Fall in love with farming in Northern England

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Global Stewardship Podcast, a life update for you all. Not because you've been waiting for one or asking for one, but because it is going to greatly affect the future of this podcast for the next several months throughout this year. I recently found out that I was pregnant, very pregnant. Um, I think I'm 14 weeks pregnant. And it's been a whirlwind of. Emotions and, cascading events. Um, I found out because our dairy cow started absolutely repulsing me, her, her, her smell, her milk smell, uh, just everything to do with her. And, unfortunately we had to pass her off to another local farm just because I could not handle the milk smell and the responsibilities right now. That was hard. And so that kind of kept me off the podcast for a few weeks and, um, you know, also we didn't really see this coming. So planning our year accordingly as farmers, we plan everything out really, really, down to the day pretty much. I felt really fortunate that last time, you know, we kind of had a plan and we do real, really feel so blessed that we are able to conceive and obviously just. Without even trying. And so, uh, I don't wanna sound, you know, like we're not so grateful. We are so excited, so grateful and just so happy to be able to tell our now 2-year-old that he's gonna be a big brother. It's been a really fun time, um, but just have been kind of nauseous. I think I'm getting over that hump now. But as I only have probably a month left of prerecorded episodes to post, I'm going to take, several months. Off of the podcast I'm gonna be putting all of those out. So just keep listening while I'm posting them. And also want to do an episode about Woof the program, W-W-O-O-F. The program through which we host all of our volunteers here on the farm, they have been so critical and crucial for us, especially in this time. They run everything here so smoothly alongside us, and especially as we're going into the busy planting season, lambing season, chick season. Springtime is the busiest season for us. Having them here is just something that is so fantastic and, we're always so grateful for them. So I am gonna be posting those episodes. I just wanted to share that because there's, uh, probably not gonna be very many after this spring, just until maybe fall or winter. So FYI that is coming up and we are so excited about it. So. Uh, today I am sharing an episode that I recorded with my friend Shannon. When I, you guys have heard me talk about my trip to England when I went. I had been to England before, but I went to England last year in 2025, and it totally changed how I view the country, how I feel about the uk. It was a fantastic trip and. When I went, I had maybe a day or two notice, and thankfully I had been following Shannon just because of all of her beautiful farm pictures for, I don't know, probably a couple years at that point, and just reached out to her. We didn't know each other really, and. She gave me some of the best recommendations for what to do. I was going into it totally blind, and that is ultimately what led me to finding some of my favorite places on the planet and, creating what was a fantastic trip. Speaking of that, I know I've also mentioned recently, and some of you may have signed up for it, uh, the trip to Northern England this summer, it was also a crazy series of events because. Uh, within three days of each other, two groups of two canceled, even though they had paid a non-refundable deposit. I did refund their deposit and everybody else's. But, uh, I took that as kind of a sign and then shortly after I found out that I was pregnant and probably wouldn't want to be leading a trip that pregnant anyways. So it, it's just crazy how everything falls in line and everything works. Something that we thought at the time was so strange now. Totally makes sense. And, uh. We make plans and God laughs because obviously he knew better and he orchestrated everything. So, um. We will definitely be taking a group to England at some point, but we will not be doing it this spring. Was it spring, early summer? So just FYI. But Shannon will be talking about some of those areas and I thought she would be the perfect person to have on the show because she really did open my eyes to a whole new world of things about England that I didn't know. And she has a historical background. She's works curates music. She. Is a wonderful person. I had such a great time meeting her and her little one who's around Willie's age, uh, when we were there. And so that was just a fantastic time. Enjoy the show and if you feel so inclined, I would love for you to still leave a review at the end because this is something that I want to pick up. Like I said, I had no idea that we were going to be pregnant, and so I'm just gonna take a little bit of a. Break but keep pre-recording more episodes to drop later in the year, so if you could leave a review, that would be fantastic. Thanks guys.

Audio Only - All Participants 5:21

you started chatting with me about your mixed background in farming. You didn't grow up farming. Can you give us some background on what brought you to this life? Yeah. Uh, it, it isn't my background at all actually. So I sort of accidentally fell into a lot of my interests around farming, um, by my partner who is a stocks man. So he essentially runs livestock, for a sort of couple of forms, one a museum, so sort of traditional heritage based farming. My background is sort of history, heritage. I have a huge kind of interest in, sort of concepts of England, the English landscape, uh, like how we form Englishness through the landscape, like a sense of identity through the landscape. Mm-hmm. And they tie together a lot with, with farming. So I sort of accidentally got into the farming side of things. Um, but they tie quite well into kind of my interest and my background with, work on like vernacular buildings, so, particularly like farm buildings and rural buildings. So there's, there's kind of like a mix going on, of that. But, as I've been with my partner, I've got more of an insight into like, the daily workings, of sort of farming life. And we live in a really quite rural northern farming community as well. So having those connections and just seeing like the pattern of life has been really interesting. As we go throughout this episode, do you plan to kind of talk about those connections to history and agriculture? No. Okay. Yeah, I think they're a huge, um, for me they're like the interesting side. The farming side is really interesting here. Um, but. I think what's also interesting is like the pattern of farming has really continued, particularly'cause I'm in the north, along a lot of historic lines. There's just this thread that goes through in some ways that feels so unchanged, from the language you used, the remnants all around us. Everywhere you go there are remnants of that old farming life everywhere. Even changing practices you can just see it is completely shaped our landscape and it is like farming made England look the way England does. And so I can't talk about historical buildings or like the nature of our landscape or the concept of how we create a sense of national identity. It's all so linked to the countryside and agriculture and all of those kind of things. I saw that when I was