Stonewall

We have more than 1,000 metres of dry stone walls around the farm.

Walling is an old skill used to divide land into more manageable parcels for grazing and separation of ownership. No part of the wall uses cement or lime mortar and only weight/friction binds the wall together. That is more remarkable when the size of the walls is considered.

Along our boundary with the moor estate the wall is nearly two metres high, not including the foundation buried below the surface. I always admire the effort it took to construct it, considering that it is likely to date from 200 years ago and is 250 metres above sea level and over half a kilometre from the nearest road. 

Some of the base courses, or layers, resemble boulders not the key elements of a field boundary. Another of our walls has a number of these large stones and is classified as historic under the terms of the farm Entry Level Stewardship (ELS) subsidy scheme. The walls were originally constructed by local farmers who would share the work, working on each others farms to gather stone laying on the ground and lay the patchwork patterns we have today.

Over time many of walls have fallen into disrepair and no longer constitute viable livestock controls. In one memorable case a neighbours bull decided one length stood in between it and goodness knows what and left a sizeable hole; we were told that had the wall been better maintained it would have 'turned' the bull, but I'm not so sure... We call him Burgers, but that's a different story.

Our subsidy will help us hire a contractor to fix major sections of wall and we've already started to repair stretches where the top stones are missing. Under a separate scheme the National Park offer a grant to part fund repair works alongside roads and footpaths on the Moors. At the beginning of the year we applied for five walls to be considered, and eventually heard that we had successfully received funding for the most complex length.

There are three contractors available in Farndale; Dave Bentley is a sheep farmer, but also a Master Waller and we'd been told by a number of people that he was the guy to help us. The challenge for Dave included a collapsed retaining wall, with a badly damaged stock wall on top of that. To kick start the project we removed the nettle, thistle and bramble (finding three rolls of rusty wire fence in the process) barrier and dug away the worst part of the collapse.

The pictures show the area of the collapse with the stone removed and then the retaining wall built, with a stagger, leaning into the field behind it. The wall will be built on top. It's quite an art. Picking the correct, heavy, stone and placing it, well it's worth watching. It's said an experienced waller 'never picks up the same stone twice', or in other words once he picks up the stone he knows it's the right one for that part of the wall he's building.

Come Bye!

It's back! Remember 'One Man and His Dog'..? The TV Channel More4 is screening the World Sheep Dog Trials, taking place on the Lowther Estate in Cumbria from the 15th to the 18th of September.

It seems that since the 1980's the world has gone trials crazy; stats on the internet show trials in Utah in 2010 were watched by more than 25,000 spectators. Mind you, trials are not the wholly British invention you may think with New Zealand claiming the first event in 1867. The first UK event was held in Bala, Wales in October 1873, organised by Richard John Lloyd Price who went on to form the Kennel Club in the same year.

The inaugural world trials in 2002 were won by Welshman, Aled Owen, who won again in 2008 and is a favourite to regain his title this year. 240 dog and man/woman teams from 23 nations will compete in the Lake District for the £3,000 first prize. The winner will also receive a solid gold shepherds whistle.

More4 are using the same production company behind ITV's coverage of Formula 1 motor racing, North One, so we can expect to see GPS trackers, accelerometers and heart rate monitors on the dogs. The latter might have made interesting viewing on the human handlers too.

That'll do... (pig).

http://www.worldsheepdogtrials.org/index.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/countryside/8749386/World-Sheep-Dog-Trials-in-Cumbria.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/sep/12/dog-v-sheep-sheepdog-trials

Pigs - Rules and Forms

We have our pigs!

Born on 19 July our three British Saddleback gilts (young female pigs that have not produced a litter) were weaned from their mother by their breeder last week. In advance of their arrival we prepared a pen, complete with electric fence, sourced a metal ark (thanks to neighbours Lucy and Chris Wilson for that) and stockpiled food and bedding.

I'll talk more about the breed, food and the economics in later posts but here are the rules we're getting used to.

