Ram-a-lamb-a-ding-dong

I’m sure we’ve all heard the one about the small child, gazing in wonder at a new-born lamb, who turns to his father and asks “where do lambs come from, Daddy?” “Asda,” says his Dad.

It won’t be long now before St Mabyn echoes to the sounds of spring lambs frolicking in the fields. It’s serious sheep country around here, making a significant contribution to the 20 million-strong UK flock.
There are eight ewes in my top meadow right now, and a ram, and with a gestation period of about five months I reckon it’ll be May before there’s any lambing at my place. The sheep belong to a friend and graze about an acre of pasture which I would otherwise have to cut for hay.

Before we get to the lambing season, though, the ram has to play his part – and it’s much more scientific than you might think, although thankfully the technology is fairly straightforward.  The ram is fitted with a “raddle harness” – a bit like an inverted back-pack, tied with straps – which leaves a dye-mark on the back of the ewe, making it obvious if she has “had a cuddle” or not.

As the weeks go by, if the ewe is still clearly not pregnant, you can change the colour of the dye so as to tell which sheep are “with-lamb” and which are probably not. This is why you sometimes see sheep with different dye marks on their backs. A ewe with no dye-mark at all is probably not going to give you a lamb five months later.

This process is known as “tupping” and during this period the rams can be quite aggressive. Any similarities with what goes on at some of the rougher pubs in Bodmin on a Friday night are purely coincidental.

Round about April, I might expect to see some of the sheep behaving oddly: lying down when the rest of the flock is standing up, pawing at the ground and bleating for no obvious reason. This means that things are about to get busy.  Lambing can be a messy business, and opinions differ as to whether the sheep know best and should be left to just get on with it, or whether to call the vet. This is an economic judgement, usually determined by scale.

In my experience, the lambs have always been born before I get up in the morning, and just appear in the field, as if by magic. This is when the experienced shepherd (not me) pays extra close attention, making sure that the mother does not reject the lamb – in which case fostering by another ewe, or even bottle-feeding, might be necessary.

There are stories that foxes will predate on new-born lambs, too, although I’ve never seen any evidence of it. The sheep are penned behind an electric fence which also helps keep foxes out. In any case, about a fifth of all UK sheep die from cold, and or malnutrition (but not in St Mabyn, of course,) so any theoretical losses to Mr Fox need to be seen in that context.

During May, the young lambs really do frolic. They rush about, leap into the air, kick their legs, and run to their Mums. Great fun to watch. But best not to think about it at lunchtime on Sundays.

Chop chop

I recently ticked off something that’s been on my to-do list for 25 years, and installed a couple of wood-burning stoves. The house had two empty spaces (a little-used fireplace and a never-used 19th century clome oven) while outside I am lucky enough to have a patch of woodland, and scores of hedgerow trees, all of which needed attention from the tree surgeon.

So I now have a couple of fields full of lopped branches, which I am slowly turning into logs for the stoves. This is where my plan is starting to come unstuck.

First of all, it is currently impossible to go into the fields without sinking knee-deep in mud. Secondly, I have yet to acquire some of the paraphernalia needed for a truly organised log-producing operation, such as a chainsaw, saw-bench and pneumatic log-splitter. This means that most days I work myself into a breathless sweat using a hand-held bow saw and an axe. And thirdly, the branches are really still too “green” to burn cleanly, and so I have to scrub soot from the glass front-window of the stoves to properly enjoy the fruits of my labour.

I could add the expected moan about having to clean out the ash every day, and lay a base of newspaper and kindling, and then poke and puff at the thing for 15 minutes before I can be confident that all is working as it should.  I mention all of this because I it reminds me of a much-loved aunt whose life, generations ago, was dominated by her solid-fuel cooker. The centrepiece of her kitchen was a 1940s Rayburn, which in the immediate post-war years was as trendy and modern as austerity Britain was allowed to be.

It not only heated her whole cottage, it also provided hot water to the kitchen tap. The cottage didn’t actually have a bathroom, but hot water from a tap was nevertheless a revolutionary development. Every mealtime was regulated by the temperature of the Rayburn. Electricity came from a Lister diesel generator – but only when it was really needed, for things like lighting and the wireless (there was no television.)

The importance of the Rayburn can therefore not be over-stated. It was, quite simply, never allowed to go out. My uncle and cousins seemed to spend every waking moment sawing and chopping logs, using much the same equipment as I do.

By the 1960s, the Rayburn was losing its appeal. The village now had electricity and the neighbours had an electric cooker. Auntie wanted an electric cooker, and the Rayburn went.
Chatting to the log-burning engineers who installed my stoves, I found that demand, in 2015, had never been stronger. Particularly, it would seem, among second-home owners who – allegedly – have little interest in actually lighting the things. Plenty of pine cones for decoration, but very little sawing and chopping, and no need for matches.