staying with Lee and Neil. You look out their window and you can see across the landscape, like several different farming styles throughout history. Mm-hmm. Because, and so much of it is the stone walls, but you can, you can see the stories right out in front of you, it's really magical. It is. It's, it is like, you can see it still all across the landscape. We've been farming for thousands of years, so since the Neolithic period, uh, on this island, and our kind of real foundations of English traditional farming come from. The rival of the Anglo-Saxons who kind of set up the, the pattern that would become English farming. So everything kind of centered around the village and communal land, um, the kind of strip farming that you would see through the medieval period as well. Everything is still there. Um, even down to like the layout of the hedges, the layout of the dry stone walls, they're, they're ancient. They've been marking our landscape for millennia. Obviously life has changed so much here, but it's so unchanged as well in so many ways. And I think farming, allows you to have that feeling of being connected through this long lineages of time. And the way that our landscape is marked by farming as well, that kind of passing down of those techniques. Through the ages and how many people, it's like an unbroken lineage. Yeah. Um, and I think, but as well, we're still about 90% I think it is now of UK farming is like small scale family farming. So we are dominated by that system still, which I, I'm very grateful for because I think it creates a completely different system. I think people who are second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth generation on their land are tied to it in a completely different way. Understand it in such a different way. I always wonder if. People can be hef, like sheep can be hef, that you are so linked to the LA landscape and you know it inside out, and I think you care for it in a different way than conglomerate farming. Yeah. Pass on skills that you've learned from your parents, that they learn from their parents, and you have this, this real tie. And I think it has created like a, like such a, a deep pride in both place and also the work that people do. I think that probably leads to a lot of the kind of, we have a really high animal welfare standards in this country. We've led the way even prior to kind of a lot of the EU rulings. And I think that's a part of this family farming system I think bolster that. People really have so much of emotional investment in their farms, in their farming, whatever their farming, be it livestock or horrible. Yeah. I was actually thinking about that yesterday and wondering why is it that farming in the UK seems so unique and different to me from the rest of the world? And I think obviously history is a major part of that. But I also wonder, if you can tell me, but is it that people don't have access to large acreage? Here people are farming just thousands and thousands and thousands of acres. You guys are literally on islands, like we are. We're on an island. We have, I was looking at the sizing of farms and actually, we're farming slightly bigger farms than some of mainland Europe. Um, but they're still not obviously massive compared to North American farms. And I think you and I talked about when you were here, this idea of not owning but of tenant ship. Yeah. So there are still thousands of tenant farmers that comes from a, obviously a really old system and that is deeply rooted in the way that we farm, that comes from through the Anglo-Saxon period, through the medieval period into like the menial system, uh, where you're tenanted to your it lord. Basically it's the sort of that feudalism, but it just lasted for centuries and people are still, tenants. So it's this idea that you don't have to own the land to be a custodian of it. Yeah. Um, and pass it on. There's lots and lots of people still making. A living, um, as tenant farmers, the largest sort of landlord for tenant farmers in this country is actually in the National Trust, which is a heritage organization. So the, the national trust, um, set up Edwardian period, to sort of safeguard mostly kind of built heritage assets, but has always included land custodianship in that as well. And I think it's interesting that heritage organization that you're number one for tenanted farmers, really. Yeah. Um, it's about that kind of sense of custodianship over the land and protecting, uh, ways of farming and, and protecting that system. Before we. Kind of pivot to talking more about the farming can you just clarify for people, you had said that your husband farms for several different people Yeah. What that might look like. Yeah. So his main, he's a, a stockman, so livestock, uh, which is really common in the north. There's a huge north south divide in the way that we farm. Um, that's down to, topography really. Climate and things like that. So a lot of livestock farming in the north. So he manages, I suppose a fairly small scale venture, for, a sort of a heritage organization. So farming in a traditional breeds in a traditional way, including rare breeds. So everything's done, without major machinery. There's a sort of 1940s structure, but a lot of it's done. In a traditional way, in a kind of way that hasn't changed for centuries. Just small scale management of quite a small flock, as well as a small herd of cattle. So it's very along the lines of the type of farming that existed here up until about the sixties. In our area, lots of kind of subsistence farming, essentially, like small holdings and things like that. Um, using local and native breeds. And then he does I think, I dunno whether that's common in North America, but there's lots of people that work in agriculture that don't have their own farm. But manage flocks or manage, some of the farming systems for other people and people kind of move around and do. Agricultural work that way. I suppose that is there in into kind of an agricultural work in a system that's probably quite hard to get your foot in the door for farming if you haven't grown up on a farm. Right. And haven't inherited a ship or, or the farm. I think it's, it is quite a hard, um, industry to kind of get you foot in the property door of,'cause there's just not a lot of farms. There used to be like council farm ships that came up, but there's disappearing and there's not many opportunities if you're younger to get into to farming that way. I think we talked a little bit about, um. Because you, you've spent time in the, the north, and I'm biased'cause I'm northern. Um, and farming looks different in the north and the south. Yeah. Because we have com we have different climates and um, soft geology. The topography is really different. So down south there's a lot of arable farming. It changes the landscape though. So you see less of the kind of enclosed fields with the head rows and the dry stone walls, they're much more open. Particularly now that heavier machineries being used. You just need your kind of open fields to be able to get in to do your big crops. So there's lots of like cereals grown down there, some of our veggies and things, uh, whereas the north, because the landscape's quite tough. Mm-hmm. The climate's quite tough. Um. The soil quality is often a bit poorer. It's traditionally always been focused around livestock