Managing the Culm

To be honest, I’d never heard the words “culm grassland” until moving to Devon three years ago; not that surprising considering most of it has been lost over the last century. The farm is in The Culm Measures, a swathe between Exmoor and Dartmoor dominated by livestock farming, and where the land has been left unimproved, unploughed and undrained, rushy pastures and clumps of purple moor grass, providing a habitat for many increasingly rare species of plant and animal life. Bog asphodel, bugle, devil’s-bit scabious, hemp-agrimony, lesser water parsnip, ragged robin, southern marsh and heath spotted orchids, sneezewort and whorled caraway support increasingly rare creatures. Curlews and reed bunting, kestrels and barn owls, marbled white and marsh fritillary butterflies and the narrow-bordered bee hawk moth all thrive here.

On the farm there’s a five acre wood with a patch of culm, a large dog-bone shaped glade. At any time of year it’s incredibly difficult to walk through; the grasses are thigh-high and tussocky, the bits between wet and plashy, and you have to wade through being very careful where you place your foot to avoid twisted ankles and squashed orchids. A few spots are flattened by the deer hiding in the long grass; four legs are obviously better than two here. We’ve now fenced off the wood from casual visits by cattle and sheep, and hanging from the trees are homemade nesting boxes to encourage owls, woodpeckers, tits, dormice and bats.

The Devon Wildlife Trust had a quick look last spring and as the culm was cheerfully bursting with species, came back to carry out a full survey. I tagged along, horribly conscious of my ignorance and keen to learn the difference between a desirable culm plant and a weed. I now know my meadowsweet from my common marsh-bedstraw, and that having a flock of ewes barge their way unasked into the woodland through an unsatisfactorily latched gate for twenty minutes means that the twenty orchids I’d previously counted had dwindled for the season to about half a dozen, even though there was no permanent damage.

When the survey results arrived, over eighty species were identified including twelve ancient woodland indicators: hard-fern, remote sedge, wood-sedge, creeping soft-grass, bluebell, holly, yellow pimpernel, three-nerved sandwort, wood sorrel, primrose, red currant and field-rose. More Latin classifications and geological terminology were bandied about than had passed before my eyes since school days. The names in the report are sonorous and serious with a grandeur that moves you beyond the soil conditions and brings vividly to mind the layers leading to the earth’s core and a sense of prehistory. Carboniferous, Namurian, Crackington Formation, Pleistocene, all of it under my feet.

With my natural interest in the edible, the discovery of wild red currant was a particular thrill: I’d had no idea it occurred in woodland, although the chance of tasting just one currant before the dormice get their nibblers round them is small. I might put up a notice asking them to leave me a sample.

So, the wood is now a Devon County Wildlife Site. I’m rather excited about the official recognition, the inferred responsibility for managing the wood and its culm sympathetically, knowing that there are fabulous and rare species to be enjoyed within the farm boundary, developing knowledge about the various species and the “Ooh-aah” factor.

To ensure the Ooh-aah factor (it comes with an increase in orchids and other lovelies), the thick thatching of the purple moor grass needs to be grazed by cattle to encourage fresh growth. There weren’t any cows on the farm last year, so instead a controlled blackening burn played quickly over a section, after assurances that it doesn’t endanger the dormice nesting in the clumps. The ground is very wet, so romping flames are unlikely, although on Dartmoor, where the gorse is swaled to keep its spread under control, they have firemen on standby. Now, why didn’t I think of that?

Published in The Landsman June/July 2008 Issue 8

Grand Designs it ain’t

When, in March 2005, I peered over the gate down the farm track to the long lime-washed house with rotting window frames, I knew this was going to be my home. To right and left was dereliction; a roofless stone threshing barn with scraps of the original thatched roundhouse, and a cob stable block with its dovecote of nine perches and tiny slate sills, roof caving in, covered in “dangerous, do not enter” signs.

A year later I lie in bed listening to the wind battering the ruined barns still further. Unprotected cob melts in the rain as surely as if it were gingerbread, so I cross my fingers that there’s more left to work with than a heap of cobby rubble, rotten timbers and smashed slate.

The process of planning the restoration of the listed barns, one early post-medieval, the other late 18^th century, is more than slow; it creeps unwillingly in some kind of direction, often backwards. The barns are to be restored to agricultural use: a proper farm workshop; somewhere to keep convalescing livestock; a place to rear poultry; a hayloft to keep feedstuffs; a stable for a big, slow horse; another for making cheese and butter; over-wintering for the dreamed of Dexters or Devon Rubies; a farrowing pen for Berkshire sows and their piglets; a space for bats and barn owls. The Borough and County Councils, Natural England, Environment Agency, Devon Biodiversity Records Centre, structural engineers, and ecologists all have to be consulted.

Two years on tenders are sought from local builders with traditional skills and sympathy for working with cob, oak and stone. They swarm over the site, work specifications in hand, gingerly poking at the realities, hard hatted and serious. Finally, signatures are added to much discussed contracts. I try to make the major mental adjustment needed for a troupe of unfamiliar people entering my daily life for 14 months.