My stoves are very effective and do warm the house. For a whole host of reasons, I am now importing less oil from Saudi Arabia. I stare into the flames and think to myself: nostalgia just isn’t what it used to be.

PS Last week’s piece about the best bait to use in mouse-traps triggered a surprising response, so many thanks to readers who suggested a wide variety of foodstuffs. Particular thanks to Mr PK of Bodmin, who catches mice with no bait at all, simply by cunning deployment of his mousetrap in a particular place.

The Uninvited

It’s that time of year when my routine now has to include a daily check of the mouse trap. Most days in January, the “Little Nipper” – now nearly 30 years old – has extinguished the once-bright eyes of yet another mouse. Some are house mice, but most at the moment are field mice.

I’m not sure why these creatures want to move indoors and live with me. There’s no ready supply of food, and it’s not as if the temperature outdoors is so cold that the mice are going to be noticeably more comfortable inside. But the mice droppings are clearly unhygienic, and so their donors have to go.

I mention this because, as a bit of a traditionalist, I still use a small square of cheddar to bait my trap. But the other day I found myself caught up in an oddly fierce debate over whether this was really sensible.
Cheese, I accept, is not something that mice would eat naturally in the wild. Fortunately the government is never far away with useful advice. A Rural Development Service Technical Advice Note tells me that: “Cheese is not necessarily an ideal bait. Consider using foodstuffs on which the mice are already feeding. Examples of suitable baits include biscuit, porridge oats, other cereals and chocolate.”

The thought of any wild animal sitting down to a natural meal of biscuit, porridge or chocolate is something that hadn’t occurred to me before, so if the cheese starts to fail it’s good to know that I now have other options. A friend tells me that when it comes to catching mice, you can’t beat peanut butter for bait. Unless you use a malteser.

I once believed that pet cats would keep mice out of the house. In fact, the reverse was true, as the cats would bring all manner of prey indoors, spread a paste of feather and fur all over the place, and then sprinkle the scene liberally with vomit.

They do say that if you ever build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. So spare a thought for manufacturers of “sticky traps” whose business plan consists of glue-coated card or plastic which attaches itself, permanently, to any mouse daft enough to walk onto it.

There is now an animal-rights campaign to ban such traps, because apparently some mice bite their own limbs off in their efforts to escape. The captured mouse cannot easily be separated from the trap, so if it’s still alive you have to kill it, or wait for it to starve to death.

Who would have thought it could all be so controversial? Your suggestions would be most welcome. Meanwhile I am content to stick with my wire-and-wood spring-loaded contraption, unchanged since 1897.

Shooting rabbits

When I was about six years old, my father taught me how to shoot.

No doubt this was an act of gross irresponsibility on his part. I’m sure that if my childhood had been delayed by a generation or two, then instead of playing Cowboys and Indians, with toy guns and rolls of paper caps, I would have probably grown up doing something far less corrupting – alone, in my bedroom, surfing the internet.

But Dad’s shotguns were real, and local farmers used to pay him half a Crown for each dead fox. My diet, in those days of brilliant blue skies, was never long without rabbit or pheasant.

I remember my first air rifle – a Diana 23 Junior – and how it seemed to take me forever to line up the front sight, as my under-length arms struggled to hold the heavy barrel steady. My intended prey had usually bolted long before I pulled the trigger.

Half a century slipped by before I took aim again, this time with a much more powerful Chinese-made .22. This modern rifle has a telescopic sight, which I can easily adjust for wind, and I’m pleased to report that so far not a single lead pellet has been wasted.

The target of my new-found sniping is the legion of rabbits which have colonised the wood, and which now seem determined to march upon the house, digging holes all over the field on their way.

Until a few months ago, most mornings I counted a dozen bunnies on the lawn – before silently sliding open the bedroom window, taking aim, and slowly reducing their number, one at a time. The rabbits do now seem to be getting the message.

I relate this part of my daily pre-breakfast routine not to upset any animal lovers: I enjoy seeing rabbits in the wild; I just enjoy rather less seeing what they do to my garden.

Rabbits remain one of Britain’s major agricultural pests, even though today they present nothing like the epidemic which we faced prior to the introduction of myxomatosis in 1953. Nevertheless, the 1954 Pests Act not only allows me to shoot rabbits on my land, it actually obliges me to prevent their spread to my neighbours.

Measures other than shooting appear disproportionate – I would need a huge amount of fencing, which the government says would have to be designed to keep the rabbits in, rather out. The fences would also need badger gates. The use of ferrets, for me, would be too time-consuming and I have always disliked the idea of traps. The Health and Safety Executive even publishes advice on how to kill rabbits using poison gas, but I’m afraid that – to me – sounds like a disaster just waiting to happen.