Whether you keep one pig or a commercial herd you need to be registered with Defra. In the event of a disease outbreak, the precise location of all livestock is essential for effective measures to control and eradicate highly contagious viruses (based on the experience from the foot and mouth outbreak in 2001).

The first step was to register our land with the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) to obtain a County Parish Holding (CPH) number. That was actually done some time ago so our neighbour could graze his livestock here. A CPH, for example, 12/345/6789, confers no rights, but aides efficient administration as call centre operators will use it as a means to identify our farm. The first two digits relate to the county we live in, the next three relate to the parish and the last four are unique to to us.

With a CPH we could collect our pigs.

When they arrived the next step was to call Animal Health at Defra and obtain a Herd Number. This is a code, unique to our pigs, that helps to identify the individual animal. It is most obvious on the yellow tag seen on the ear of all livestock over a certain age. Our Herd Number was issued over the phone and associated paperwork should arrive by post this week.

The pigs were collected from a farm outside Thirsk. Each one, still wearing the ear tag applied by the breeder, was identified and its unique code annotated in the livestock movement log for that farm. Then she and I completed the 'Report of a Pig Movement made under the General Licence for the Movement of Pigs (AML2)', a four part form, that details the movement of the livestock from her CPH to ours, including the journey time. The breeder keeps a yellow page, we keep our pink portion for six months and send the top, white, element to North Yorkshire County Council's Trading Standards Animal Health team in Northallerton. Oh, and the fourth part, the blue copy is kept by the transporter, in this case, us.

The process is intended to provide a window to observe the health of animals being transported on an industrial scale around the UK and Europe, hence the journey time aspect and other questions the forms pose relating to vehicle cleanliness.

Easy really; but it's not over. Once the pigs arrive (in fact the same would be said for one pig) a 20 day standstill is triggered. That means no pigs may come or go from the farm. A serious consideration if your livelihood involves buying and selling pigs at market. The standstill rule is six days for cattle, goats and sheep (this effects our neighbour who has cattle grazing here). Aimed at minimising the spread of disease clearly pigs are highlighted as high risk, or if you look at the matter another way, particularly resilient and likely to shoulder illness for longer unobserved.

All of this will get easier with time and it won't detract from the fun of providing a happy life for our weaners, as we become accustomed to being pig keepers. Next time, more about the pigs favourite topic, food...

It's Wool Week

The Campaign for Wool was initiated in October 2008 by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, who had observed that the wool industry was facing enormous and unprecedented challenges.

The price of wool had plummeted to the point where farmers were being paid less for their sheeps’ fleeces than the cost of having them shorn. At the same time, sheep numbers were declining across the world, from Britain to Australia and New Zealand, and some farmers were losing confidence in the future of the wool industry.

A parallel threat came from new man-made synthetic fibres, often oil-based, which were providing stiff competition in the areas where wool had traditionally triumphed – fashion, carpets and insulation. The Prince of Wales formed an apocalyptic view of what the future for wool might hold, unless something could be done. Without a thriving wool industry, and with further declines in the sheep population, the physical appearance of our landscape could change forever. Imagine the Cumbrian uplands deprived of sheep, or the Scottish and Welsh mountains, or the sheep stations of Australia and New Zealand. Were we really to enter an era when the wool trade, which has thrived and prospered since the Middle Ages, would be sidelined by man-made fibres?

The Campaign has a full and diverse programme of events for 2011, working closely with retail partners, promoting the wonders of wool, and will also be working much more closely with the artisan community across the whole country – the spinners, weavers and designers, both large and small, who have always been great local champions for the fibre.

Wool Week in the UK this year runs from Monday September 5th to Sunday September 11th, with windows and events throughout the nation, including a Love Wool initiative to encourage knitters across Britain to get involved.

Sign up to show your support: http://www.campaignforwool.org/love-wool/sign-up/

£500 of Wood

Just what does £500 of wood look like..?

Prior to the end of July this year Rayburn offered £500 of free wood for orders confirmed before the month was out. It seemed too good an offer to miss as we needed to replace our old range cooker, but nobody could really tell me what that value of timber would mean physically. Today the answer arrived at around 3pm.

