Two farms. Both run a couple of hundred sheep and a handful of cattle extensively on mixed, rough, hill ground; a mix of high hill—open heath, semi-natural wet grasslands and rugged rock—and green fields carved into the more fertile, gently sloping lower ground. One follows a regular rotation system where all the land is grazed often by the cattle and then the sheep, with short rest periods in between, just long enough for the grass on the rough lands, which is limited to low growing species tolerant of near perpetual, tight grazing, to freshen before it’s grazed again, and the good fields, of bright, nitrate green ryegrass, are fed and cut for silage. It’s an extensive system that’s managed a little bit more intensively. The land is pushed to produce from every inch of soil and it shows: the heather and gorse on the rocks struggle to bloom; lone, straggly, windswept willows reach out of bare rock; the bones of upturned hedges lay where they were dumped, torn from the ditches to make way for tight, new fences and freshly cleared drains that throw water away down the hill, to be someone else’s problem; there is visible bare soil, pocked with hoof prints, barely covered by tender, sweet grass that’s kept perpetually young.
The other farm follows a seemingly more relaxed approach. The sheep are turned out onto an open swathe of the hill and left there to graze extensively and selectively—going where they want, eating the plants they choose, grazing some areas into tight lawns and naturally leaving other areas to grow rough—for a whole season, brought in only for essential handling, and down to lamb and fatten on the fields of soft, varying shades of green that are never fed or cut, but explode into oases of waving seed heads, trefoils and daisies in summer thanks to the reduced fertility (not being artificially fed to push on hungry, productive grasses) and being left for a long growing season while the livestock are out on the hill. Meanwhile, other sections of the hill are left to rest and recover from the sheep for very long periods. Perhaps half a dozen cattle will spend a month or so on the high grass later in the season; the sheep might be back the following year. These are the hill pastures I aspire to, abundant with wild grasses and wildflowers: knapweed, devil’s bit scabious, yarrow, meadowsweet, vetch, bird’s foot trefoil, heath bedstraw, cinquefoil, buttercup, clovers, orchids and daisies. Pockets of native trees and scrub fill the creeks, ditches, edges and cliffs. Hedges are left to grow wide and wild. Old fences are propped up between sprawling willows and scrambling brambles. Butterflies, hoverflies and bumblebees abound. The Irish gorse and heather set the hill ablaze late summer with gold and royal purple blooms that buzz with busy bees. I’m honestly not sure if the farmer has got there intentionally, or whether it’s an accidental effect of a very hands off approach.
I have seen our uplands described as “ecological desert”. Perhaps that is an apt description for parts up along the west of Ireland where overgrazing and erosion have become a serious problem, and it may even be where the first farm I described above is headed, if they were to continue knocking back succession and degrading the soil in an unending cycle of graze, graze, feed, cut and graze… But it’s not what I see here. No, here I see a thriving ecosystem alive and dancing. I see hares leaping madly in March, marsh orchids pushing through the grasses in June, kestrels dancing and dining in airborne scrawls, and there, dotted across the landscape in colours of quartz, shale and limestone as though made from these hills, creating the conditions for the hares to race and the orchids to bloom and the kestrels to hunt over open grasslands: the sheep. The sheep are part of the dance, co-creators of the landscape. A landscape and ecosystem that has formed over centuries, held in a plane of ecological succession, a rich, mosaic habitat of semi-natural grassland (“semi-” denoting human influence in the evolvement and continuity of an ancient, native habitat), low scrub and heath, by the sheep.
My little farm, a fraction of the acreage of either of the aforementioned hill farms but the same kind of mixed, rough ground, is too small to manage extensively. I have to do things a bit differently if I want to have pastures like the above: to be able to give such long rest periods and keep a productive number of sheep, I have to split my land up into small pastures—to move the sheep often from field to field to concentrate their impact and lengthen the time each small field, each impacted area of soil and pasture, has to rest and regenerate before the sheep come back around again. That’s a work in progress. There were no fences when we came here, just open heath and old, rank grasslands delineated by cliffs and ridges of rock, the boundary of our parcel of land marked by an old, low, dry stone wall, open to the hills and the heavens. We have much work to do, but already we see changes in response to our intentional disturbance: biological activity awakening in the soil; the grasslands greening earlier; a shift in the ever dynamic ecological balance as the land responds to our disturbance and inputs, as the land reciprocates the giving and taking of the sheep. My sheep are both my tool to restore and maintain our grassland—because a grassland needs to be grazed, grass and grazer evolved in tandem—and the product of it.
There’s a third farm. If it could be called a farm. It’s an open strip of rugged land just like mine, but it’s been left ungrazed, uncut, uncultivated, untouched by human hand or livestock for, I don’t know, perhaps a decade. Seasons upon seasons of tall fescue, bent and purple moor grass have grown thigh high, set seed and fallen, thatch building upon thatch. Straggly vetch and bird’s foot trefoil clamber through the grasses to reach the light. Bramble leaps and tumbles, filling the dips and hollows with its thorny thickets. European gorse (an introduced and quite invasive species here) stands imposing on the pockets of deep soil. Bracken, in summer, usurps entire slopes, leaving a smothering wake of its own decay. Interestingly, there are not yet more young trees or pockets of wood than there are growing wild on my farm, or the second, lazy farm described above. Perhaps the sika deer that tread paths through the grass or the neighbour’s cattle that break in occasionally are keeping the saplings in check. The grasses, those few vigorous species that can keep pushing through their own thick thatch and fight back the brambles, still dominate, unchecked, rank and rampant, for now. I’m curious to watch and see how long it will take for woods to begin to creep in. How the landscape and the species it supports will change as the grasslands give way to scrub and then woodlands. Where will the hares go? Where will the hen harrier hunt when he visits on his winter spree for easy prey on the open grasslands? What will come in their place?
For anyone interested in more on Irish grasslands, check out greatirishgrasslands.ie for resources and some beautiful examples.
Thank you for your posts! They bring me a bit of peace after reading the local and word news. Sincerely, Trish
That is “world news”