all kinds if names, so maybe I should explain a bit. One pal is tasked with killing every squirrel he can locate with his airgun, in amongst plantations of mine. I have been planting and growing oak trees since my mid 20s, and have watched an exploding grey squirrel population destroy my young oak trees in heartbreaking numbers. I employ various strategies, including a long period of simply not planting oak any more, instead concentrating my efforts on growing conifers. And while I never saw deer on Dartmoor until my 30s, now I have a man quietly managing numbers on my behalf for similar reasons. I also have individuals unknown helping themselves to my deer, in a manner I don’t approve of, and would certainly have those responsible boiled alive if I could. Rabbits come and go in natural cycles, although they’re rarely an issue up here- lowland colleagues can barely believe I have hundreds of acres too poor for rabbits to persist on. But I have one particular off lying block where they’re a constant nightmare, eating out my livestock’s grass and destroying the hedge banks if left unchecked. There, another helpful chum uses ferrets and nets to remove dozens at a go, and said airgun marksman takes a toll as well. Various predators are constantly feasting on them too, as evidenced by the shredded remains everywhere.

Likewise, vegetation under my care is constantly managed to varying degrees. Indeed, I was being lectured lately by someone with some environmental degree, as to why nutrient sapping yellow rattle plants were so precious in a hayfield. I omitted to mention I’m carefully using a flock of sheep to eradicate hundreds of thousands of the wretched things on a site of mine. After my telling off, I slipped off to hook the topper onto the tractor, to try and get on top of acres of encroaching blackthorn and brambles engulfing another piece of land.



I live in a messy symbiosis with all this fundamental stuff, as do all of my rural chums. And whether they realise it or not, so do the tens of millions of urban Brits who rely on the stuff we raise and grow for their sustenance. But most of them know virtually nothing about it, getting their ‘knowledge’ of what happens beyond the reach of streetlights from Countryfile and Springwatch. Worse, a lot them then think they know better than us grubby yokels. And you know something? I am sick of it.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Countyfile and burping cows

An update on last week’s pillaging of the house martin nest outside my bedroom window. For 2-3 mornings after the poor travellers little mud hut was ripped open, a jay thumped up against the window, while Alison and I sat up in bed having the industrial coffee which fuels thestart to our day. Said jay clung to the nest and stuck its head in to see if any morsels remained. The martins havealready started to rebuild, but in vain I fear. I’m unsure what to do next, and recognise that jays gotta eat too….I just wish this one had found another meal.
I also mentioned Countryfile last week, suggesting that viewers are hardly going to learn what actually happens out in the sticks. Although I generally never watch the tripe, I’ve had to find the watch again facility after a furore blew up over last Sunday’s episode. The article that had been drawn to my attention was on some daft plan to feed extract of daffodils to cows, to stop them burping methane. And sure enough some boffin who studies this was interviewed, alongside a feed company who’re planning to include the magic elixir in cattle feed, and some farmers who seemed to go along with it. Sounds like everyone is a winner then? No, it doesn’t. The whole piece is based on the flawed premise that methane from cattle burps are contributing to man-made global warming, when the briefest look at the chemistry shows that is obviously hokum. Cattle are part of a very short carbon- and hence methane- cycle that has been around since long before we started burning oil. If you doubt me, go and learn about carbon cycles….and have a good long think for yourself. Who’s behind this misdirection is another tale, involving some hugely wealthy corporate interests, and individuals who benefit from them. More to the point though is why are Countryfile so lazy as to repeat the lie so readily? Because they are feeding this nonsense straight into the living rooms as if it were true, which builds public perception. The presenter went on to assure viewers that every climate scientist agrees how bad cows are for the environment, which rather glosses over the fact that lots do not agree, some quite vehemently so.
But what really irritated me was that the farmers interviewed were happy to discuss how the daffodil extract might help mitigate cow burps, which simply cements the myth. That farmers would endorse such dishonesty beggars belief. Then for reasons unknownCountryfile gave more oxygen to that odious farmer-hating Guardian columnist, who’s done so much toalienate my community and profession, and created a poison atmosphere between so many ‘conservationists’and those who actually work the land. I cannot for the life of me understand why the BBC would allow his crooked agenda onto prime time TV. As ever though, when he’s given space, he soon reveals his fundamental ignorance. Walking beside the lower reaches of the river Dart, he admitted he swims in it most days, and that it’s one of England’s least polluted rivers. This was in between decrying ‘animal agriculture’ and how it’s destroying the planet. The juxtaposition would be laughable, if his message wasn’t so vitriolic. Because the catchment of the Dart- one I’m obviously very familiar with- would be one of Southern England’s most ‘animal agriculture’ influenced. There is very little arable farming upstream, with the vast majority of the farming operations involving the exact grazed ruminants he so hates. Indeed, my own cattle take great pleasure standingright in it on warm evenings when they come down to drink. Think on that.
Onwards, but connected, I’ve been lucky enough to be chatting with someone involved in a wild bird program locally. He’s doing a fantastic job, re-introducing a ground nesting bird that has just about disappeared locally in recent decades. He was kind enough to show Alison and I the results, and we’re right behind him. Mind we’re also interested because he’s revealed the 18 year study he’s been doing, that shows quite clearly that that various ground nesting/wading bird populations on Dartmoor have plummeted in exact unison with the removal of livestock under Natural England’s direction. These iconic birds really don’t like the lack of grazing, and I understand our man has ample evidence showing this. Predation is another problem, principally from corvids. Given the above mentioned columnists fixation with rewilding, and attempts to remove ever more livestock from the hills, you can guess why I might be very interested to hear about this chap’s study. And I can think of a review of NE’s plans for Dartmoor that needs sight of it.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Nature Recovery

