A Book of Britain: The Lore, Landscape and Heritage of a Treasured Countryside. Johnny Scott
so, it was enormously time consuming. Circular stone-walled enclosures called stells were built on, or near, each heft and the sheep shut in them at night. By day, a boy or an old man would stay on each heft, keeping the flocks separate.
Gradually, over several years, the sheep on each heft became acclimatised to their own ground. To maintain this territorial knowledge, every year ewes that had reached an age where they could no longer productively survive the harsh conditions were sold off the farm and a proportionate number of ewe lambs from each heft retained, thus the grazing territories became inherited knowledge, passed from mother to daughter. The sheep on the hefts at my farm are the lineal descendants of those established 250 years ago and it is not unusual to see family groups of great-grandmother, grandmother, daughter and her lamb, all grazing together in the same group. Eventually the sheep ceased to be shut in at night and reverted to the instinctive grazing pattern of wild animals. In the afternoon they make their way to the safety of high ground and rest there until dawn. As the sun comes up, they slowly graze downhill to the sweet grass in the valley bottoms and, depending on the hours of daylight, they then start making their way back to high ground.
This natural ‘rake’ performed by hill sheep every day of their lives is what makes the husbandry of hill farming possible. The one glaring indication that a hill sheep is in distress is if it does not follow flocking behaviour. A hill shepherd’s day starts with his circuit of high ground; if a sheep is hanging back whilst the others are all grazing downhill, there is something amiss. In the afternoon, the shepherd goes round his low ground and the same principle applies. It is particularly pertinent at lambing time; ideally, as with all wild animals, a hill ewe prefers to give birth a few hours before dawn as this gives them time to recover from the birthing process, clean the offspring and see that it has suckled and is able to follow her before any danger that daylight might bring. A lesser proportion give birth during the day, after they have reached the good grazing of the lower ground and whilst there is still time for the lamb to be up and suckled before the trek back. Therefore a shepherd looks for likely problems on high ground in the early morning and on low ground at night.
The other essential piece of knowledge which is passed from generation to generation by the hefting is that if a hill farm changes hands the sheep always stay on the farm and an extra price over their market value is added for ‘hefting and acclimitisation’. Were they to go, it would be virtually impossible, in this day and age, to replicate the hefting and a new flock would simply surge round in a bunch, eating out the most palatable herbage until all the goodness had gone.
Hill farming would not be possible without the shepherd’s collie: ‘A single shepherd and his dog will accomplish more in gathering a stock of sheep from a highland farm than twenty shepherds could without dogs, and it is a fact that without this docile animal the pastoral life would be blank. Without the shepherd’s dog, the whole of the mountainous land in Scotland would not be worth sixpence. It would require more hands to manage a stock of sheep and drive them to market than the profits of a whole stock would be capable of maintaining? This observation by James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, is as true today as it was in 1800. A trained sheepdog in action is a wonderful sight and I consider myself privileged to have spent my farming life working with a succession of fantastic examples. Sheepdog trialling started 1873 at Bala in south Wales and there are over 400 sheepdog trials held every year in Britain, ranging from Nursery, Open, National Championship (a three-day trial held in Ireland), to the International Supreme Championship, which rotates between England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, with each country sending a team of fifteen dogs.
REGENERATING THE HEATHER-CLAD HILLS
Burning heather to create fresh, palatable regrowth is as old as farming, but until the agricultural revolution it was only carried out in a very small way. The glorious carpet of purple bloom that we know today as an enchanting feature of parts of the north of England and much of Scotland was reclaimed from untamed heath by graziers as they established their flocks. By using a system of rotational burning across a hill farm and a carefully controlled stocking rate, flock-masters discovered that in place of scrub and old rank heather an even spread of palatable mixed ages could be maintained.
There was an ever-growing interest in shooting sports during the nineteenth century and an increasing demand for shooting tenancies. Landlords began to notice that moors managed by graziers carried many more coveys of grouse than those that weren’t. Grouse feed on the green shoots of juvenile heather plants, and burning to give fresh food for sheep simultaneously provided grouse with the necessary food source for population expansion. This led to the successful partnership between sheep and grouse which has existed ever since, with heather burning playing a vital role in moorland management for both whilst providing a habitat for an increased number of summering bird species. If heather is not burnt, it becomes old and stemmy and lacks nutritional value for sheep or grouse and both species – and indeed all other moorland wildlife – naturally decline, including predators.
IF HEATHER IS NOT BURNT, IT BECOMES OLD AND STEMMY AND LACKS NUTRITIONAL VALUE FOR SHEEP OR GROUSE AND BOTH SPECIES – AND INDEED ALL OTHER MOORLAND WILDLIFE – NATURALLY DECLINE, INCLUDING PREDATORS.
A properly managed heather moor has a mosaic pattern of different ages and lengths of heather, about 30 metres wide and up to 100 metres long, burnt rotationally every year to provide continual regrowth. This ensures that sheep graze evenly across their hefts and provides grouse and other moorland ground-nesting birds with the depth of cover to nest in safety from the increasing number of aerial predators and space for their chicks to learn to fly. Heather burning is strictly governed by legislation; below 1,500 feet it is only permissible between 1 October and 15 April and there is a fifteen-day extension for ground above that altitude. In both cases, if the weather is particularly wet a further extension may be granted. In theory, there are six months in which to burn heather; in practice, most heather is burnt in a short, hectic period from mid-March, when the heather is dry and the underlying peat wet. The most important factor is to stop burning before ground-nesting birds start to lay their eggs.
Heather burning has become very technical during my lifetime. It used to be done by gangs of men armed with shovels to control the fires, now there are tractor-mounted flails to cut out the shape of the area to be burnt, leaving damp mulch behind which helps control the flames and high-pressure fogging units mounted on Argocats to deal with emergencies. Today, hill farming incomes bear no resemblance to the value of the sporting increment, and although sheep and grouse continue to coexist necessarily, the preservation of moorland conservation is almost entirely funded by shooting. Without this the landscape would revert to an unsightly jungle of rank, heather, thistles and scrub.
FARMING MODERN BRITAIN
By 1850 Britain had become arguably the most powerful country in the world. The population had risen to 21 million, 50 per cent of whom were urban-based and employed, one way or another, in the booming manufacturing industries. The world map turned ever pinker as colonisation continued, requiring an army of about 400,000. The railways had out-competed all other means of transport and the rail network spread rapidly across the country; technological advances in agricultural machinery made improvements to all existing reaping and threshing machines, new ploughs and drills.
There was another surge in more efficient fertilisation when chemists discovered that guano contains high concentrations of nitrates and phosphates. In essence, guano is the sedimentary conglomerate of dung, carcasses, feathers, eggshells and sand accumulating in areas where seabirds congregate in confined spaces on small off-shore islands or rocky outcrops, which by virtue of their inaccessibility offer shelter from natural predators. Climatic and environmental conditions favouring this scenario occur on the west coasts of both South America and Southern Africa. The discovery of rich guano deposits on the islands and coast of Chile, and Ichaboe Island, off what is now Namibia, started a series of mad rushes to acquire the precious excrement. As guano resources became exhausted towards the end of the century, they were replaced by the latest innovation