grazing, particularly sheep. So sheep, have always been really important to, the way that farming has worked. And sheep do really well on like poor. Soil really. So you can kind of, you can kind of turn them out and it's sheep that have completely shaped the landscape and the look and that kind of traditional iconic English scene that you would think of. So when you think of the orchard Dales, it's, it's sheep that really, really transformed a lot of that. Mm-hmm. There's obviously cattle as well, um, but it's that kind of, uh, they shaped the field systems and they shaped the way, a lot of the economies, local economies work. So during the, the medieval periods, the English economy basically ran off wall. It was, uh, so profitable, uh, that it made us really, really wealthy and it was like a integral part of, of our economy. And that symbolism. Sort of has lasted culturally as well. So you can see it in a lot of towns in like place names or street names. And also our chancellor still sits on something called the wool sac, so Oh, cool. Yeah. The sack of all because it was so important to our economy there's so many of these kind of threads, even if people are urban and not living in rural communities, it's threaded through our culture so much, it's threaded through both the landscape and some of the words we use and the ITMs that we use and things. Uh, but in the north definitely, um, that kind of quintessential kind of dry stone wall landscape, is really shaped by that kind of farming. And it's really unique. I think you see it in know that some of the bit places like the Cowells where they have a lobster sheet, but we also have. The most native sheep breeds out of anywhere in the world, so about 64. And that is, um, they're a regional base, so they're kind of, we're bred to do well in their certain environments. And it's nice to still see it's changed a little bit. Like we've got, a few things on the rare breeds register, but you still see, native breeds dominating their regions, which I think is really nice to Yeah, to still see. Yeah, they're obviously still well adapted. Um, so you'll still see T Sheep a lot when you're in sort of Northumberland. The Herdwicks are protected in the Lake District, and then lots of swaledale when you're around the Yorkshire Dales, um, and mules as well that are crossed out as well, Dale. There's been imports from Europe because like everywhere productivity is key, isn't it? And you're trying to kind of make the most as things are getting harder and harder. And those European breeds beef all do really well. Um, but it's nice to still see how dominated kind of our farming is by local breeds and by native British breeds. Yeah. That's super special. Mm-hmm. Yeah, definitely. Compared to here, it's, there's very few people who farm native breeds of really anything. And if you do, it's not like, it's just so special there that it's so tightly bound to certain mm-hmm. Little areas. It's not remotely like that. Here you could drive. Like 20 hours and still find the same breeds, yeah. I do love it. I love when you go somewhere new and then you spot their, kind of their breed. I think there's something really quite special about seeing that. Um, yeah. That's so cool. I still, yeah. I still kind of get excited because they're so, like, they're so well adapted. I always think, particularly with the Herdwicks and the Lake District, they just, they look like they belong. The color of their fleece matches like one Right. Matches the fells. Yeah. They just, they're part of that landscape and have been for millennia and I think like to have still have them all there is amazing. Yeah. Gosh, where did I go? It's that famous, oh my goodness. U Tree Farm. Yes. U Tree Farm yeah, because they're tenant farmers, that's kind of part of their deal is they have to mm-hmm. Continue to farm Herdwicks. Yeah. There's a lot of, um, so the Lake District National Park, a lot of it, was safeguarded by Beat Potter, the children's author, famous obviously for Peter Rabbit. And, she accumulated, she sort of used her wealth once she'd sold her books to buy her first farm in the Lake District. She wasn't from the Lake District, she was from London originally. So, grew up in the city and, um, came from quite an upper middle class background. And lots of wealthy Victorians had holiday homes in the Lake District because it had this romanticized beautiful idea and people really loved the landscape and she fell in love with it, and she was integral to. Conserving it really, and conserving the farming and way of life. And, she acquired lots of farms that were tenanted as well over her lifetime and, donated them to the national trust of which she was a founding member as well. And so they, they hold like thousands of acres of that sort of Lakeland fell area, and there's lots of provisos in it because she left provisos about protecting traditional farming. And so they include things like keeping flocks of herwig, so keeping the native breed going, which I think is. It's wonderful really to still see them there and not see them replaced because they are, quite rare. Uh, and obviously they don't always have the best yield, I would say. But it's, it's the importance of keeping, that traditional method of forming because the herdwicks are formed in a different way than some of your loved breeds. They do so well on the Fells and they spend most of their life just turned out kind of communally on the Fells. So you've you've protected a way of life and a pattern of farming. Yeah. That wouldn't be there if you replaced some of the modern breed, because the modern breeds require different kind of care. For sure. Mm-hmm. You keep saying the word fells I'm sure that people listening have no idea what you're talking about. Yeah. Uh, so we all use things, differently interchangeably, but Dales and Fells, the Fells are um, sort of the Lake district has hills and mountain sea. Mm-hmm. Very mountain sea landscape. So the fells are each individual kind of peaks or the fells, so you get your fell ponies that are also a native English breeder from that area as well, that were all turned out communally. So it's really high kind of landscape. A bit mountainous sea, quite rough, very poor soil, and the sheep are just turned, turned off out. And they do so well on that harsh landscape. They do really, really well on it because they're perfectly adopted and have been bred to do so for um, millennia. Really? Yeah. Some of the farmers that I talked to, they're like, oh yeah, we won't see our, we won't see our sheep for eight months. No, they'll be totally fine. That's awesome. Yeah, they, they do really well. They just turn out, they're, um, the name Herdwick is, is Viking. It's north, comes from Old North and that area of the Lake district. Um, so the north of England was under. The Dean law, so lots of Viking settlements and, it survives in lots of place. Names, lots of names that, so her Heric Herik translates to Sheep Farm or Sheep Enclosure. That's where their name originally comes from. And they have a really old genome, so it's not proven, but it's probably likely that they were brought over, that they have links to sheep brought over. Wow. Fantastic. From, uh, and there's still sort of lots of practices around. So, um, they notch the ears, of certain flocks so that you know that that's your flock. And that's