I saw a brief interview with ‘Green’ MP the other night- Caroline Lucas. And it was hugely revealing. And nice as Caroline may be, what took my attention was the epic scale of woolly thinking and self-delusion, which enfolds the Greens and their fellow travellers.

The news item regarded the scary heatwave gripping Southern Europe. And if it doesn’t scare you, then I’d advise trying to spend a few days at 45 degrees, and see how you like it. Dear Caroline advised viewers that, to solve the climate crisis, we must ‘restore nature’. Really, that seemed to be the crux of it. The message was reinforced last night, when the same demand was apparently being made by a wide range of ‘wild life’ lobbyists.

And I’m afraid I beg to differ. The heatwave would appear to be driven primarily by a massive rise in atmospheric CO2, complicated this year by the normal variations in Pacific weather - the ‘El Nino’ thing. The former is in turn is fairly clearly being driven by the exploitation and use of fossil fuels. You can dress it up any way you like, but the 2 things we would need to do are firstly stop releasing yet more carbon, and secondly, find ways we can effectively lock up what we’ve released. Think of it like this- we’re ‘flaring off’ hundreds of millions of years of stored carbon, in an orgy of idle greed. We have allowed our fossil fuel use to drive a huge and unsustainable explosion in human population. Loss of bio-diversity is a side effect.

Regrettably, systems of governance don’t favour anyone doing much about CO2. Politicians don’t get elected by saying they’ll stop you having an easy life, or bonking too much. Hence, we’re not fixing the problem any time soon. And Caroline saying ‘restoring nature’ will fix it is just puerile nonsense. The same news show also mentioned that China and the US have been in talks about climate change, but that neither was prepared to inhibit economic growth….that’s the reality.

If the Green Party were to focus on actual solutions, I might have some respect. But they’re somehow wound up with something called ‘social justice’, which seems to imply that if we’d all be loved up lefties, hold hands and look after everyone, the nastiness will magically go away.

I don’t see that at all. Even if we, in the UK, could find a way to make the country better, with a verdant comfortable environment coupled to a fairer thriving economy…the queue of poor desperate souls trying to get in would engulf us, dragging our available resources back down to the floor. The better we make it, the worse that problem becomes. We cannot have the fabled nirvana Caroline clings to.



Sadly, the way forward is going to be brutal, and to many minds, ugly. Admittedly that’s a question of perspective- it doesn’t bother me much as long as I can save my own offspring. I’d rather it could all be daisies and butterflies, but unfortunately it absolutely won’t be like that. We are selfish short-sighted creatures, and I accept this reality.









Look. The ‘nature restoration’ concept doesn’t do anything to capture any meaningful amount of carbon. Wild flower meadow and hedgerow management will do just about nothing for CO2 reduction. All you could say is that we might have a prettier countryside to watch while it and we fry. Undoing centuries of farmers draining wet land and managing watercourses, and letting beavers build their dams, may or may not alleviate downstream flooding. But it will certainly reduce the food production capacity of the land upstream, while doing nothing for carbon capture.

