We've not had many fine days since I last wrote for In Your Field, although there was a great week of weather just as the kids went back to school (great timing), but our third crop silage wasn't ready for cutting at the time. I wish, however, that we had just grabbed what there was, because it hasn't stopped raining since and everywhere is looking rather soggy and backendish. Fingers crossed for a sunny break before too long as we do definitely need the crop in the pit for the winter feed.
Westmorland Show fell very lucky with the weather, we were blessed with two decent days and, even though the rain through the middle of the night made the show rings fairly clarty, wellies were not needed and I'm pretty sure my raincoat stayed hung up next to our cows in the cattle tent all day. We came away with Dairy Shorthorn Champion with our fourth calver, Strickley Foggathorpe Fragrance 49th, and she looked a real picture on the day; the sun shone off her dark red coat as she paraded around the ring. We had eight exhibitors in the Dairy Shorthorns this year, by far the largest number in the dairy section. Winning with Foggathorpe was made even more special as she is the direct descendant of Strickley Foggathorpe Fragrance 12th who was breed champion at the same show in 1995, the last time my Grandad won there before he died the following year - we've got a nice photo of him holding a cup in one hand and Foggathorpe's halter in the other.
See also: In your field: Amy Wilkinson - 'it's all Jeremy Clarkson's fault...'
We have been exhibiting at Westmorland Show since 1875, and halter training heifers and getting our kit ready is very much part of what we do at this time of year, although we slept at home the night before rather than our usual night in the show tent with the cows, due to four cows at home deciding to calve as we were getting ready to set off, including the 11th and 12th lactation queens that needed a bit of extra care.
While it's been too wet to do field work, I've spent much of the past couple of weeks trying to get my head around the Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme from Defra and it's looking like a much different beast to how it was originally envisaged.
Defra's aims at the beginning were to reward farmers who had environmental ambition; the scheme would help farmers who wanted to do great things for biodiversity, the payments would target those who set about changing things across their whole farm. But, as time has gone on, ELMs has been watered down to focus mainly on a broad and shallow approach. The Government target of 70 per cent of farmers to be on a scheme of some sort or another seems to now be the main priority. Biodiversity gains via farm scale habitat management and creation have always been best delivered by the Higher-Level Countryside Stewardship scheme or its predecessor HLS, and it was upland and marginal farms that used these fantastically and made a real difference to the land they managed. But now that option is looking like it will only be there for a select few. Although some of the individual actions may be available in the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme, the whole farm scale ambition that is the trademark of Higher-Tier stewardship agreements will only be there for a small number of farmers, such as those with features that require statutory protection. The number of agreements being processed today represents a significant decrease compared to a decade ago, which hardly instils confidence that ELM will reward the targeted, tailored land management that upland farms like mine need.
So, with help from the Nature Friendly Farming Network, I have written an open letter to the Secretary of State highlighting the disparity, I had an original target of 50-60 fellow farmers signing, but with the help of being publicised in Farmers Guardian and social media doing great things, it is now ready to send to Therese Coffey with almost 2,750 signatures. This shows the true feeling amongst the industry.
It has been shown that broad and shallow schemes deliver little for the environment, we need the government to listen and with 2,750 signatories, I think/hope they will.
