In the footsteps of the ancestors

Farmer and I have just got home from a trip to Ireland.  A (farmer's) busman's holiday.  We went across to County Clare in the Republic of Ireland, to the Burren Winterage School and Festival.

The Burren is an area of Co. Clare on the west coast of Ireland, south of Galway.  It is coastal, rolling out across softly rounded hills and mountains.  It has the most extensive glaciated karst landscape in Europe - 'limestone pavements'  - which cover the hills right down to the sea in places.

Over 5000 years of traditional farming has helped create and maintain this extraordinary landscape.   Patchworks of green fields with grey stone walls leading into hazel thickets and scrub and up onto the apparently harsh rocky landscape of the limestone mountains.  On closer look, the limestone is nurturing a wide variety of wildflowers and plants, many of which were still in flower, months after they would have died off at home.  We saw lots of single Bloody Cranesbill and Carline thistle growing between cracks in the rocky surface of the hill.  The limestone, warmed in the summer sun, holds onto its heat and provides a comfortable dry microclimate for the cattle over the winter.  They drink from calcium rich streams on the mountain and come back down in the spring, strong boned and ready to calve.

Farming in the Burren has an ancient transhumance tradition called the Winterage when farmers take their cattle out on to the mountain to graze for the winter.  This is the opposite of most transhumance in Europe where the cattle and sheep are traditionally brought down off the mountain pastures for the winter and go back up in the summer!

High Nature Value Farming is central to looking after the Burren, and farmers and land managers are supported by the BurrenBeo Trust, an impressive organisation who work on behalf of the farming community and the wider community.   They started the Burren Winterage Weekend which brings farmers and the community together to celebrate the connection between the land and its people and the unique Winterage tradition.

The Winterage School brings farmers, advisors, and government officials together to a Conference of talks, visits to farms, and discussion groups over a few days.   The Burren is part of a European wide initiative to support high nature value farming and to encourage sharing of learning and experience between regions - called the HNV Link.   So delegates from several of the European projects were taking part in the Winterage School and Conference.

There was an impressive schedule of events over 4 days, but sadly we couldn't do it all.  We listened to a series of talks at the Winterage School and attended two very interesting farm visits, but the highlights of the Winterage Weekend for us were the Herdman's Walk and the Winterage Cattle Drive.

The Herdman's Walk started at Father Ted's house.  When Father Ted appeared on our TV screens we had no TV signal at Treshnish so it was totally lost on us, but thankfully Google knew all about it when we tried to find the farm on Google Maps!  It didn't recognise the farm name but when I tried Father Ted's house it took us straight there.

There was nothing Father Ted about the Herdsman' Walk.  The farmer, Patrick McCormack, described himself as a Herdsman, a (fifth generation) farmer and a poet.   He led us on a winding walk through fields and centuries, weaving a hypnotic spell around us all, regaling us with stories of the ancestors and this ancient connection with the land.    He told us stories of the battles that took place where we stood, and of those buried on unconsecrated ground - and on we walked through other fields, so green and fertile, warm sun on our backs.  Stories of witches and cows and streams running with milk, up through rocky hazel scrub, with limestone rock underneath our feet, hidden by decades of ivy, moss and lichen.

Occasionally, instead of hearing a tale handed down generation to generation, we listened as Patrick recited a particular poem before moving on.  We stopped at a holy well and bathed our eyes in the healing water, in dappled sunlight through the hazel and thorn trees.

Everywhere the land told stories of its own, drystone walls snaking across a hillside and ruins of houses crumbling under a soft layer of moss.  Finally up onto drier ground, at the bottom of a rocky bluff, with the limestone mountain above us we stood in the middle of an ancient fort, in the warm sun, as Patrick recited a poem of his own.   It was a magical walk, and gave us a different way of reading the landscape we were walking through.

Back down to earth in the Cattle Market at Kilfenor a few miles from Father Ted's House.  And afterwards a delicious lunch at a farm shop in Ennistymon.  This area has a proactive food network of producers markets and use of local produce, and everything we tried from St Ola goats cheese to organic Burren Smokehouse salmon to locally grown organic veggies was delicious!

Follow this link to read about our High Nature Value Farming at Treshnish. 

A trip to the sales

Always nice to have a day out together, and yesterday we headed off to catch the 8.40am ferry to Oban as we had some serious shopping to do.