Planting trees? I’ve looked long and hard at forests around the world, including some of the most fabled of verdant paradises – old growth cedar forest on Vancouver island, tropical jungle on the coast of Far North Queeensland, and Dartmoor’s pixie infested oak woodland. And you know a funny thing? The boulders still poke through the soil, meaning the only significant bulk of carbon stored is in the tree trunks themselves, which come and go in a geological blink of an eye as part of an ongoing carbon cycle.

If you asked me to capture and store large amounts of carbon long term, the best I can do would be to carefully manage Sitka Spruce or Eucalypt plantations, harvest the trees at maximum yield….and pile drive the trunks into the bed of the North Sea, putting the carbon right back where it was previously stored. And as manifestly daft as that is, I’m afraid there aren’t better ‘pretty’ solutions.

There are simply too many people.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Cow Attacks

We snatched a couple of fields of silage last week, seeing the briefest realistic window in the weather. I’d cut as much as I dared, anxious to restart its growth with some dung, after the desperate dry spell left it stunted and stalled.



Looking back on the surprisingly bulky mown swath, I was concerned how the rubber band baler was going to like these soggy lawn mowings. Such conditions require a very steady hand, and much slower progress than normal. And, by Friday morning, with the odd shower forecast and a deluge due Saturday, I was fair sweating. Happily, I live in the kind of community where a neighbour phoned – guessing I might be stressed, and offering help. He soon rocked up a spare driver too! We put them rowing up and making bales- he knows rubber band balers well- so Rueben and I could start shipping bales back to the yard and getting some wrap on them. The weather held, and I only had a few leftovers to tidy early on Saturday morning before the monsoon arrived. Result!



While I’d been chasing grass I’d heard some chat on the radio about a website for people attacked by cows. Various tales of horror were phoned in, where unsuspecting members of the public had been beaten up by bovines. Unsurprisingly almost all seem to involve a dog being present- do you think there might be a clue there? Anyway, the crux was that the public calling in seemed be demanding that footpaths were fenced off, to keep these terrible creatures at bay. It was so naïve it scared me a little. First, let’s talk about footpaths. They were recognised to permit locals to go from A to B. Many were ‘postman’s paths’, or the straightest route to church. Their very nature recognises that the land they cross belongs to someone else. But now they’ve morphed into a recreational facility for strangers, many of whom think it should also be their right to bring a dog with them. It is inevitable that such behaviour is going to cause problems, and placing the blame on the occupants of the land strikes me as pretty unreasonable.

Inquests after regrettably fatal cow attacks have varied in conclusion. Some have concluded that cattle should be fenced away from public paths where possible, while one suggested the public shouldn’t take dogs onto land where cattle are legitimately grazing. The law is a mess, and Labours rumblings about blithely increasing public access can only make this matter worse.

That brings us neatly onto the nonsense about fencing paths off. Firstly, isn’t that really a ‘landgrab’ by the State? Because the owner/occupier would then have no commercial use of the land behind the fence- although there is the benefit that the public would at least be obliged to stay on the path, rather than ‘accidently’ meander will. And while it might conjure the image of a path which neatly follows one edge of a nice square field, in reality, paths often - shock horror- cut across fields. Are there really suggestions that farmers divide all such fields in two? Fencing both sides would create silly alleyways everywhere.

Further, don’t people have any idea what happens when you remove farming operations – either the grazing of beasts or tillage for crops? Unless a path is so well used it is liable to become a quagmire in wet periods, brambles quickly them. Perhaps armies of ‘countryside rangers’ are going to be employed to keep them open with strimmers? I suppose a new tax can be levied, although obviously it’ll be a lot easier if the rangers can sit on some kind of rough terrain mowing device ….let’s call it a ‘tractor’. Best make the alleyways 12’ wide then, with adequate splays on corners and gateways.

And we haven’t got to Chateau Coaker yet, where hundreds of acres are now ‘access land’ anyway. Which bits shall I fence off? Or should I simply remove all the cows? Curiously, asking those who do walk across my land brings gasps of disbelief….of course they don’t want the livestock removed. Most are bright enough to see that the vegetation would simply engulf everything. Many hugely enjoy walking amongst the beasts, and watching the cows loaf, graze, and nurse their calves is very much part of the experience.