 The 1.4m high stack on the pallet is made up of 80 bags of quartered logs, six boxes of kindling and 2 boxes of natural firelighters. Each bag contains around 12 logs, dried and ready to fuel the new Rayburn when it arrives in October.

I had to smile when I eventually found the name of the supplier under all of that plastic: 'Certainly Wood', very clever.

http://www.certainlywood.co.uk/

Word Cultura; Agri v Horti

What's the difference between agriculture and horticulture?

Horticulture

The industry and science of plant cultivation including the process of preparing soil for the planting of seeds, tubers, or cuttings.

Horticulturists work and conduct research in the disciplines of plant propagation and cultivation, crop production, plant breeding and genetic engineering, plant biochemistry, and plant physiology. The work involves fruits, berries, nuts, vegetables, flowers, trees, shrubs, and turf. Horticulturists work to improve crop yield, quality, nutritional value, and resistance to insects, diseases, and environmental stresses.

The word horticulture is modeled after agriculture, and comes from the Latin hortus 'garden' and cultūra 'cultivation', from cultus, the perfect passive participle of the verb colō 'I cultivate.

Agriculture

Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the development of civilization. The study of agriculture is known as agricultural science.

The word agriculture is the English adaptation of Latin agricultūra, from ager, 'a field' and cultūra, "cultivation" in the strict sense of "tillage of the soil". Thus, a literal reading of the word yields 'tillage of a field / of fields'.

Straw Lessons

We're buying pigs!

And pigs need bedding and a house to live in. I'll write more about the pigs as the time nears to pick them up. Preparation however is everything. The breeder advised against buying specially designed pig ark accommodation as that can be difficult to move and the plan is for the pigs to earn their keep by helping with land clearance, so they'll be moving around the farm. She recommended building a house from straw bales and using corrugated tin for the roof. Luckily we haven't scrapped all of the latter just yet and we have some clean pieces we can use. So straw for the walls and bedding, but what straw and where from..?

I don't how many times I've driven past the church at Knayton just off to the left of the A19 south of Teesside... I've often wondered how such a large church came to be so remote from a congregation; it looks as if the village has been removed, leaving the church behind. Tomorrow I'll get a bit closer to knowing a little more as I'll be collecting straw from the adjacent farm. It looks to be a large concern: http://www.gepeacock.co.uk/index.php 

Finding the straw was actually the first challenge; typically the agricultural industry poorly presented the desired information, as with many others products and services, on-line. Google searches revealed some independent suppliers, with a five or six on eBay, but none in our immediate area. Fortunately Peacocks, apparently a large business, have a relatively good web presence and one phone call saw a deal done for 20 bales, at £2.50 per bale, about an hour and 30 minutes drive away.

'Straw is an agricultural by-product, the dry stalks of cereal plants, after the grain and chaff have been removed. Straw makes up about half of the yield of cereal crops such as barley, oats, rice, rye and wheat.' (source: Wikipedia)

If fresh straw is provided pigs will keep their house clean; they do not urinate ordefecate in their house, so straw in their house will last quite a while. In fact, pigs prefer to sleep on clean dry straw at night. How many bales we'll actually need for bedding is a question and an answer we'll have to leave to experience. The dilemma is one of supply and demand; later this year supply will diminish as demand increases with the inevitable price increases and scarcity. A recent report on the Farmers Weekly website examined the pressures on supply as a result of the 2011 spring drought: 'Plan for for straw shortage, farmers urged': http://www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/2011/06/27/127538/Plan-for-for-straw-shortage-farmers-urged.htm

But straw isn't just straw... Nothing is that simple!

'Straw has good thermal properties and moderate absorption capacity, making it an effective bedding material. Usually, pig farms use wheat and barley straw and occasionally oat straw, some may even use bean straw. However, due to changes in cropping and weather conditions it could mean the range of straw and bedding types used may need to become wider. Wheat straw is the most commonly type for bedding...' (source: pigsite.com)

So, with a borrowed trailer, I'll be headed around the Moors via Stokesley to Knayton tomorrow to buy our wheat straw. Can't wait...