It was the day of the annual Tup Sale at Oban Livestock Market, just out of Oban on the road to Kilmartin.  In days gone by before Tescos, before William Lows, Oban Market was at Lochavullin and there were so many tups for sale in the one day that there were 2 rings on the go at any one time both selling single tups pot by lot.   Ironically yesterday the site of the old mart, the Tescos car park, was waist deep in water, due to biblical amounts of rain over the previous few days!

Our journey started unexpectedly when the back axle of the truck went, a few miles out of Salen.  Luckily we had left enough time and were able to limp, very slowly, to just the other side of Salen where we knew we could leave it, and arrange for the insurance recovery to pick it up and take it to Tobermory.  We were able to contact J who was also on his way to the ferry and he kindly gave us a lift.

It was the first sunny day we had had and such a relief from the heavy rain of the last few days.  Farmer's new rain gauge (a Christmas present) showed that between 2pm on Monday and 1pm on Tuesday we had 60mm of rain!  Yuck!

The car deck was full of livestock trailers.  The cafeteria was busy with farmers having breakfast and catching up on the news.    I arranged breakdown recovery - and phoned to explain to the recovery driver what the story was.

Every year we need to buy new tups in order to ensure that the tups are not breeding with their daughters.  So there is a steady flow on and off the farm of new and old tups.    In the past we have bought from Lanark, from Fort William, from Dingwall and privately from other farms on Mull.  This is the first time we have been to the tup sale in Oban.

It was initially disappointing to see there were only about 50 Blackface tups in the catalogue.   The atmosphere at a tup sale is quite different from a ewe or lamb sale.  For a start the numbers of sheep is far smaller at a tup sale.  The number of buyers at a tup sale is obviously much higher as individual farmers and crofters all need new tups.  So whilst there may not be a huge number of sheep in the pens it is lively and sociable.  You end up seeing other island and Argyll farmers you may only see once a year.

Farmer managed to bid on 2 Blackface tups and was pleased with the prices.   On to the Cheviots and he was hoping to get 3 or 4.  He had an idea of which farms he wanted to get them from, and all you can then do is hope the prices don't go over our budget.   Armed with a note of the lot numbers he was interested in Farmer started to bid.  By the end of it he thought he had bought 4 Cheviots and happily went off to pay for them.  In the office he was told he had only bought 3.   He paid for them and once our tups were loaded into our neighbours trailer we headed down to the ferry.

Just as we arrived at the pier J whose tup we thought we had bought got a call from the mart saying that V Carrington hadn't taken his tup - or paid for it!  For some reason it transpires that V Carrington is Farmer!  So there we were, in the middle of the queue to load on the ferry, being told we had one more tup...  In the end they told him they would deliver it to Mull tomorrow in a lorry that was coming over to collect calves.  Phew! Though collecting it without the truck would be interesting!! We would just have to worry about that later.

All that sorted, it was wonderfully sunny and we sat in the warm late afternoon sun having a coffee from the wonderful Food from Argyll Cafe on the pier.

Our neighbour kindly delivered us and our new tups to the door, just in time for a stunning sunset.   Later on we went to supper in Toechtamhor and were treated to a fantastic aurora.  It was interesting standing outside with everyone sharing the colours they were seeing.  I realised that my eyes really don't pick up the colours very well compared to some people.  Perhaps that is why I love using the camera so much.   I could see the green but not the pinks and reds or blues that others could see.

One door closes

Farmer was invited to help gather on the Isle of Eorsa last week.  Eorsa is the teardrop shaped uninhabited island in Loch na Keal.   There is no house - though there is a 'hotel' shed for shelter!  

There have been sheep on the island for generations.  It is hard work having a flock of sheep that you can only access via a boat in good weather.  The ewes thrive despite that and Eorsa produces good healthy lambs.  But finally Iain Thomson 'the singing shepherd' has decided to call it a day.   He tried to find someone else locally to take the ewes on and continue the tradition but there was no one who was able to do it.    So the gather on Friday was to take not only the lambs off but the ewes as well. 

Iain.

On their way out there, with A and his dogs.

Eorsa. From the Gribun side.

 

From Eorsa to Inch Kenneth with Gribun on the left of the photograph.

Looking up Loch na Keal.

In the fank.

Sorting lambs and ewes.

Looking for the barge.

Tea time.

Loading the barge.

On the barge.

Farmer took this photographs on his phone.   The day went well, and they had to wait for the tides, so it was dark by the time they landed back on Mull.   They will be sold later on in the week.

For Iain, the Eorsa door closes and a new door opens.  We wish him well!