For my part, like most of my peers I try to ensure my cattle are as docile as I can make them. But the simple reality is that the cows live on the land, and if you can’t accept there is some element of risk going in amongst them, perhaps walking in the countryside isn’t for you.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Yorkshire Dales

With no hay making weather about, I took the chance slip off with my lovely little wife for a few days. We had a date with some fellow cattle breeders to tour some farming operations in and around the Yorkshire Dales. I say farming operations, when in fact some were lately deliberately destocked. They don’t seem to like the word ‘rewilded’ now, presumably as it instantly raises the hackles of so many countrymen. But can a hill farm that used to carry 800 ewes, and is now stocked with just 10 cows really be described as much else?

It hadn’t been our intention that the tour should focus on such projects this year of all years…it just fell out of the packet that way. Honest. Our group have a well-established tendency to meander amongst lush countryside, taking in the geology, vernacular architecture, archaeology, and such eclectic points of interest along the way. Farming and its place in the landscape are merely the framework upon which we hang the tours. Oh, and we’re meant to be looking at cows too. To this effect, Alison and I shared a holiday cottage in the nearby Forest of Bowland with one or two other fellow travellers. Unsurprisingly, there too destocking is making its mark, and the common around the cottage was under the cosh, and badly understocked. It’s slowly disappearing under a blanket of rank rushes, creeping thistle and gorse. This was doubly sad, as every day we were privileged to watch a short-eared owl hunting voles across the common. Backtracking her loaded return flight, she was feeding young in a barn next door. And I suspect she soon won’t be able penetrate the trash to feed young. An adjacent common was worse. Completely destocked, it was devoid of livestock, economic activity and apparent wildlife….and seemingly owned by United Utilities.

Then, venturing up onto the limestone of the Dales, we then found miles and miles of neatly grazed landscape. Tourists pack the roads, winding between the maze of little fields, miles of carefully maintained drystone walls, and grazing stock. A bit of a straw poll with chance met visitors indicated they’d be aghast if the livestock were removed, leaving the field systems redundant and neglected. The bit Alison and I found difficult was standing amidst a landscape lately lauded as a model for bio-diversity and wildlife, which was so well grazed. Vast areas of Dartmoor are now knee deep in vegetation, and we’re being told we should remove much of the remaining stock. Fellow tour delegates from around the country confirmed that the approach is widely disparate, with some completely untouched by the attack others are enduring. It’s a mess.

Back to the Dales. The standout feature to a livestock farmer is the limestone. Where it pokes through the landscape, it raises the ph, and the difference this makes is hard to convey. On one farm, we gazed across to where our host had an enclosure lying across the division in geology. From half a mile away, his livestock neatly reveal the border, preferring to graze the bright green of the limestone pasture to the dull coloured vegetation overlying gritstone. I surely know which I’d sooner graze! Indeed, something I appreciate more as the year pass, both in farming and the growing and trading of oak, is that location and respective dirt underfoot is everything.

The highlights of our trip centred largely, if perversely, upon voles. Not only was our friendly owl hunting them, but when we got to the most destocked farm we were in for a lesson. Looking across the broad vista, one of our delegates – a quietly spoken but legendary Cumbrian farmer and rural sage- pointed to a large number of pale green patches half a mile away. He explained to our host and listening assembly that removing the livestock was allowing the voles to proliferate, and they’d eaten everything there but the pale green moss. And while some people- and owls – might think this was a marvellous state of affairs, in fact the numbers will then crash after a few years when they’ve scalped it. Everyone was more or less agog….. how could he tell all this from such a distance? I’m not sure I was wholly convinced, until a few yards further on when we started finding them…scuttling everywhere underfoot. His granddaughter even caught one in her hands, running after gramps to show him…until it bit her and she dropped it again. It was a pointed lesson for many of us, mostly about the quiet wisdom of a man who’s grazed and gazed upon such fells all his life. Would but Natural England could understand such wisdom.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Nurse