an old nurse practice that survived thousands of years. Wow. So some people still practice lug or ear notching. Obviously everything's tagged in this country now as well. And it survives in like unique sort of farming names as well. There's a really great word that's like a northern dialect word, for when sheep are cast. So you know, when pregnancy, like get on their back and they can't get up. And it's called, um, Rick Welter. And that is a northern term for when that happens. So a street, a sheep's rig, welter, it's, it's stuck on its back and that's north and it survives through thousands of years of just being passed down and these kind of isolated farming communities who did things in very specific ways. Mm-hmm. And I, I love that the traditions are still there. We're in sort of near the Durham Dales and still a lot of the older farmers practice what you might think are like superstitions maybe, I don't know. But like, the tradition of putting the top, so putting the Rams in on bonfire night so that you get your, lambing for 1st of April. So a lot of people still follow that and put their tops out on bonfire night. What is Bonfire Night? It's, uh, guy Fox Night. It's the 5th of November. It's when we celebrate, celebrate, commemorate, um, the, capture of Guy Foxs who was a Catholic, who tried to blow poem. It's a very, very English tradition. We have, uh, bonfires and fireworks and lots of traditions around it. I find it fascinating that it's, it, even though lots of sort of larger scale commercial farms have moved away from that because they need lambing seasons that are longer and fit in and they stagger and they start much earlier. But the people that are still farming, not massive flocks, still seem to follow that. And I think it's just quite a nice kind of, it's just tradition I suppose. Yeah. And traditionally weird like that can sometimes just be a bit ambiguous about it. But, uh, I suppose 1st of April, um, April Falls Day, Lamy. Wow. Wow. That's awesome. Yeah, and I think, um, given like things have obviously changed now because, people can bring their la like stock into sheds and things, but, uh, traditionally people would've been lambing outside, which is why you needed your good weather to start in April and you needed a lambing season that wasn't gonna be too cold or, you didn't have too much risk of snow and things. Mm-hmm. That's such a cool fact. Can you share some more interesting facts about farming in the uk? Yeah, I think it's so long and I think because it's so woven through our history, I like, that's what I find fascinating. It's so interlinked and tangled the way it comes down to us. Um, a lot of the early farming sort of through the middle Ages, was done by the monasteries. So they ran massive, massive sheep flock numbers, like thousands and thousands and thousands of sheep in their care. And they got really wealthy off, their sheep rearing. And then that, that system passes into the country estate, country house system. So, uh, the large country houses held. Masses of land, masses of massive and had small tenant farms on them who did their farming essentially. And then they paid rent and things, but the system stayed for so long in this country and it's still kind of in many places it's still there. So we're really close to, um, rabies Castle, which is a medieval castle and they are still one of the largest landlords for tenant farmers in our region. So when you drive through that area, all of their tenant farms are painted white, the line washed, and everywhere you look across the landscape running from county drum towards Comia, uh, belongs to them so that everybody's a tenant farmer still. For them it's lasted. Even though that system has sort of crumbled since the. It's first World War really, and particularly the second year World War. It's just the patterns have still kind of stayed. And I love that you can trace it through the landscape still, like when you're driving, you can still look across the fields and see the remnants of rig and furrow. A type of medieval farming system where oxen rather than horses, we used to plow. And it creates this really unique kind of bumping in the landscape where things were grown on the top of the ridge and things were grown in the bottom of the ridge. Different things that needed different water levels and things like that. Um, it's a really old system of farming, and obviously horses replaced the oxygen, but it marks our landscape still and a lot of them are protected, which is wonderful. So you can't plow them up. You can grate sheen things on them. But I love that you can still read so much of that history. Everywhere you go across our landscape is just, it's just marked. It's still there. Um, and you pass old sheep dips. Were the sheep, were washed in the rivers and there's just, there's all these remnants everywhere you look of it. And I always find that really fascinating and I think it makes you feel linked. Yeah. To the past. I think when I kind of got more into farming. Other side of things with my partner who follows that. I think it gives you a really different, view of life and the seasons and the pattern and kind of how big, how small you are and how everything continues in the cycle. And, I think you're really tied into the seasons in a really different way. I think about the seasons really differently'cause you think about, and I think there's something in it where you think you're doing the same thing that people have just done here for centuries and centuries and the way that people got ready for lambing season, the way the people got ready for this season. It's just, you're part of this long linked kind of circle and I think it makes you think about time in a less linear, progressive kind of way that you're, you're part of something so long. Yeah. Hmm. I guess I even experienced that to some extent here. And i'm not looking out at the horizon and seeing history really. Yeah. You're seeing trees that's, you're still part of that cycle, aren't you? You're still part of, you know that that's coming every year and no matter what. And I think it's something quite reassuring in that even when the world feels quite crazy life and nature and things just continues. Mm-hmm. And I think that's quite something quite nice in that for me. Yeah. When you think about your year in the uk, like what are some of your favorite times of year? I loved visiting and we got to see the flowers and I know that I wasn't even there during peak flowers. Yeah, you were. You would hear a little bit, um, early I. I love living somewhere where there's these seasons and I value the kind of distinctness between the seasons. But I, I love spring, I think, but kind of, um, when everything starts to come to life again, and it's one of my favorite times to walk, like in the Yorkshire Dales walk all, we've obviously got miles and miles of accessible public footpaths, so you can walk through farmland and really feel like you're in it. You're walking through people's kind of daily businesses, I suppose, where they're farming. But, um, you can walk through the sort of, and see all the lambs in the field and see the, the daffodils coming up and see the crocus is coming up and. That's one of my favorite times of year, I would say. Um, and every season has its special things, isn't it? But I think there's, so it's a very busy time for farmers, obviously, like they're flat out. But I think from people that I know that are really, quite more, maybe more intense farmers, there's something that they really do look forward to about loving. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think even though it's so labor intensive, it's something so rewarding I think about it. And, and we, we walk when my partner has done his sort of, when the big flux of laing is over and you walk around and he's turned his sheep out in the field and he, he just sort of quietly watches them. And I think that that's super rewarding. You've kind of poured so much energy into it is pretty intensive. And then it's just lovely to see. I think, I also like, like summer, there's always so much going on in, in summer. I've spoken to American friends who are always really shocked at like, the amount of tractors they're just going through, like all the villages and the towns. And obviously they're flat out in the summer, but, I love watching them work in the, in the summer as well. And then when they start combining in, in autumn, I think there's always, if you're in a community like ours, you're just surrounded by it all the time. So everywhere you look, when you look out across the fields, they're all working so hard. Everywhere. You see there's tractors and there's things going on, and I think even though we're a bit quite close to some big major cities, you're still so linked to it. You still see it everywhere. Um, it's still kind of part of most sort of life. You can access it really, you're not really, really removed from it. Yeah. Um, yeah. Which I think is nice. I've kind of been wondering for people who are urban, people who live in Manchester or mm-hmm. Maybe London, like I'm sure there are people who are super disconnected from it, mm-hmm. But it seems like it could be right next door to them. If they were able to just like drive a little bit. I'm wondering like what's your perspective on how young people are thinking about farming, how urban people are thinking about farming? We've seen, um, there's obviously been some, uh, some political stuff going on in this country with, the inheritance tax rule change that has had real pushback, and. Farmers, I think we saw when that happened. How supported actually. So, um, public kind of opinion of farming and farmers is very high. So even people that are, city wellers and things, um, really value farming and the contribution that farming makes to this country, and really value the farmers. There was so much support, for the farmers when they protested and um, I think that's really nice to see. I think for the farmers, that was really nice to see because I think it can sometimes feel like unthankful work. They're not turning massive profits in this country. It is hard grafted. They're working really hard, sort of being hit with a million different things from a million different angles. Things that are out of your control as well, like bad weather and some really poor kind of harvests and. Flooding and all sorts of things. And I think it made people feel quite appreciated. I hope it did. Um, uh, and kind of what farming brings to both our economy, which is quite a lot, um, as well as what it brings culturally. And I think that in, in terms of my kind of background and my heritage and history background, I've done a lot of work on concepts of Englishness and how we kind of think about our national identity and, um, the English have always thought of themselves as. Like a pastoral kind of nation. And even as things changed after the industrial revolution, there's this like constant mourning and grief for a lost kind of agricultural basis. And I think a lot of, when you look at kind of where people visit, both English people and people coming from abroad, what they're searching for, what they think of when they think of England, it is, it's rural England. It's the countryside, it's little villages, it's rural fields of dry stone walls. We think about ourselves and our national parks or our kind of, I. A lot of the countryside is we are really, I think we talked about like walking, how much people are into walking, but people really do value the countryside. They value, walking and village life. And you can see that in the kind of areas that get all the tourism particularly things like the late district national park in Yorkshire, Dales are so well known and, um, they get millions and millions of people who want to just be in that landscape and be in that environment and see those things going on. And we've seen a massive kind of, uptick in like, farm stays, you know, or so like Airbnb's on farms or, um, going along for lambing and things like that. I think do some things with the hedwigs and I think there's probably a desire if you're. Slightly urbanized as well to connect to that. We know that there's so much kind of research around wellbeing and green space and, there's a pull to agricultural life and rural life. Definitely. I see the same thing here. Even more so since like 2020, just people really, they're so desperate to get outside and connect to farms. Well, they were like, I'm hoping that we don't lose that momentum. I feel like we are starting to kind of lose it already. But when I visited Yew Tree, they were kind of talking like. I know this sounds crazy to you'cause I'm a farmer as well, but they're like mm-hmm. We're just gonna host people to pet the sheep. Like we're ba Yeah. You know, it's like basically an adult petting zoo. I think they do like huga Herdwick. Do they? Yeah. Huga herdwick. And, but it's, it's so true. I mean, there are just so many people who've never touched a sheep before. Mm-hmm. I think there's something really valuable in that. I think for people that are, are quite urbanized. I think there is some real value in maybe those things that we take for granted. And linking people. I've seen a real kind of, post COVID as well. And then with the things that are happening in farming, a lot more conscious like shopping habits. So people are more aware of where their food is coming from. Uh, more aware of supporting local businesses, butchers and grocers and, there's definitely been a kind of focus on buy British. You see it a lot in our shops, so things are marked with the union flag. And I hope that that stays'cause I think that that's an important element of value, the kind of high welfare farming that we have here and the way it produces really high quality, food. So we're particularly really like self-sustaining on quite a few cereal crops, but also dairy like we produce such good dairy in this country. I think probably say that for granted and it's. In part to our landscape and the breeds that we use. There is a lot of support for dairy and there's been a huge shift in shopping habits that have moved away, um, from dairy alternatives and back to like full fat, which is not, but like back to whole milk, back to proper butter, back to buying proper August British, um, dairy. There's been a huge uptick in people spending money on that. There were, people are definitely more kind of, of conscious of that and we're still consuming a lot of the nation, which is good. I loved visiting and seeing. Along the countryside, there's popping up a lot more and more of the milk vending machines. Yeah, they're sweet. I thought that was cute. They're great. Um, there's quite a few