Over the Farmer's Gate (24 page)

THERE’S A HILL near here that is something of a local landmark. If you lived on the plains of Cheshire or the wetlands of Somerset you might call it a mountain but everything in life is relative, and around here it’s called a hill.

It’s a big old hill mind, goes about 10 miles down. Most of it is owned by the National Trust and it provides common grazing for the farms that adjoin it. The people who make a living off it, with their natural this and natural that, project this and project that, outnumber the farmers and very probably their sheep by some distance.

There are lots of sheep on the hill; I’ve seen grouse on there, hardly any cattle and a few ponies, although there used to be lots.

I’m never really sure what these various bodies are looking for in their ideal of vegetation on the hill.

We read a lot about ‘overgrazing’ that will ‘spoil’ everything but what is there now is the result of what has gone on before, in the way of livestock, so it doesn’t really tie in.

But then if you earn your living running a project that is running a hill and you say everything is OK, well you don’t need the project, do you?

Hill-sheep production used to be subsidised on a headage basis, so the more sheep you had, the more subsidy you got. That’s all stopped now and farmers are paid a lump sum based on what they received historically, so there are nowhere near as many sheep on the hills today.

I read somewhere that there are now four million less sheep in Wales, for example, than just a few years ago.

IN THE SUMMER, at weekends, the sound of motorbikes intrudes on the peace of early mornings. Almost everywhere we go in the country these days we are implored to ‘think bike’, as we drive about.

But unfortunately, the bikers themselves don’t seem to read these notices, because our local newspaper always has reports of accidents and deaths over the previous weekend.

Yesterday there was a new sound, gunfire, marking, or at least reminding me, that shooting started at the beginning of September for partridge and duck.

However, the natural world that I see every day is slowly being taken over by the pheasant. In just a few weeks, they have transformed themselves from the shadowy shy birds that hung around the release pens, to getting larger and bolder and now they can be seen everywhere.

Their comeuppance, gunfire, will start in November. It is ironic that when I note these preludes to the shooting season that I have just seen a hen pheasant with a nice brood of poults, and a partridge with a hatch of chicks. If they’ve got any sense, and they probably haven’t, they’ll leave off learning to fly for six months or so.

One day I saw five red kites on one field. I don’t know if kites have a collective noun to go with them but it was a nice sight.

What had brought them there I don’t know – perhaps they were a family on some sort of outing.

Out there in the media world that knows more about nature than those of us that live amongst it, they have just woken up to the fact that your average badger is very partial to a hedgehog supper. I’ve only seen one hedgehog run over on the road this year but lots of badgers.

I’ve been looking out for hedgehogs on purpose and I drive a lot of miles. The run-over hedgehog used to be almost a given on any journey and the disappearance of the one and the proliferation of the other is a clear indication of the populations of both species.

It is also a given that farmers are bracketed in with badgers, for destroying the hedgehog habitat, which is a shame because they probably have more habitat than they’ve ever had for a generation. Two metres are now left untouched around every field, six metres around lots. Am I expecting too much in hoping that the ‘experts’ will finally wake up to the fact that badgers also decimate the nests of ground-nesting birds?

A quite reasonable and probably justified law to curb the activities of badger baiters has inadvertently let the badger population get out of control with a negative effect on other birds and animals.

THESE DAYS, when I get in to the car to go off somewhere, there’s something of the airline pilot, pre-flight check about my preparations.

Firstly, I have to get my phone to connect to the hands-free kit fixed to the sun visor. Sometimes it connects first time but mostly, it doesn’t. There’s quite a lot of buttons to press and I don’t always get it right.

Next is the sat-nav. I don’t usually need this until the last few miles of my journey and that’s only if it’s a new destination but it’s still a bit of a novelty so I switch it on.

I’m used to women telling me what to do. I suppose it’s something of a comfort zone. I’ve chosen an Irish female voice. I’ve always been a bit of a soft touch for softly spoken Irish women. I was deeply in love with that woman, I think she was called Assumpta, who kept the pub in Ballykissangel.

I suppose it was just a crush, an infatuation, and as we get older we learn that we have to shrug these things off and move on with our lives, but for a time it was a very real love and very important to me. I think I was in my late 50s at the time. I used to fantasise about going to live with her in her pub and enjoying the party in the bar.

I’d probably have a couple of cows in the field behind the pub that I would milk by hand so that she always had some nice fresh milk to put on her cornflakes in the morning and if we had spare milk I would make it into cream to put in to our Gaelic coffee night caps just before we went up.

Enough of that, I can fantasise about that when I’m stuck on a tractor all day.

Anyway, the first time my wife comes with me in the car when I have the sat-nav working and she hears the first instruction ‘turn left in 400 yards,’ she snaps at me: ‘I suppose you chose that voice to remind you of that damned barmaid in Ballykissangel!’ Can a man have no secrets?

IN A PREVIOUS life it is highly possible that I was a buzzard. There is an undeniable logic to this.

To all of us who observe what goes on about us in nature it is quite clear that crows hate buzzards. From dawn to dusk they harass and torment them and, as the buzzard moves from area to area, there are always ‘fresh’ crows waiting to take up the challenge.

So, when a particular buzzard eventually dies and is reincarnated as a farmer, namely me, the persecution goes on.

I have come to this conclusion quite easily; today we have completed the planting of about 60 acres of winter wheat.

From the vantage point of my high ground there are freshly
drilled fields as far as the eye can see. Everywhere I look, tractors are ploughing, working down and drilling.

We farmers are ploughing the fields and scattering the good seed on the ground as never before. Could it be something to do with wheat prices at record levels?

On all of those fields there is already an opportunity of a harvest for the birds. Worms, grubs, spilt seed, easy pickings, full stomachs. And where are all the birds? The ground is black with crows.

There is a feeling of persecution about it, much as a buzzard is persecuted throughout its life.

MOST OF my life, no that’s wrong, almost all of my life, has involved getting up early in the morning. There’s no genetic reason why dairy farmers should be able to cope with less sleep than everyone else but we do and, invariably, we are always tired.

Sometimes there’s an opportunity to ‘top up’: wet lunchtimes at weekends, for example. Just half an hour can be a real help. But woe betide anyone who wakes you up during that half-hour. Children for miles around go about on tiptoe while I have my snooze. Last Saturday, I had just closed the second eyelid when I was disturbed by a knock on the door. I had been woken up by a young van driver.

Showing amazing restraint, I listened while he told me his story, which brings me to another pet hate of mine: the proliferation of road signs in rural areas. Some villages have about eight signs at each end to tell you that you are approaching a 30mph limit. We have an unclassified council road through our farm, most of it impassable except by tractor or 4x4. But a few years ago, the council put a sign at the other end indicating it as passable. There is a no-through road bit incorporated in the sign but it doesn’t tell
you where the bit is that you can’t get through.

Two years ago, a big articulated lorry tried to get through and we had to cut half a tree down to allow it to pass, there was no way he could back up one and a half miles on a narrow track through a steep field. This was my van driver’s problem. His satnav didn’t know little local details like that either, and he had gone off the road and become stuck. It was amazing that he hadn’t turned his van over.

I took him back in the Discovery but that wouldn’t look at it and it took an hour to pull him out with a tractor. I don’t think he could believe that we didn’t try to touch him for £20 for our trouble, but it wasn’t his fault. I’ve never had a problem with giving people a helping hand.

IF YOU TALK to people who are involved in animal welfare organisations they are always eager to see the number of journeys that animals actually have to make kept to a minimum. They will cite stress and the possibility of injury as good reasons why this should be so. We have to transport animals most weeks as they make the journey between our two areas of land.