Once more, I’m driving hard at getting my crops in safe, in conditions less than conducive. And as days shorten, and the next round of seasonal work knocks at the door, I push harder. It’s tough on old bones, and I’m reminded daily that my bones are indeed older than they were. I find myself wanting to stop evenings, when I used be ready to carry on.
This in turn reminds me there’ a phenomena some people and professions might never experience. I’ve found that some kind of crisis overrules the body’s needs. It must be psychological, but when the chips are down, and a time sensitive task has to be attended to, long after I’mhungry, thirsty, cold or tired, I can somehow keep going. Yet on another day when the work is less urgent, I’m flaked out hours earlier, happily telling myself I’ve done a day’s work. I’ve no idea how this works, but is obviously some inner mechanism, subconsciously channelling reserves. I daresay the military and medical professions could tell you how it works, when all I can tell you is that it’s blessed handy.
Where I probably let myself down is wishing that I could harness it somehow. When there’s no crisis, I hardly want to do more than 8-9 hours a day. I stop evenings kicking myself that I know full well I could do another 4 hours, if I could but convince my hindbrain that the task was urgent. I wish there was a switch.
And now, I find the degree of urgency triggering this response to need has noticeably increased somewhat. This reminds me of a summer long ago, when I was in my twenties. The mowing ground at home was swamped with my parent’s blessed ponies, and I needed hay for mygrowing herd of cattle. I had somehow procured bits of mowing grass right down through the Dart valley, from 4 to 20 acres, each a mile or two apart. I had assembled a full set of rattly and cobbled together equipment, and had a good lad helping me, when a July high pressure driftedin. We set to, and settled into the rhythm of cutting 4-5 acres each morning, turning the previous 2 days mowing, rowing up the previous to that, and baling it. Each evening we’d return to base with a bale trailer and flatbed lorry load of small bales to unload in the cool. The sun shone for 3 weeks straight, and so we carried on, working our way up the valley towards home and saving 350-400 little bales each day. I’ve forgotten what stopped us, whether it was running out of grass, or the weather turning, but the lad and I were bronze coloured, and neither of us carrying much fat. Obviously, my memory has blotted out the nightmare logistics of trying to get clattery old tractors and gear from one field to the next, and the endless encounters with tourists in narrow lanes, but we must’ve worked something upwards of 250 hours apiece in three weeks.
Unsurprisingly, the newness has rubbed off me a bit now, and I’m cured of such enthusiasm.

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On matters less wholesome, what do we do with that wretched nurse? Given she can’t be dropped through a trapdoor and bright to an abrupt halt, we’re likely going to have to house and feed her for….well, it’s likely to be many decades. Possibly, hers will prove to be the longest incarceration in modern times. Listening to the reports on the radio, I’m left wondering what is wrong in her head. The behaviour is so removed from how people ordinarily act that it’s not really possible to grasp. Perhaps there was some episode in her young life that would explain how she is so ill. I don’t know, but evidently she has to be removed from society one way or another. I would be content with the trapdoor solution myself, but note that the family of at least one of the victims have expressed the desire she lives a long life behind bars.
Obviously, her trial had to be followed through, and her guilt proven. But the next stage is considering how the system ignored the warnings coming from characters like that consultant interviewed on the news. I’m not sure what kind of manager dismisses allegations of such gravity coming from time served doctors like that. It’s almost beyond belief, and allowed the culprit to continue. If evidence shows this is true, I would want to see at least one ‘manager’ in the dock next.
I don’t know how you can guard against actions like Letby’s, but the system certainly failed here.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

ULEZ

Let’s talk about ULEZ or whatever it’s called. This bright idea is that polluting old vehicles have to pay an extra tax if the get within sniffing distance of green guru Sadiq’s office. And did I hear that the zone incorporates Heathrow airport? That’s pretty rich isn’t it? Every day, hundreds upon hundreds of aeroplanes taking off blasting their exhaust back at Sadiq’s constituents, many of whom are outraged when there’s glitch in the slick ordering of these flights. Indeed, the whole concept is a bit rich. A monster sprawling city, distorting the countryside around it for hundreds of miles by its very existence, worried about air pollution. The chances of 10 million people living in such density without a colossal environmental footprint are pretty much zero, but singling out old cars will make everything better. If you say so Sadiq. I’m unclear what commercial vehicles get drawn into this, ne’er mind the diggers and cranes chuntering away to build ever more development, roads, and unwanted hi-speed rail terminals. I don’t know what monstrous diesel pumps shunt clean and dirty water around such a low lying city, but presume there’s some real beauties chugging away steadily somewhere. Then there’s the consumer consumption, and everything supporting those millions of people. Ships, burning oil, to push aside thousands upon thousands of tonnes of seawater bring materials and goods to London in an endless flow. The concrete and steel the city consumes is made using untold volumes of fossil fuels…albeit burnt far away out of sight. Everything arrives wrapped in plastic, most of which will be newly made. The very push to get rid of old cars means they’re replaced faster than they might be, and more steel and aluminium has to be smelted to build new ones.

