Thread by @IrelandsFarmers

Good morning folks, it's me @IrishRainforest back again.

Yesterday I talked about the desperate and worsening state of nature in Ireland, and the role the industrialisation of farming is playing.

Today, let's look at one of the solutions: High Nature Value farming (HNVf).

Small numbers of farmers all over Ireland are moving towards HNVfarming, and you can follow @farmfornature to get an idea of who's doing what.

Also, I'd highly recommend reading @isabella_tree's 'Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm'.
bookworm.ie/wilding/

Now I'm going to launch straight into a description of the sort of farming I do myself.

As I said the other day, this farm came with 33 acres of ground, plus 40 of mountain commonage; 21.5 acres (mostly rainforest) of the 33 isn't farmed at all; the other 51.5 is all HNV farmed.

When I started out farming 7 years ago, it was with sheep, mainly black-faced Scotch but also Cheviot crosses.

It involved a pretty steep learning curve, but I never took to them, and in 2020 I sold off all 34 we had at the time and got Dexter cattle instead.

There were a few things I didn't like about the sheep, but I think by far the biggest was a constant awareness of just how very ecologically destructive they are, and of how that contradicted everything else I was trying to do.

Sheep graze very selectively, which means they seek out certain plants like tree seedlings or other important flora, and eat these preferentially, even if there's loads of grass and other vegetation.

I've seen this numerous times with my own eyes: let sheep into any ground where native trees are coming up, and they'll make a beeline for them first.

The result is they're extremely effective at repressing wild native woodland.

In fact, sheep are an ecological disaster.

Some will say: An ecological disaster? Poor sheep, isn't that a bit strong?

It's not their fault of course, they can't help how they feed. But it creates grass monocultures wherever they graze.

And as we saw yesterday, monocultures are useless to nature.

When I had the sheep, their damage was limited by the fact that they spent most of the time on the commonage, which is grazed bare by other people's sheep anyway.

I'd only bring them down into my own place in the winter, when the leaves had dropped from the many tree seedlings.

Even then, the sheep still had a tendency to strip the bark from young trees, killing them.

So I decided to replace them with Dexter cattle, a decision I've never once regretted.

They're great, and unlike the sheep (IMO), each one has her own distinct personality.

As opposed to sheep/deer/goats, cattle don't graze selectively. Instead of snipping with their teeth, they wrap their rough tongues around a bunch of vegetation and just yank it out.

This is why 'conservation grazing' is usually based on cattle.

However it's essential to add the caveat here that ALL herbivores, including cattle, will overgraze and hence damage wild habitat if overstocked.

Ideally, they should be in extremely low densities, and only let into ground periodically, eg only in winter if trees are coming up.

The Dexters still spend most of the year on the mountain, only coming down into our own place in winter.

It's not unlike the traditional practice known in Ireland as 'booleying', in which animals were grazed on the uplands in summer, then brought down for the winter.

Known as transhumance outside Ireland, it was still part of folk memory in this area into the 1950s. It likely went back millennia, right to the Neolithic, and the beginnings of farming in Ireland.

Eugene Costello, @Booleying, is our national expert on this subject.

Dexters were originally bred from small hardy local mountain cattle in Kerry by an Englishman named... Mr. Dexter.

Seemingly the breed almost completely died out, but a few survived in the UK, and were brought back to Ireland from there.

Other enthusiasts might add more info.

Our own ground where the Dexters stay during the winter is very 'sheltery' for them, as there are plenty of rocky escarpments and thick scrub.

And the Dexters generally don't damage the 1,000s of wild native trees coming up everywhere, since in the winter they're leafless.

In fact, the disturbance made by the Dexter's hooves probably creates the ideal conditions for tree seeds to germinate, actually helping speed the return of wild, native woodland.

Their trampling may also help repress the bracken, which is abundant in this piece of land.

And because they're organic, the cattle's dung is greatly appreciated by invertebrates, which are in turn greatly appreciated by badgers, who by digging them out spread the dung far and wide.

In the spring after the Dexters go back up onto the mountain commonage, this area explodes with wildflowers like bluebells, wood anemone, celandine, dog-violet, + wood sorrel.

This woodland ground flora has been hanging on under the bracken since it was forested, centuries ago.

And the wildflowers' long wait is set to pay off, with multitudes of self-seeded wild native forest coming up everywhere.

The elements of a natural ecosystem are reconstituting, naturally, spontaneously. All it takes is for us to not stand in the way.

As the habitat starts to form, all the other species are quick to move in too: insects, birds, fungi, mammals...

This is one of the ways we turn the death spiral of Irish nature around: farming in ways that leave space for the wild.

We borrowed a bull for 6 weeks until last week, and should have a few new calves later in the year.

As I said in my introduction on Monday, I accept that there isn't a whole lot of food being produced here, though we will be selling on a couple of animals each year.

But society has long understood that farming isn't solely about producing food, as reflected in the different strands (pillars) of farm subsidies.

Of course we need food, but we also need a healthy environment, a stable climate, and wild nature.

HNVfarming strikes that balance.

There are of course plenty of other ways of farming to benefit nature.

But in our case I'm certain that, given the sort of very rough land we have here in Beara, Dexter cattle in (very low densities) would be hard to beat.

Hope you found that interesting and enjoyable.

I'll be back with another topic altogether tomorrow, check in to discover what it is!