Roy, Helen Mark & Jenny Glen Iris Farm, Sheepstor, Dartmoor continued
Helen: A lot of people are at least two generations from understanding what happens in the rural areas now. So many people just don’t understand where their food comes from and how it works in the hills and how many lowland farms rely on what we breed. We produce the breeders up in the hills and then they go down into the lowlands and produce the meat. The trouble now is the Consultants. They’re telling us all to produce, produce, produce when they should be telling us how to sustainably farm. Because of climate change, we can’t keep our farms running at 100%. We keep Dartmoor ponies. Now if we were totally economic, we would never keep our Dartmoor ponies because they don’t make any money, they’re a total liability. But as long as the rest of the farm can keep making a living, we’ll keep the ponies. The push for change is very important. I never want to stop learning. Part of my job is to work for the Tenant Farmers Association which does actually change things, or helps put things in place so that they will change. Farmers have got to work with the science, they’ve got to work with the ground they’ve got. Why are we growing lots of corn in the Westcountry when it’s so wet and we’ve got to use so many sprays and so much drying equipment? You’ve really got to think about what you’re doing it and where you’re doing it. To survive on the hills, you’ve got to work together. I know government would love it if all the farms worked together, but that’s never going to work that brilliantly. But as a family, we do need each other as with what wages are nowadays, you do need to value your family and value what they do and what they bring to your farm. We’ve all got different strengths. The problem we’re getting in farming is, that a lot of younger people that are coming in (and I’m not saying all by any means) they’re interested in the tractor driving and the big machinery, and there are fewer and fewer stock people because there isn’t the monetary return in looking after stock. So there are less and less of us, but it’s so important to be a stock person. Wild fire is a very real problem, so we’ve been looking at different ways of keep the purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea) down without burning it. We’ve been using the cattle to trample it down and we’ve been doing that for three or four seasons. And now, you get all the heather and all the other little plants coming up through because the Molinia was out- competing everything. Burning releases carbon and we’re just trying to find alternative ways to manage the common. My Husband always used to say, that a wild fire will go as fast as a galloping horse. In the mid 90s, when we had butter mountains and wine lakes, the environmentalists had a lot of power. And it’s true that the common was being over grazed, but we should have been able to have a managed retreat. A sudden stop to grazing meant that there was more combustible material on the Moor and wild fires became a serious risk. And you know, walkers on the Moor want to be able to see things and small birds want to be able to see their predators. They don’t want an overgrown common. I think in modern life, there aren’t the seasons there used to be. I mean, now we’ve got electric lighting, we’ve got machinery. You can keep going, even if it’s dark. Years ago, you worked to the weather and the daylight. And there were quiet times. Apparently, a lot of the farmers weaved in the winter, they had weaving looms by candle light! They used their own wool. Now all we do in the downtimes, is paperwork! Now, you fit your farming to suit your paperwork! We are so reliant on the weather and we’re so restricted by the area we live in because where we lives dictates what we can keep. There are only certain breeds of sheep that are going to survive up there on the hills and they are acclimatised to it over the years. Our sheep go back 100 years now. And the environmental groups have damaged the sheeps’ ability to live out on the Moor. Because once they are removed from the hills and put somewhere else for a period of time, their gut flora and fauna changes and the fact that the sheep have been kept in, you know why would they then sit out on a rainy hill when he’s experienced sitting on a farm with a nice bit of hay or shed or something; they just walk home. It has ruined the whole thing. And you know, if you put an un-acclimatised sheep out on the moor, where they are expected to produce a lamb and produce milk, 50 to 70% of the flock will die off! I agree the common shouldn’t be overgrazed, but we farmers have to be listened to by the environmental people because they need to understand how the common needs to be grazed and what level they need to be grazed at. But it’s hard. We’ve had 30 years of these environmental schemes and most farmers have just given up. They’ve just put their stock out when they’re told to and taken their stock in when they’re told to and take the money. And they say, what’s the point, they don’t listen to us. Roy: I descend from Northwoods and Moses and we’ve been here a long, long time. These stones and rubble outside? They are from a 17th century manor house that was on this site. My ancestor, he was a yeoman and he had a lot of land and mined for minerals. When his eldest son went off to sea, he got robbed here in his house and for that, he always blamed his son. Apparently his son would brag that his father had all this money. They actually hanged a man at Exeter Assizes (Court) for stealing gold sovereigns and going back down to the Barbican in Plymouth, where the police traced him to. As family members we help each other, but years ago all the farms helped each other. When they had 30 acres of corn to cut, 30 men with scythes would turn out to do the work in a day. If they had 200 sheep to shear with hand shearers, 5 men would come from all over to shear and they’d get it done. Nowadays, my son Mark'll shear 200 sheep in a day on his own, and that’s how it’s all changed. When I was growing up, we’d go and help gather sheep at the next farm and then they’d come up and help us gather our sheep. Nowadays there aren’t enough people about up here. Too many people have gone. There are so many changes on the Moors. My father’s best mate was Bob Giles. Giles and he made their living out of rabbits, they were warreners. They got wiped out in the 50s because of Miximotosis being introduced and that took away their living. After the War, people wanted better food and the rabbits were in decline. People were turned off rabbits when they saw the swollen eyes and so on. But rabbit is a good clean meat! In the old days they would long net rabbits on the moor and then take them back home and farm them. But times have changed.
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