Hill farmers don’t need to be fenced in by vanity projects

Hello dear reader, I hope this month’s blethers find you hale and hearty. I sit writing to you sore and weary after a day sorting hill fences.

I’m a poor fencer, the only skill I’m worse at is dyking. The beasts, though, don’t go near my dyke mending as they fear the threat of it couping on them – I don’t have that luxury at the fencing! But needs must and I couldn’t find anyone else to do it.

The consolation was a grand late winter day but these days are dangerous.

All too often you start to think about mentioning the ‘S’ word, as I said in the last blethers; the subtle signs are there and we ware on through the days and weeks but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, this time of year is fickle and unforgiving on a hill farm.

Some parts of the day with a glint of devious sunshine, a park of grass set aside for a latter bite might even look green but the sun is lazy yet and disappears for a bit piece behind a cloud and everything is back to BROON.

Nature dictates that we must be canny, we must be patient. At this time you can almost feel the energy in the trees and in the grass waiting like ourselves for that blinky heat and April shower.

That too can spell ruin for the odd leaner beast; we have all seen the older tup, nursed through the winter blasts of sleet and snow and hard frost, to be felled by that ripe first green bite or two. It’s a while yet to hear a cuckoo calling! But that’s the way it has always been and shall be.

My late grandfather would speak often of the winter of 1947 or “The Big

Freeze” it was called elsewhere, but here in Rannoch it was an unremarkable winter until I think mid-April when it blew in a terrible blizzard that lasted 24 hours.

Needless to say the havoc it brought was severe and years after, auld Peter said that it gave “hairy-ersed craturs the heebeejeebees”.

Rannoch escaped the worst effects of that terrible storm because ewes managed to find shelter in the ancient birch woods that frame the lochside and carpet the bottom of the hills. The neighbours in Glenlyon faired poorer and some 6,000 hill sheep were lost.

My great uncle Jock was a keeper at Innerwick in Glenlyon. He was long quiet in the peat soil of the auld kirk yard in Rannoch by the time I could hear these stories.

Through my father and grandfather he bemoaned that the fox burden in the glen was heightened as so many more cubs made it out the dens as the vixen made easy pickings of the abundant food source.

I suppose, like now, there are only so many chiels willing to sit so many nights at so many holes and I think that spring luck was in short supply.

It has been the usual panic on for the scanning: gather in, scan, sort, inoculate and turn out to hill in enough time to do it right but not eat the growth you promised to your twins.

We are lucky to have a great scanner who takes it all in his stride (if we fail a bit on organisation). I won’t say too much about the results as it could either be seen as “blowing” or could be rubbing salt in some poor chiel’s wounds; so let’s say it was satisfactory and will be a busy spring.

This week I’ll take a run up to draw out some fat lambs and cattle.

Trade is exceptional for both but every penny earned has its place and I think we have undersold our products for too long.

I expect the first calf any day now and as always I’m excited by that prospect – calving Luing cows outside in a landscape such as ours is no chore.

Silage stocks deplete every day but the little worry voice that speaks to you when your head’s on the pillow is still disappearing at one “WEESHT”.

Recently a good deal of news and debate has emerged from the government’s plan to create another national park in Scotland, with a number of proposals forward.

I remember well the discussion and some disappointment when indeed the Cairngorms boundary fell just short of Rannoch. What a shame we now see the missed opportunity of the Cairngorms as a bullet well dodged.

Such a pity that the experience of those that have lived, often generations in the heartland of the park, feel so aggrieved.

The self-same folk – crofters, farmers, keepers, landowners and managers – are the ones who have the nous and foresight to create a blueprint for success and are the very ones not even invited in the room.

The demonstration and the creation of the Cairngorms crofters and farmers group echo the sentiments of nearly every rural dweller: “Get what you have working right first!”

People living, running businesses and working in rural areas need no more impingement upon their abilities to carry out their tasks.

Indeed in a functioning NP these interests would be fostered and supported and the mechanisms of that NP would ensure that the community living and working there would have a synergy that would communicate a voice to those in power of what the people really need – far removed from the dysfunction we seem to witness.

I applaud those men and women in the Cairngorms working so hard to defend our livelihoods, communities and way of life.

They know we can deliver ecological and biodiversity goals, productivity, we can keep a community, heritage and culture but only through a functional system.

As it stands I can say quite clearly there is absolutely no place on the banks of the Tay, Tummel, Lyon or Tilt for a vanity project that will stifle innovation of those who live and work here.

We don’t need “jobs for the boys”, we don’t need failure of governance and impingement of freedoms, we don’t need additional costs, we don’t need the carbon lairds (we have enough already), we don’t need more money wasted on the planting of trees we know won’t grow, we don’t need the hinds getting it harder, we don’t need money poured into reintroductions.

What we do need, along with the rest of Scotland, is potholes fixed, waiting times reduced, an education system that is fit for purpose, businessfriendly policy, affordable housing, harder definition of the Agri bill, functional ferries to our Isles. The list goes on!

Ach well, it may not look like it now but in a month or two we will be greening up and the promise of spring better be paid in full!

Maybe some of the notions of those with “big ideas” will, we hope meet with a ripe green bite!

LOOKING AHEAD: Signs of spring will soon be emerging across the countryside to give sheep fresh grazing.