Tower and Town, March 2024 (view the full edition)Dairy FarmingJamie farms 1750 acres at Broad Hinton with a herd of 800 cattle of which 400 are milkers. 'Oak before ash, in for a splash; ash before oak, in for a soak.' Well, I am guessing the ash trees beat the oak by some distance last year. We have had a record amount of rainfall on the farm, pretty much double the annual average. Farmyards and cottages battled floods, fields swamped, crops rotting, and landslides on the banks. Conversely, remember the record heatwave and humidity we had back in September? The cows did not like that and milk yields took a nosedive - it was such a massive change from the wet, cool August and they took weeks to recover fully. The herd is now settled and performing really well. All of the cows have names, pedigrees, eartags, movement books and passports. I was on milking duty the other day and moving them to the milking parlour. Cow number 82 is greedy, and will stay eating whenever she can, stubbornly refusing to move. After an age of gentle persuasion 750kg of Holstein cow still hadn't moved and I was beginning to wonder how this was going to play out, when she moved forward, gathered some pace and with a hop, skip and a jump aimed a kick at my vitals. We met again the next night and I was a little more alert this time! Our cows are very individual with very different personalities! One of the joys of working on the farm is being amongst nature, seeing lapwing chicks in the spring on nesting plots, a grey partridge in the wild bird food areas, boxing hares on the grass margins, clouds of butterflies on the pollen and nectar strips, and glorious bee orchids on the banks. We have been in various stewardship schemes since their inception many years ago and we thoroughly enjoy farming for nature. And I feel that there may well be more of this to come - in many ways it is part of diversification and makes good economic sense, but something does worry me. We farmers are being persuaded to become more like park keepers; meanwhile we import cheaper food from the other side of the globe - food that often has a big negative environmental impact, is not produced to the same welfare standards, and racks up huge food miles. Surely this is not joined up thinking at a time when carbon footprint and local food miles and produce should be a priority, and alarmingly the UK self-sufficiency in food is at 54% and falling! Oh well, I don't want to get political; instead I will be keeping my fingers crossed to see the oak leaves soon. Jamie Horton |