Five beautiful calves born last week, and time for the cows to move out of the bare field where they’ve been getting silage on to some fresh grass. We had hoped to keep the two best fields shut up for an early silage crop to see us through next winter, but we’ll have to use one of them for grazing as there’s still no grass further up the hill.
It’s better to buy in silage later than set the cows and calves back now – much like the conversations about when to cut public spending without damaging the green shoots of recovery – but getting the balance right needs good judgement and a few seasons’ experience. We’re still learning how many cattle and sheep the farm can carry sustainably while making room for woodland, wildlife, pigs, playing, cereals, turkeys, chickens, fruit, vegetables, buildings and cars.
The Scottish Government is talking about the same issues on a bigger scale in its land use strategy – trying to balance food production, greenhouse gas reduction, fibre and timber production, biodiversity, recreation, landscape, renewable energy and development in a small country where only one acre in a thousand is Grade One land.
We had the loaves and fishes talks this week. Crick Carleton from Nautilus Consultants gave us the big picture on world fishing stocks and then brought it close to home by looking at how we could source local sustainable seafood such as herring, mackerel, nephrops and haddock as well as mussels and crabs. So we will be offering fresh fish on Friday and hoping for frequent firm orders.
Interesting to learn about the process for Marine Stewardship Council accreditation – both the transparency of assessment and scoring and the way all the people involved in a fishery have to work together to manage the stock and the environment. Perhaps there should be a Terrestrial Stewardship Council which could accredit Scotland’s land management and provide a seal of approval on all our food, timber, fibre and energy products… but that would mean rethinking our view of land management as a duty to produce public benefit rather than a right to extract.
Andrew Whitley from Bread Matters took us through the practicalities of getting a community bakery to wash its face. It’s starting to take shape as a mutual enterprise, with the bakers, customers, apprentices, wheat growers and miller working as a partnership. A small mill will mean we can bake with and sell freshly-milled flour – a bit like making coffee from freshly ground beans. We don’t plan to be thirled to the mill, though – if the miller starts any funny business we’ll feed our wheat to the chickens.
Next week we should have the vegetables all sown so we can finish off the new woodland up around the pond. As well as keeping stock away from the watercourse to reduce soil erosion and pollution, this will provide a wildlife habitat and some coppiced timber for the bread oven and charcoal-making. In time it will also help with water management, slowing down the rate at which water runs off the hill and down the burn past the shop – but it does mean an acre less for summer grazing – so better sell a cow and calf ..