In fact, let’s look at the rather dry maths pertaining to the theory that a new car is a bit more efficient than an older one. An average car might have a tonne and a bit of metal in it. Working out how much coal is burnt to smelt this metal is difficult, because the figures involve turning the right grade of coal into coke before it goes into the blast furnace. And I have no idea how much heat is needed to then work the basic materials into something as complex as car components. If, as it seems, it’s something like one to one for the basic process, you might guess the whole process might be one and a half tonnes of coal to make one tonne of car parts, not allowing for the fuel burnt grubbing the raw materials out of a hillside somewhere else far away. And if you reckon a car doing 10,000 miles year, at 7 miles to the litre in London, it’s burning 1400 litres of fuel annually. If a new car is 10% more efficient/less smoky, you’re going to save 140 litres of polluting fuel annually running one.

By these clunky figures, it’d take over a decade to see a net benefit, and in my limited experience, efficient new cars don’t stay ‘new’ forever.

Happily the foundries, factories and iron ore mines are mostly far away, so Londoners won’t get the sneazles, so that’s all OK.

In fact, while taking steps to make the air cleaner can only be a good idea, the reality

is that the ULEZ business is barely scratching at the surface, and is a gross hypocrisy.

One wag, who drives a much superannuated 1970’s Landrover, reckons that historic vehicles are not covered by ULEZ rules. This gives rise to the somewhat pleasing concept that, should he wish to, he could chug his smoky way into town daily, albeit somewhat slowly, without raising anyone’s ire. Indeed, when I was in central London last year, I noticed there was no shortage of large polluting cars rushing about, presumably able to pay the congestion charge anyway.



That’s enough of that. Let’s get back to important stuff, like whether that Coaker chap is ever going to stop whining about the weather. I want to put my difficult ‘hay’ harvest into context for you. I still haven’t finished, and by the time I have, I’ll have spent about 6 weeks doing difficult work that a dry fortnight would’ve seen easily put to bed. I’ve lost a month, making lesser quality soggy silage. The ‘cost’ of this poorer fodder will manifest in my livestock needing a bit more hard feed than normal next winter. I don’t feed much corn, but I’m estimating the increased requirements will equate to about £4000, plus an extra £1500 on the bale wrap. Hey ho.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Last Scotch Ewes

There’s been scant respite for the wicked this week, nor indeed us angelic innocents. Brief 2-3 day weather windows see many of us peasants scuttling about like dervishes, trying to cram a fortnight’s summer work into a handful of days. If I had but a dry settled week or two, the rest of my harvest would soon be put to bed, but this stop/start business is a grind. It’s now three weeks in the last four that I’ve had to jump to it and hurriedly get 10-15 acres of grass cut, to snatch another days baling. The penalty for delay is that quality is steadily dropping away, and what fodder I do preserve to overwinter my beasts will be so much garbage. At least this week I’m hoping it’ll be dry enough for my rubber band baler to cope. I could see last week’s offerings would have caused it to get its knicker elastic in a twist, so I phoned a friend with a more robust machine beforehand. He arrived Thursday lunchtime with the dew hardly lifted. We pushed on as fast as the soggy lank crop would allow, and blow me, by the time young Matt had deposited the last bale – 107 on the counter- the cloudbase was fast sinking down the mast at Princetown again, and fog soon rolled down the Swincombe. Looking Eastwards down the Dart valley, the sun still shone…which is what hill farming is all about.

It’d been quite pleasant for an hour or two, raking and baling a level 11 acre field with herds of cows and calves with their respective bulls loafing either side of us, amidst the most beautiful wide vista. Dave the South Devon, bronze coloured coat glistening with grease, raised his wrinkled nose to sniff the air, grumbling away what he would do to Bennie the Belt- in the newtake nextdoor. Bennie in response calmly sat cudding amongst his harem, aloof.

This sanguine scene was then replaced with a rush to shuttle the 107 green 700kg dumplings down to the platt where we wrap and stack, as the fog turned to drizzle. A number were soon out of shape enough to need very careful handling, lest they jumped off the wrapper. The normal throughput of 30 per hour slowed considerably, and it was 9.30 as I got the last of them stacked in failing light.