on, uh, the local farms and yeah, they're obviously been really well received, so they're, they're great. There's loads of different ones there, so there's places that do raw milk. Uh, so I'm pasteurized. And then also there's places that do it with all the flavors and things, but, it's such a great kind of, yeah, I think linking people to, I think people love that experience of going to the farm and getting the product from the farm cutting out the supermarkets. And I think like that we can only do more of that. I hope to see more of that. Yeah, across with other things we're not particularly great sustainability wise or sufficient wise in terms of like fruit and veg, but that's kind of a, obviously climate thing as well. Mm-hmm. Um, but it would be nice to see, to see more as, as our population's kind of grown a little bit to have a bit better food security.'cause we're an island nation, I think we need to be wary Yeah. Of that in the current format. Um, I would think you guys are also pretty self-sufficient in lamb. Right. Yeah. Lamb is our number one. That's probably because we produce so much of it, uh, but also, changing eating habits. So, lamb and mutton were, an integral part of English cuisine for a really, really long time, and they've kind of fallen off. Yeah. So not Morton particularly, but a lot of people don't eat lamb anymore. Um, I would like to see a bit of an uptick in that actually, because we produce really good, uh, lamb and moten and uh, we have the ability to kind of do, so we'd have all the different breeds. It would nice be nice to kind of see people eating a a bit more, I don't know what has particularly driven that shift, towards like poultry and, I think we eat a lot of pork. We can't keep up with the map. There's definitely, we're really good on soft welfare of cattle and sheep and things. I think we, there's definitely room for improvement on poultry and pigs. Yeah. Growing would be nice to see. Um, because I don't, you work, farmers work so hard in this country to uphold really high welfare standards that you don't want to see imported meat that doesn't have the same standards, uh, that it's raised here. So it would be nice to be, to be a bit more sustainable on that. How you'll shift people's palette back to, back to, back to Lamb is a hard one. Yeah. Back to Morton and Lamb, which were really like, it's only a relatively recent shift really. Yeah. And you don't see it on a, a lot of menus anymore. You used to see it on a, on a lot of menus, particularly for like Sunday roasts. Like lamb would always be an option, but I don't see it that often anymore. Yeah. That's so crazy. I'm sure it just is like globalization and media here in the states, when people find out that I raise sheep, I, I always get two questions. What would you raise sheep for?'cause people don't realize that sheep equals lamb equals meat. Most people haven't even tried lamb or they, they hear that my sheep don't have wool'cause I have hair, sheep. Okay. We're closer to the tropics. And so, you know, that's also a huge question. It's like, well, why would you raise sheep if you can't shear their wool? So many people have never even tried lamb, have never seen it on a menu. It's definitely not promoted in movies by any means. It's always hamburgers and chicken nuggets. And I think that has extended globally. I talked to several farmers, in Africa and mm-hmm. They import so much chicken and pork from Germany or China, when they've had ruminant animals on their landscapes for thousands of years. Yes. It's not weird that it's still, that it's everywhere, but that, that shift has happened. It is a really relatively recent one. Um, I would say that most of our, sheep are, there's like a sort of demographic distinction. So, um, goat and sheep are still really popular, meats in certain, immigrant communities in this country. So yeah. Here too, uh, yeah, so they will be eaten a lot in certain parts of the country. Uh, I would say that that's probably where most people's, uh, sheep. Now. Yeah, same. I literally only market to people from other countries. Mm-hmm. It's such a good meat and it's, so for us it's such an easy kind of one to, to raise. I dunno how you would, how you would push it. I'm thinking about some of the kind of more period, historical times where there's been kind of government pushes for milk or government pushes for this, for that. I wonder how you change the, the palette of a nation. Yeah. That's strange. Mm-hmm. Um, but I, I suppose, our local butchers stock it. Um, but I, I imagine it's not bought as much as chicken and, and pork and beef. I think those are probably the big three. Yeah. Can you just kind of, well, first of all, is there anything else that you wanna cover that we haven't? I, I think we talked about what made the North special, and I think there's lots of different things that make the north special and farming and the North special. Uh, there's so many experiences you can have kind of around farming. I always think, um, one that's probably confusing for people coming from maybe America particularly because of the way you kind of conceptualize land ownership. Yeah. Um, is like common land and communal grazing. So the fact that like flocks are kind of just turned out, onto to commons essentially, and then, they're gathered up and split into their kind of relevant flocks. After spending the kind of summer, uh, the gathers are really cool. I've seen lots more farmers, um. Particularly like in the, the Lake District and even in the Yorkshire Dales advertising, basically saying, we're doing our gather on this state, and you can come along on foot. And they, some of them take the quads. It depends on the, the landscape. They take lots of farmers, lots of dogs, and you gone foot and you essentially collect these thousands of sheep, from up in the fells and things. It's really cool. So I think if anybody has a, a chance to go together, like what a great kind of experience into a really different way of, of farming and a kind of something that's so untrained. I think that's really nice. Um, I think with the, did we talk about, we've talked about the kind of landscape a little bit, so the heteros and the, the dry stone walls and things. They're iconic part of, that English landscape, I think people don't realize how old they are. Yeah, so they're really old. Some of the hedge rows get back to the bronze age. A lot of them are medieval. They're really, really, really biodiverse. They're amazing. So both the drystone walls and the hedges are full of life. They create these little havens where sometimes there's not a lot of trees and things for little woodland birds and for insects and for hedge hogs. And, they create this protective little like wildlife highway essentially that yeah, animals can move through. We've lost about 50% of our heteros since the second World War. But there's been a big drive, with some government initiatives and, um, charities as well to, um, reinstate. So there's a big kind of conservation movement to bring back a lot of hedges. They're laid in. Um, they're traditionally laid, so they, they cut them and laid them and then they mesh together to create these, we don't need to answer. Um, and then lots of work as well, like repairing dry stone walls, it's a really old, technique of building walls without mortar so that you kind of interweave