November 2007 and the farmyard already looks like a building site due to our preparation efforts: electric cabling trenched underground, site hut area levelled, tin lean-tos demolished, oak boarding taken down and stored for re-use, self-seeded ash saplings torn up to enable access. I have splinters from sifting the rubbish for firewood and old fittings, my boots constantly muddy as the scalpings that kept feet dry in the farmyard are pressed deeply into clay with the comings and goings of heavy machinery.

Two weeks later the builders are on site; from scratch they build a composting toilet and it is a thing of beauty, the door handle a small branch. If they put this much effort into the barns, I’ll be beaming forever.

A shiny, yellow tele-handler is hired. In a couple of hours the remaining rag slates on the barn roof are removed, the few in good order neatly stacked.

The skyline changes daily; my home is in flux and unfamiliar. The dogs snoop round the site to reinforce their scent markings and suss out new smells and bits of dropped lunch, but the site is litter free and spotless, apart from it turning into a moonscape.

At Christmas we celebrate knowing one barn is wrapped inside and out, tarps secured over the walls; that demolition has stopped and building has started. Much of the work is hidden behind scaffolding and protective hessian, so I put on a hard hat and run my hands over repaired walls and oak lintels, imagining inhabitation by pig and cow.

February 2008 and the building work + the weather + the season = unavoidable heaps of mud. Unbelievably copious amounts of the stuff; you open the front door and it pushes into the house unasked and unwanted.

As we move into the spring there are lots of small decisions to be made and tasks to fulfil. I see more and more new elements emerge: cob blocks where once there was air; triangular windows repaired; new footings for the roundhouse; a damp-proof floor for the workshop; huge beams of green oak shaped into roof trusses. I cross fingers for a glorious and long summer, a warm autumn; the builders will be on site for another year.

Published in The Landsman April/May 2008 Issue 7

Sex and the toy-boy

The testosterone of a toy boy is where it all starts. Throughout September and October, Toy-boy the tup has more hormonal frustrations than a grounded teenager. He hurls himself head first at the gate – reinforced after bitter experience – to remind you loudly that his sap is rising. The whiff of his masculinity is tangible, as are the tracks he makes in his field pounding up and down, certain that if he looks long and hard enough a gap will magically appear that will lead him to his harem.

Come 1^st November, Toy-boy’s dearest wish is granted. Raddles and all that malarkey are too much trouble; the harness for the crayon block all seems rather too S+M. He disappears unencumbered into a crowd of ewes to emerge much later, all smiles. If he behaves himself he may be allowed to stay with the flock until the end of January, but if after six weeks together there are any signs of pushing and shoving and general bullyboy tactics, he is put back into isolation, replete, relaxed and ready for a rest, and I can concentrate on the ewes.

I’m not one for lambing in guaranteed dire weather considering that night shifts are on the cards, so it’s the last days of March and beginning of April that have lines drawn through the diary – absolutely no appointments away from the farm until every ewe has done her thing.

Three weeks before the due date the lambing shed is all set up and I sort through the household veterinary supplies, checking for castration rings, soft rope, iodine, antibiotics, syringes and needles, lube, armpit length gloves, and make a short list of goodies to buy before the off. Only trouble is the checklist on the kitchen table looks like a shopping list for a sex-shop spree rather than an outing to the agricultural store and you wonder if you should put it somewhere less prominent to avoid shocking visitors.

The ewes get wider and wider ‘til some of them look like dining tables on spindly legs. You know the moment you have been waiting for is imminent when their nipples are the size of organ stops and lying down uncomfortably is their only activity between eagerly consumed feeds. 

There are bad moments: an apparently perfect lamb, stillborn; a collapsed ewe in need of mega doses of calcium – you try to become inured and increasingly skilful. The best moments are at 5.30 in the morning doing the first round of the day, and a pair of beautifully presented lambs suckles eagerly at their attentive mother having needed no help from you at all. A quick dose of iodine on their navels to prevent infection, a bucket of congratulatory feed and one of water for the ewe (they drain that first post-birth bucket like a fugitive from the desert) and they are back outside.

After a week the lambs start to play together and leave the ewes for longer periods to congregate like kids in the schoolyard, playing chase at ever increasing speeds along the fenceline. In another month their wild toddler antics will become decidedly adolescent; lots of riding each other like wheelbarrows.

Farming – it’s all about sex, isn’t it?

Published in The Landsman February/March 2008

Observations on farmers and smallholders

It’s 8.00pm, it’s cold, and the pub is crammed with farmers, thanks to the vicar who set up the monthly bashes in 2001 to cheer things up post Foot and Mouth. There is a speaker and Q+A followed by a carb blowout of ferociously hot chips, sarnies and if we are looking particularly famished, a tray of potato croquettes. Tonight our speaker unravels the realities of taxes and allowances, and there’s mention of the lifestyle farmer, which gets me thinking about the differences between a farmer and a smallholder.