There seems to be no shortage of organisations urging me to Do Something About The Rabbits – Defra, Natural England and Cornwall Council all say that pests must be controlled, but none of them is offering to do the job for me.

My dead rabbits end up in a small incinerator, completely in accordance with 21st century health and environmental regulations. I would much prefer to cook and eat them, but I simply don’t have time. If any local butcher wants them, no payment need change hands.

Busy doing nothing

About a year ago the government promised us it was on a mission to create a “paradise” for bees. Next weekend I plan to join in with this national exercise in pollinator-promotion and build a beehive. It will be tucked away, in an old orchard, and with luck the bees, due to arrive in the spring, will mostly look after themselves.

As I now seem to have the space, and time, I’m more than happy to help heed the warning of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature: more than a quarter of European bumblebees – and nearly one in 10 of all honeybees – are at risk of extinction.


The government’s initiative, 12 months ago, saw Defra putting bee hives on the roof of its headquarters. I wonder how that’s working, given that the roofs of Whitehall are not blessed with an over-supply of flora. 

Only a cynic would suggest it was simply a photo-op for an otherwise unknown minister.


The press release heralded “Motorway verges, railway embankments and forests will be used to create bee and insect friendly paradises as part of the major new strategy to protect the 1,500 species of pollinators in England.” I have to confess to my ignorance about what a “bee paradise” actually looks like, but I’d be surprised if it included the miles of plastic cones which seem permanently to adorn motorway verges.


Attached to the press release was a 36-page glossy document titled The National Pollinator Strategy. “Over the next 10 years it will build a solid foundation to bring about the best possible conditions for bees and other insects to flourish,” it says.


The strategy encouraged us to plant more flowers, particularly wild flowers, cut the grass less frequently, not to disturb insect nests and to “think carefully about whether to use pesticides.”


I can only imagine the mayhem in Defra High Command as officials argued over whether or not to use such inflammatory language. After all, the government is currently facing a High Court battle over its decision to exempt some of the dangerous chemical pesticides banned by the European Union, following lobbying by the National Farmers Union on behalf of Big Cereal – an industrial sector where crop-spraying has been endemic since the end of the Second World War. Farmers say the chemicals are needed to protect crops from devastation by the cabbage stem flea beetle.


The European Food Safety Authority says the pesticides clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam pose a “high risk” to bees when sprayed on leaves – yet the government seems determined to ignore its own Pollinator Strategy. A case of “do as I say, not as I do?”

Bringing home the bacon

I said goodbye to my pigs last week. They were back within days, enjoying an even-more-carefree space, in the freezer.

The pigs had spent five months helping clear my overgrown wood, and although I’ve raised a small amount of cash through sales of the occasional joint, I’m very much an amateur. The pigs were an enjoyable and useful hobby, roaming free in the wood, removing brambles, blackthorn and stinging nettles. They were also surprisingly good company.

The scale of my agricultural interests is vanishingly small. I live on a St Mabyn smallholding with chickens, ducks and geese, and occasional sheep, and although I am registered with the Rural Payments Agency and Defra’s Animal Health department, I certainly don’t claim to know very much about the practical side of farming.

I was surprised, therefore, to get a phone call from Cornwall Council’s Trading Standards office, inviting me to join their register, too. Trading Standards had picked up on the computerised record of animal movements, and wanted a bit more information to find out what I was up to. A brief conversation ended with the Trading Standards official politely declining my invitation to visit – his records were up to date, and he was happy.

Some might see this as an unwarranted intrusion into privacy, or an example of how bureaucrats are driving small-scale operators out of agriculture. I am not one of them. Despite my lack of expertise, I welcome anything that drives up standards of bio-security and animal welfare.

Pigs are notoriously prone to disease. More than a decade ago, I reported in considerable detail on the Foot and Mouth epidemic which closed down the countryside and brought the British livestock sector to its knees.

I am also old enough to remember the 1967 Foot and Mouth outbreak, when I first learned of some of the biology behind disease transmission – and of how Foot and Mouth disease used to be endemic in Britain, with most rural communities harbouring the illness to some degree at some time.

In those “good old” days nearly all agriculture was local. Whatever disease there rarely spread beyond the nearest market, and seldom lasted long. But it was there nonetheless. Now that animals can be transported hundreds of miles, the risks of a national disaster are vastly increased, and only one batch of dodgy pig food away.

So well done Cornwall Trading Standards. As they say at MI5, the price of security is eternal vigilance.

60 = the new 40? Fingers crossed