your walls. It's such a fascinating thing to see. And, uh, they were done when the, the fields were cleared of stones, essentially. And to think that that technique got handed down for like millions of years is amazing. Yeah. A lot of, a lot of the ones that you see now actually date from the 18th century onwards. Um, from the 16 hundreds we had something called, um, the Enclosure Act. So there were a number of different acts of parliament that essentially took away that common kind of farming system, common lands that had been used since Saint Saxon period and enclosed them into private parcels of land. So, it changed the landscape into what we think of now into these smaller field systems with their walls and their hedges. It really, it changed rural life as well.'cause it drove a lot of people out of rural communities, and into towns. And this was a real kind of shift for the agricultural and the industrial revolutions. It created a lot of poverty, um, because of the way it complete sort of land ownership went into certain areas and then not others and people couldn't survive. But that's really shaped a lot of, of how we, how farming is done now, I suppose. And that's the pattern that people are probably thinking of now. And they go, the Yorkshire Dales is really unique. Landscape actually as well. I think you'll have seen that when you're there. For such a small island of really like Britain and then within our kind of constituent nations, there's such a range of kind of geography, and landscape for such a small place. And I think that that's always quite fascinating. So you can go to these different regions and they look so different and the stone is different. So the buildings are different and the styles are different and the stone work is different and the way that they do something here to 20 miles away is different. And there's, you can look at kind of pictures and kind of place exactly where they are in England. And the Yorkshire Dales is unique in its landscape, which you'll have seen when you were there. Yeah, it was amazing. Yeah, it's beautiful. And this kind of, the, the Dales rolling through with the kind of patchwork of dry stone walls and also all the field bonds. There's thousands and thousands of field bonds that were built from solar, 1600 somewheres, um, where they were a bit further away from some of the farmsteads, but they would cut the hay meadows in the summer and then store it the hay. Uh, and it allowed them to kind of have these little satellite they're often called, lathe is the, the term, but cow house. A cow house. And they, um, cattle would over winter in them and things. And it allowed a bit more, productivity, without moving things to and from the main farm side, which was really labor intensive. But that's such a unique thing to the Dale was like looking through down the Dale and seeing all those old ancient fuel bonds, dotting Yeah. The landscape is so nice. I think the preservation of history in each little unique area is pretty fascinating. It was so cool to see, and especially because, you know, younger generations of America aren't really learning about that part of England anymore, mm-hmm. I don't know if it is Hollywood driven, honestly a lot of our things are very just culturally driven, but we learn so much about royalty and about states and the big houses. Even now, every third person I know is watching some kind of English countryside show, but it's about royalty or it's about wealthy families. Yeah. Um, in some way so I think that coming and seeing it myself in person and like. Hearing perspectives like yours, um, that are just like, actually English is like really, really valuable. I think the, the value of our, there's something, I always try to pinpoint it. There's something in our culture that has always valued, um, our heritage. I think we, that's why we've kept a lot of it. Um, it's quite an old value, I think really. We didn't knock things down. We just kind of repurposed them. Uh, and I think even in, it's not just our, our castles or state homes that are preserved, it's, it's everywhere. And you'll have seen that when you come around, the villages are preserved, the pubs are preserved, the little field bonds are preserved. Um, people do, there's a lot of value still in that vernacular kind of heritage. And for me, that's. That's England as well as, you know, and I love the history of state at homes and I love those things. That's also not my history. I have a working class family background and um, I think you find the, the essence of England in those rural communities. Mm-hmm. I think one of my favorite things is when we go to the mart. So, um, there's still quite a few small marts where you take your livestock to sell them and then you, you bid on them. And, uh, I love going along. I sort of tag along just because I find it the most fascinating sort of social experience. It feels like an ability to step back in time to like a, an older England. And I think it's'cause a lot of, a lot of our farmers are quite old actually. Mm-hmm. Um, it's de it is tipped on that end. But there's just something, um. You get a real sense of community. Like people really know each other still. They really know their areas. They really know their family links. They, uh, they carry their history. And I always think that particularly about our rural communities, they, they are really such experts in, in their history. Uh, I moved a, a building for work. We moved a farmhouse, um, that was derelict. Uh, it's just across the sort of dale from us. And there's hundreds and hundreds of these farmhouses that disappeared, as the lead mines closed and the farming practices changed. And we moved this building, uh, and we couldn't get to the bottom of the name. It was called Spains Field, and we couldn't figure out. It paid loads of different spellings on maps from the medieval period onward. And, uh. When I went into that community, they immediately knew like what the name was. Wow. So it's a corruption of, um, spins Field and Spain is a, a dialect word in this region in Wayde for weaning. So when you wean, you separate your lambs from the mothers. That would be the field that you would put them in. And it was so obvious to them. Yeah. And it made me really shift in like, how I thought about, um, experts, you know, like that you're not an expert. Actually, people are really well versed in their own history and their own landscape. They know it really well. And I, I love going out into those rural communities because they, they carry so much of their history with them and they know their landscape so, so well. Yeah. Uh, it made me think really differently about sort of not waltzing into a situation, you know, with a certain educational background into whatever, but that actually people know. A lot of their own kind of, and carry their own history really Well, and I think you find that when you go into rural parts of England, I always encourage if people are visiting from abroad, particularly America and places as well, but from anywhere that you, you go and get into these kind of communities.'cause I think that that's where you feel the core of Yeah. Or with the culture shock. But you feel the core of what makes England, England, when you get out there, you can visit castles and stately homes and things, but you go to the pub with some of those farmers and