Help the Whitefaced Woodland

The Whitefaced Woodland is one of the largest of the UK’s hill sheep breeds. This handsome, long-lived and prolific breed is hardy and able to thrive on poor quality grazing but pedigree registrations are declining and the unique genetics of the breed are under threat.

Together the Rare Breed Survival Trust (RBST) and the Whitefaced Woodland Sheep Society are taking part in a programme to a) encourage registrations and b) buy a genetically diverse breeding flock.

Any donations would be appreciated; please donate between 6 and 8 December from 10am until 5pm and your donation will be doubled (see below).


To donate go to: http://new.thebiggive.org.uk/project/RBST2012

With fewer than 900 registered breeding ewes remaining the Whitefaced Woodland is in the Vulnerable Category of the RBST 2012 Watchlist. It is suitable for meat and its wool is finer than other hill breeds, taking coloured dyes well.

The Big Give Christmas Challenge is the UK’s largest matched-funding event.

How the Challenge works: the RBST had to identify a project and find £1,000 in pledges. Fortunately RBST Vice-President Lord Iliffe generously donated £1,000. Then an anonymous Big Give Charity Champion – a company, foundation or individual – backed the project to allow funds from the Charity Champion Fund to match the pledges.

The Charity Champion Fund is released in stages over the 3 days 6 to 8 December and the RBST is competing with other charities to secure matched donations from this limited Fund. If the Charity Champion Fund is exhausted, donations continue to be matched 100% from our pledges until our Pledge Fund is exhausted.

Thank you.

Click here to visit the Whitefaced Woodland Sheep Society website.

Click here to visit the RBST website.

Red Sky

A beautiful sunny morning has followed last nights red sky.  The shepherds delight saying comes true more often than not.

Red sunsets are associated with dry, settled weather and high pressure, indicating good weather. The key is in the red sky around the sun and not the colour of the cloud itself.

As the sun rises at a low angle in the east, it may light up the impending clouds associated with a weather front coming in from the west indicating that rain is on its way later in the day, hence the shepherd's warning.

Any sun is welcome now, not just for moral, but the drying/warming effect it has on the land and stock. It's not long before the dark comes around of course and the pigs evening feed now takes place under artificial light.

Relief and Perseverance

Checking the sheep twice daily provides the opportunity to see them going about their normal business. That routine is then more obvious for being broken by a cough, scratching or, in this case, a limp. Number 28 (I really must memorise their names) showed signs of being lame and 'lame sheep are suffering pain' to quote Agnes Winter and Clare Phythian, authors of Sheep Health, Husbandry and Disease.

It's with great relief that, following treatment, Crest (Number 28) has returned to normal and is one of the first to reach a barley treat.

It could have been different. Her lameness was diagnosed (thanks Dave) as Scald, or Interdigital Dermatitis. This infection is caused 'by a common bacterium, Fusobacterium necrophorum, widely present in the environment.' It can infect the sheep when grazing on long wet grass, a scenario made more prevalent with the dew we've woken up to recently let alone the rain showers and there is a risk that the infection can progress to footrot. Treatment was essential and spraying the foot with a blue coloured antibiotic, Terramycin, is a recognised solution among local shepherds.

Now, on a less successful note, bread making... Attempt one, following a simple Delia Smith white loaf recipe, produced something a little doughy in the middle. I diagnosed that as me selecting the wrong oven shelf and cooking the crust too quickly. I'll keep trying...

1.7 and a New Calculation to Ponder

Back in February this year I found myself asking how the equation for quantifying the amount of gravel required for an area had been discovered. And did it work? So far so good; a 14 tonne load was dropped by lorry last week and has been steadily moved by wheel barrow to lie on top of a special mat that allows rainwater to drain away, while preventing any weed growth.

One of our neighbours is selling his Moor Sheep. He was considering their value and mulling over an equation he had heard of.

As opposed to sheep grazing his fields Moor Sheep, which you'd be hard tasked to tell apart from his others, acquire special significance based on a little observed, yet traditional shepherding technique. Hefting has been carried out for generations in various parts of the country, especially in the Lake District. Over decades sheep from certain farms with common grazing rights would always be led to a defined area of land off the farm. Over time the ewes would pass on the area to their lambs and this knowledge would pass through generations of offspring.

The technique and the knowledge bank of the hefted flock was badly damaged by the foot and mouth outbreak in 2001. A DEFRA report (http://tinyurl.com/ckrsudn) also details market pressures which have meant the decline of the practice. Still, locally, sheep that run on the Moor acquire a unique value:

market value + £8 + 10% of market value

But the question that needs answering first is: what is market value? And which market, Malton, Ruswarp..? Just a small amount of latitude for disagreement there. 

September Heat

It's been ages since I collected my thoughts and recorded them here. I blame the end of the football season; my usual routine was to listen to games on the radio and get on with research and writing on-line. Tonight's England demolition of Moldova certainly isn't captivating but it forms the sound track to me getting back (hopefully) into the blog habit.

A lot has and hasn't happened since my last post in March. We haven't had a summer for a start... Thankfully more recently we've had a dry spell of weather and that's enabled a good run of work, including a program of major earthworks.