There’s the question of scale; does a farmer have more substantial vital statistics than a smallholder, is the curve and body mass of their acreage, more productive, more generous? Perhaps it’s the size of the water bill, but plenty of farms have wells. What about the prominence of the boot room, or the range of wellies and wet weather gear that fills the space between the back door and the kitchen? Or perhaps it’s the number and vintage of the tractors? But if you have a neat Massey 135 you can bet your last groat that someone will offer a bushel of coin for it when their convoy of ever larger machinery struggles to reach a vital farm corner.

Would an inspection of the body in question give a vital clue? Does a case of orf, a tick on the groin or ringworm just about anywhere justify the working title? I suspect farmer’s finger may be a better indication; no matter how much you scrub, the dirt remains ingrained – not a good look nor one those adopting the lifestyle are keen to imitate.

Lack of squeamishness is definitely no use in distinguishing the hobbyist from the real thing; you could fill your freezer with the game that farmers can’t face dressing and either category is just as likely to faint at the sight of blood (usually their own). Squeezing the pus out of an abscess on a sheep’s backside is liable to be greeted with mildly hysterical hilarity by a smallholder, whilst the more commercially minded soul may be more grim-faced about this particular treat. If it’s a hobby, just remember to adopt closely pursed lips if a giggling fit threatens to erupt.

What would happen if you tapped each one’s self-sufficiency barometer? My guess is that the results would vary widely in both categories. And I know for a fact that the pros are as guilty as the rest of giving cutesy names like Blossom or Tinkerbell to preferred livestock.

If it’s not self-sufficiency perhaps it’s more about do-it-yourself. Do you call a vet/contractor/agent to do all the dirty work, or are you likely to be found with your hands:

a) up a ewe

b) applying grease to numerous metal nipples

c) full of movement licences and SP5 forms?

Tick all that apply.

Stumped, I asked the local insurance broker for his thoughts. The offered wisdom is that smallholders have other occupations that are most likely to be their main source of income. So perhaps it’s all revealed in the ratio of boiler suits to two–piece suits that you own.

For myself, I have one boiler suit, have long since dumped the coordinated skirt and jacket, own three pairs of wellies, have calloused hands, can remove ticks and pluck game or poultry with abandon. I am happy with sheep and their abscesses, avoid naming the pigs, am slightly nervous of cows (but would really love to get some), deal personally with armfuls of forms and hold down another job.

If you ask me, I think farmers are defined by their canny ability to read the weather more accurately than the Met Office, ready access to a never-ending supply of baler twine and a lifetime of experience. I am awash with bag string but would be thrilled if someone, please, could give me the rest.

Published in The Landsman, Dec 2007/Jan 2008

We love to eat…Mum’s chicken livers on toast

4 chicken livers
2 hard-boiled eggs
1 medium onion
chicken schmaltz (or duck/goose fat)

When I was a child, over 30 years ago, my mother usually cooked a chicken for Sunday lunch. If it was a boiling fowl we had the neck skin stuffed with dumpling ingredients, stitched at both ends into a large sausage shape and boiled alongside the fowl to eat greedily in slices with the chicken soup as a first course.

More usually, my mother roasted the chicken and would save every scrap of chicken fat (schmaltz) from the roasting pan to make chopped liver for supper. The butcher was always happy to throw in a few extra chicken livers; most of his customers didn’t seem to want the giblets.

Once the lunch things were put away I had the job of chopping the onion and boiling the eggs. My mother fried the onion in plenty of schmaltz until it softened and then added the livers. When the livers were cooked they were left to cool a little in the pan. She then tipped the pan on to a board and chopped the mix with the hard-boiled eggs until she had a coarse, pâté-like texture. Every little bit was scraped carefully into a bowl, including any fat still lingering in the pan.

Eating this slightly warm with toast turned Sunday evenings into something more than the lull before Monday-morning school. I still make chopped liver occasionally and each time I wonder why I don’t make it every week; it tastes of childhood and is simply delicious.

Saturday Guardian 29.9.07

We love to eat….duck eggs

If you mention duck eggs, urban people screw up their noses. Rural folk will agree that they are great for baking, the deep yellow of the yolk adding a golden glow to any sponge, but you wouldn’t want to just, well, eat them, would you?
We, on the other hand, will spurn a hen’s egg if there is a duck’s on offer. Nothing fancy required: try duck egg and chips, bacon and eggs, hard-boiled and chopped in mayo, chopped in the bottom of the salad bowl with the dressing to tart up a freshly cut lettuce, boiled with buttered soldiers, or scrambled, with a slice of smoked salmon and bagels for a special-occasion breakfast.
We now have our own ducks so we can be pretty profligate. When friends and family descend, a huge platter of egg mayonnaise will always be the first dish to disappear. But my mother won’t touch them. Just mention them on the phone and you can feel the reflex nose action.

Saturday Guardian 5.11.05