Spring is turning into early summer and the swallows have been back for a couple of weeks now. The fields around where I live are full of lambs. Racing up and down in hooligan groups, bouncing up and down with all four feet off the ground; and butting their long-suffering mothers in never ending demands for milk. To make the most of the change in season I recently went on a ‘hands on’ practical course in Wensleydale about sheep rearing and lambing.

The practicalities of lambing are not for the faint hearted. It’s the busiest time of year for a moors farmer. Night after night with broken sleep as the ewes start to give birth, and whilst some of the lambs are born without problems, many of them need quick, skilled attention. The farmer running the course told us that lambing can bring much joy; and also much heartbreak.

Aside from work needed in the lambing shed, the course covered many other aspects of sheep husbandry and compared different ways of managing fields and grazing. Many sheep and lambs are now raised on artificially fertilised fields of ryegrass that promote rapid growth so that lambs can be sent to market as quickly as possible. There are strong financial pressures for rapid turnover as a lot of the supply chain is controlled by the purchasing power of supermarkets who want to keep prices as low as possible for their customers.

Intensive rearing leads to intensive use of pharmaceuticals such as antibiotics, vermicides, and insecticides. These in turn affect life in the fields and soil. The farmer compared their own fields rich in plant and insect life to that of the larger neighbouring farm’s high turn-over production system. They held up a piece of sheep dung and pointed to the holes in it saying that this is evidence for the number of dung beetles recycling natural nutrients. On intensively run farms there are fewer insects and so the dung doesn’t get broken down and recycled in the same way. Fertilizers and animal manure get washed into rivers causing pollution and eutrophication.

They also told us about the diversity of plants used by sheep as medicines to treat their own ailments, how sheep will eat particular types of plants to rid themselves of intestinal worms. Sheep raised on high productivity artificially fertilised rye grass swards don’t have the option to self-medicate naturally, so need to be treated with vermicides to prevent infestations. This in turn affects the diversity of life in the soil.

Standing in a field with swallows flying in the sky above, surrounded by happy gambolling lambs and contentedly grazing sheep made me draw parallels with the artificial, high production life that humans create for themselves and the illnesses it causes. Living slower, with more diversity in diet, helps us to make choices to self-organise our physical and mental health.

Have you been on any good courses recently? I think I’ll go on one about building dry stone walls next. Who needs to go to a gym when you can heft big chunks of limestone around all day instead!

Rowan on the Moor

A Moodscope member