I often say I have a list of 27 things to do, but I actually had a list of 27 jobs for the three tonne digger and three tonne dumper I hired last month. Some tasks were easily crossed off the list, for example collecting up broken stone gateposts from gateways across the farm. Not only does that remove a hazard for stock (and us), but grass couldn't grow where they lay. Not a major loss, but an attention to detail matter that was easily dealt with, with the equipment we had.

Plenty of drainage jobs were done, but the most time consuming tasks were to landscape the veg plot, spread the soil produced previously by work on our house and filling depressions in fields left by sheds long since demolished. The latter was essential prior to our Front field being ploughed at some point in the future. The picture shows the second terrace taking shape.



We've gathered together a number of railway sleepers and we'll recycle these as raised beds, using a good heap of top soil set aside for that purpose. The first retaining wall, visible running up from the bottom right corner of the above picture, is set on concrete and is constructed from modern blocks and stone. This will prevent the land shifting toward the house had it had done in the past, to the point where at points along its length the earth was five feet high against the building. The next wall will be a traditional dry stone construction, subject no doubt to local comment/sarcasm as we build it!

The Weight of a Pig

Pigs produce pork and bacon cuts at different weights as they grow. A pork pig might weigh around 60 to 75 kilograms and left to gain weight for bacon it would reach around 90 to 120 kilograms. But how do you know when your pigs reach these weight ranges? In our case we don't have an expensive set of livestock scales and that challenge would be familiar to many smallholders today.

The answer lies in the following equation, courtesy of thepigsite.com:

• Measure the Heart Girth in metres (around the body of the pig behind its front legs
• Measure the Length of the pig in metres (from its ears to its tail)
• Square the Heart Girth to get the Girth Result
• Multiply the Girth Result by the Length and multiply that by 69.3
• The result is the weight of the pig in kilograms.

The largest of our three British Saddleback pigs weighs 100 kilograms and I think its ready to go to the butcher. We have a choice of three to pick from, but one, Glaves and Sons, stands out for two reasons, for one, they package and label the cuts individually and two a pig farmer we know heartily recommended them. The next step is to revise the DEFRA procedure for taking stock off the farm.

Scrap Metal

Over the 18 months since buying our farm we've collected three large piles of scrap together as a number of rundown livestock sheds have been dismantled and the land cleared. Each pile has usually had at least one intriguing centre piece: the first was a very old seed drilling machine (we kept the cart wheels), the second was the number of tin roofing sheets and the third were the ovens removed from the house.

As a pile grew collection was arranged with the local scrap merchant, using a lorry complete with an integral crane, to make way for the next heap. I received the final tally today and all together we removed 10.6 tonnes of scrap, everything from wire fence, tools, guttering, wheel hubs, nails and screws we had found buried to old beds and building material.

To put that total in perspective 10.6 tonnes is the equivalent of:

• the kerb weight of eight VW Golf cars
• one of the capsules on the London Eye
• 1,052,631 £1 coins
• a third of a fully laden Tornado fighter
• around 163 women of average weight.

Here are a few pictures showing, pile one:

Pile two being driven away:

Pile three being collected last week:

Pallets

During our building project here I've tried and failed to have wooden pallets removed by drivers making fresh deliveries. I don't understand, surely the builders merchant or other business could take good pallets and use them again, as opposed to buying new pallets, thus reducing costs?

Perhaps drivers could be incentivised to bring back good pallets, even if they weren't dropped off by their company originally. Even if the pallets were stored at a depot and not used for further deliveries, they'd be in a single location, in volume, and profitable for companies that specialise in pallet recycling/collection/supply.

Maybe you can tell I've just spent a day breaking up pallets..? Our neighbours have gratefully taken some, be it for the base of a dog kennel or to store straw bales on but the rest had to go and some will make good kindling.

There are of course enterprising folk out there who'll do a bit more with the average pallet: http://craftbritain.co.uk/2011/08/24/recycle-wooden-pallets/ 

According to the Environmental Information Exchange at the School of Life Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, approximately 12% of softwood used in the UK goes into the manufacture of pallets and other packaging. There are thought to be around 2 billion pallets in circulation worldwide and as many as 90 million in the UK alone (Brighton and Hove Wood Recycling Project).

The Environment Agency estimates that the UK produces 7.5 million tonnes of wood waste each year, with over 80% disposed in landfill sites, despite the fact that much of it is reusable. 

Have you heard of WRAP? I hadn't but you'd probably recognise their 'recycle now' campaign. They look at the wood recycling issue closely; it turns out there's a market for recycled wood! And of course there's an industry body; I wonder if a member of the Wood Recyclers' Association would take our scrap wood pile, and what (unlike the healthy scrap metal supply/demand relationship) it would cost..?

Gold Fleece

New Zealand would like sheep shearing to be an Olympic sport!

The New Zealand Farmers Federation, a rural lobby group, claims wool shearers should be recognised alongside the world's finest athletes for their "sport".

Jeanette Maxwell, a spokesman for the federation, describes top shearers as "athletes who take it to another level".

"Surely, the time has come to elevate shearing's sporting status to the ultimate world stage. "One way would be to make shearing a demonstration sport at the Commonwealth Games, if not the Olympics itself." She said: "I can testify to the physical effort shearing takes.

From The Daily Telegraph today.