In between these hectic and stressed sessions, we’ve been fetching in Scotch sheep for junior to clip. The final flock we managed to get after the rain abated Monday morning. They live several miles out over a vast peat plateau, and we have to cover miles of difficult terrain to fetch them back. On foot, I did my bit, stopping to grab a few whortleberries as the chance arose. Yellow tormentil dotted the shorter grazed areas, and bog asphodel spiked its poison flowers up in the wet patches. I drank from streams along the way, and put up sky larks unnumbered, and 2-3 snipe. Lizards slithered into long grass on my approach, as ‘Fly’ and I pushed groups of blackfaced ewes and lambs together- each as healthy and sparkling-eyed as a trout. The Natural England staff who write such warm platitudes for public consumption, about working with farmers, are doing their utmost to get rid of these free living flocks….really, their honeyed words in the paper bear no comparison whatsoever with what they’re attempting to do.

Several odds from other flocks came in with this last group, and the lads spent most of Tuesday sorting them out, including which unmarked lamb belonged to whose ewe. It has to be done as carefully as can be, out of mutual respect. Then we phoned everyone concerned- several 20 miles drive distant- to work out who was gathering what else this week, and how we’d best exchange the ‘returns’. I consider it a very real privilege to be working with such solid farming tribes, who tend flocks which have grazed the same hills for many decades- centuries in some cases. As well as clipping his and mine, John shears for several of them. Through the autumn sales many of us will then be trading replacement rams with one another at local markets, where this extended community comes together.

There is a depth of culture and belonging hard to convey, a grounded wisdom of which the flimsy facile urban eco-warriors- who hate us and our sheep so- have no grasp. I sometimes think what we are is more or less invisible to them. We tend not to have degrees, employment contracts, or bright goretex jackets. Our values, our world view is wholly different. And I treasure it.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Some sun at last

Well it was nice that someone turned the sun on again for a few days at last. Unsurprisingly, every bit of mowablegrass left to cut now has been. There are 3 separate teams working on 3 sites, and we’re all running round like blue-ended flies getting it all baled and saved. I am intending to get one lot dry enough to call hay, but have invested yet more of my meagre life’s savings on bale wrap for a lot of it. Shorter daylight hours, and a very high soil moisture start point make getting crops properly dry a risk. And I don’t want to get to the end of the week with everything still on the deck, waiting on it drying.
Perversely most of the remaining ‘1st cut’ has sheared lush and green. It seems to have seeded somewhat scantily in the dry in June, died back, and started again when the rain came. It’s too late to ever be rocket fuel, but is certainly better than I was expecting. Likewise, we’ve got a lot of 2nd cut on the go which, despite having seen no bagged fertiliser, has mostly sheared more than we anticipated. That’s needing careful handling – if we try to turn it up for hay, it’ll go to dust.
I’m anticipating we’ll find something over 400 bales by the weekend, which should set us up reasonably, after a very testing season. This latest session has reminded me once more of the difference technology and specifically bale wrap has made to my meagre existence. I’ve no doubt that other agriculture sectors will have similar experiences, albeit using varying technologies. Be very clear, before such advances, this wet July and August would have precipitated what used to be called a ‘famine’. Hundreds of millions of people wholly rely on crops and beasts raised in regions that have endured very difficult harvesting conditions. Here, if I’d had to make hay, it would have been a dusty lot of garbage, if I’d managed to get it at all. I’d be a wheezy ruin, wracked with farmer’s lung, and I wouldn’t be able to overwintera large proportion of my breeding cattle. Many arable farmers would have struggled to save their crops, and what went into the granary would have been pretty suspect.
I am speculating what will happen when we have to stop using plastic sourced from fossil fuels. I will have used the best part of a tonne of the stuff this year, and while it goes for ‘recycling’, I suspect what it goes back into isn’t quite the same. As indicated, it has absolutely saved the day here. Whether some renewable plastic will take its place, or I will have to look at a different method of conserving fodder remains unclear. Certainly, turning naturally growing grass into beef and lamb remains a very good use of the dirt beneath my feet. In a very real sense ‘it just grows out the ground’. My job is to market as much beef and lamb from that grass as I can, balancing spending as little doing it as possible. Some of my colleagues carry stock through the winter on root crops, but the soil loss up here makes that a very risky business. I could carry less stock and extend the period they rely on grazed fodder, but production would inevitably slip dramatically. And as I already struggle to keep on top of the growth this end of the year, I hardly want to run less cows.
Talking this through reminds me of all the armchair experts who think they know best, which in itself is pretty insulting. I give careful thought to what I do. As haphazard as it might seem, it doesn’t happen by accident and we try to make best use of the resources we have. I wouldn’t profess to be very good at what I do, and frequently get things wrong, but I could surely do worse.
One of the buzz phrases amongst the ‘experts’ just now is ‘regenerative farming’- or just ‘regen’. I’m not altogether clear what it really means, although looking after your ground in a sustainable manner seems to be central. Advocates talk about not disturbing the soil where it can be helped, which sounds good. I have noticed that some outfit advertise their potato products are made from regen spuds, although how you grow spuds without disturbing the soil a bit remains somewhat hazy. Sustainability’ itself is another popular phrase, although how anything society does now could be called sustainable is likewise pretty questionable.
Happily, I’m making no such claims, and must away to get some more grass saved. Rock and roll.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Vets

I hear that someone or other has been sent off to investigate why vets bills have apparently shot up muchfaster than ordinary inflation. I suspect I could probably save them the time, but that would spoil their fun. Because, in case it’s escaped your attention, what has really changed is the primarily business model many vet businesses now work to. Many decades ago, with the arrival of what we recognise as professional qualified vets, practices were established and run by individual vets. Generally, there might be 2-3 primary partners, with their metaphoric- and actual- ‘names over the door’. You’re quite rightly thinking of Heriot’s ‘All creatures great and small’. Practices –rural ones at least- were inevitably mixed, treating all manner of critters. Balancing running a business and the vetting itself would obviously take some juggling, but in the end, the boss/bosses were vets, and involved hands-on. I recall a few of those founding old vets, still working in the businesses they’d started.
Time moves on though, and young vets had to employed, then allowed into the business as partners, lest they set up in opposition…nicking half the clients. How the value of their entry into the business was established must surely have varied widely, but the premise was that the practice persisted, as the old partners stepped back and the new partners got some skin in the game.
This was fine, although the cracks started appearing as it became clear that ‘small animal’ practices in town could be making more money than those who routinely spent time working with livestock out on farms. Some mixed practices seemingly found themselves charging less for farm work than they did for pets, for the simple pragmatic fact that commercial decisions dictate howmuch a farmer can spend on livestock. Meanwhile, it also became clear that the apocryphal Mrs DoubleBarrelled from up at the Manor House would spend anything to tend her pampered lapdog.
Then came the rise of the ‘corporates’, where practices started being bought out by larger concerns. I don’t know whether they all grew from actual vet practices, or ifsome were started by non-vets as investments. It doesn’t really matter, as now there are several huge concerns, owning many former independent practices. Their buying power enables them to procure supplies and medicines at a better rate than the old business model, and undoubtedly they vie with each other to offer the right terms to attract young staff. And by their very nature, their relationship with the clients changed. Scratch away at a vet running a business, and you find someone went into the job wanting to help treat animals. The corporates are evidently being run with a different steer, and it hardly takes a rocket scientist to guess what that motivation is.
The practice I grew up with, where the original men were still extent, or fondly remembered, evolved just as described. I’d known most of the vets for years…..decades in some cases. But eventually, the newer partners took the corporate shilling, and sold out. We stayed with the firm, although from that day forth it was a different feel. I believe the business changed hands at least once more, and I suppose it was interesting to watch how matters developed. I had cause to take one of the collies into the surgery, after it had tangled with something with bigger teeth. On arrival, I was presented with a form to fill, demanding my credit card details or somesuch. I explained that I had no means to pay, as I was a longstanding account customer and would be expecting to pay the bill when it arrived. But no, I was informed, it didn’t work like that any more. Seeing as I’d been with the firm since before several of the staff present were born, I wasn’t hugely impressed. Happily, one of the vets heard the growing kerfuffle, and matters were sorted out in short order. But the die was clearly cast.
It came as little surprise then, when a letter dropped through the door one day, informing us that they were giving up farm work altogether, and we could….well, we could just get lost. Guessing what was coming, we’d already been looking around, and were ready to sign up to one of the few remaining traditional mixed work partner led teams still trading locally. It turns out that a number of the vets jumped ship with us, not wishing to remain in the corporate sector. I don’t suppose there are quite the same career advancement prospects in the corporate sector.
But if you want to know why some vets are charging eye watering sums….I’d look no further.