you, you feel it. You feel the way that they think about where they're from. Definitely. Yeah. Wow. That's a beautiful story. Yeah. I just, with planning both my impromptu trip last year, but then also this trip this year. Mm-hmm. Um. I had a couple people ask like, well, you know, are we gonna go see all the castles and like all the things and like, that is not this trip. It was just a really amazing opportunity to really get, to feel like it was real life. Get to actually meet like genuine down to earth farmers and see what is still, like they're still preserving that everyday way of life now is really special. Yeah, I think that that's, that is a huge, that would've been for me, like a draw for your trip to, like, you can, I, I love visiting, like, don't get me wrong, I love historic buildings of any kind, but there's something so different to be found in not a sort of presented history of the past via going through a heritage organization. But actually I lived kind of passed on every day. Um, people living in the buildings that they've, you know, and living in the communities that their ancestors lived in and farming farms that their great-great-great grandparents farm. Those are really different things. Um, I went for, we went for a walk in the Yorks Dales and we bumped into a really old farmer and he was fifth generation on their farm. And I said to, to come and walking, imagine. Imagine that you sort of, you grew up here, your parents grew up on that for your great grandma. That how you understand that landscape so differently. And it was, when we were talking about it was right sort of as the inheritance tax came along and I said, how do you convey that intangible value to people that live in the city that make these kind of Yeah. Um, policies and things. How could they ever comprehend what it means to be fifth generation, hundreds of years on your farm? And all the stories. And all the links and the way you know your community and the way you know your land. How can you. If you don't experience that, if you've not had an in on that, how can you, how can you convey that it's so intangible. It maybe doesn't translate on paper to a certain amount of profit or, you know, that small scale forms aren't viable or whatever. But like there's an intangible value system that I fear of, of losing, um, with the loss of small scale farms. And yeah, I think that, I think those are irreplaceable values and you can't put monetary things against'em Once they're gone. They're gone and they're, they're, they've been threaded and woven through our, our culture and our history for centuries. Uh, I fear those being lost and I don't know how, how do you convey that to, to people that live in a, an urbanized setting that don't have that same kind of link to landscape community seasons? Um, it would be nice to kind of foster those links. A bit more. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. Can you just share like a personal story of why it's important for you to preserve this way of life? Uh, yeah. I. I dunno whether this is like a personality trait or'cause I have always been sort of deeply, um, I've always loved the countryside. I've always loved heritage since I was little. That's why I followed this path. It's why I, I worked for a heritage organization. And I think as I got more into farming by a car, that's particularly the sort of bolstered my desire, um, to, to ensure that this remains, I think being in a, a rural community and I, I didn't grow up in one. I grew up in Manchester, so I grew up in a, in a city. I've had access to animals. I had horses, like I was into horses and things growing up, but not farm animals. Um. I think being in a rural community really changes the way you think about community. It changes the way you think about your ties to the land, the way you, you feel about your area. Um, I live in county Durham, so it's one of, it's still very, very rural, one of the least populated English counties. And I've run into farming all the time. But, uh, it's a hard one to convey, like to people in the city.'cause sometimes I think people can be a bit dismissive. You know, why, why does it matter if we do just like get rid of family farms and import everything? We just import everything from the eu and, um, I think the loss of the family farm would be, so destructive for this country, um, in terms of many, many things. It would completely transform the landscape. It would mean that a lot of land went for building. You would become more urbanized, so you would see a loss of your countryside, a loss of open space, uh, a kind of loss of the traditional landscape that we really associate. It would mean a lot of people would lose access to green spaces, uh, but also means like a loss of animal welfare in terms of our food, our food security. But I think it's a cultural thing. I think it's woven through who we are and I, I feel like that's worth protecting. Rural communities still hold a lot of, um. They're not super traditional anymore, but they, they hold a lot of values that I think are quite important. So like a sense of custodianship, a way of thinking about the land, a way of thinking about their community helping one another. And, um, yeah, sort of being quite like, like LinkedIn kind of, not community dependent, but you know, like there's a, a lot growing up in Manchester and then living out here. I see how different life is and, and how much value I think people get from living in these smaller c um, life is hard, you know, it is really hard work for farmers right now. I do feel for lots of people who really depend on farming for their livelihood, it is not easy. They're struggling. I think there's a lot of policy shifts we could make in this country to really support them. But it's great to see the public behind them. And I think there's a yearning in this country for a kind of the values that are represented in farming and in rural communities. I think people maybe feel that those are missing from their lives, like a bit of a void. I think if you live in somewhere that's really urbanized and you have a very urbanized life, it there's something I. Not there. Is there, there's something, um, I think there's something very human and that's how we're meant to live. That's how we lived for most of our existence. Linked to the land, linked to the seasons, following that pattern of, of life. And I think urbanization obviously removed us from that. And there's probably, uh, to our detriment hugely. And I think that that's why people still choose that hard life. It might probably be very easy for a lot of pharmacists think I'm gonna throw the towel in. Like, it's just too hard. But it isn't a job is that, it's like a vocation. It's their life. It's, it's who they are. It's imprinted in, in them. And I'm really grateful we have so many like really hardworking, uh, farmers that. Work so hard. Really great welfare. There's lots of really good stuff going on, in terms of like conservation and like, land management where we've kind of seen a bit of, um, loss of kind of habitat and overuse of soil and things. I think if you feel tied to your place, you care for it better, don't you? You look after and you look after your community a bit better. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's beautifully said. Thank you. I love it. I think that's a great way to end it, if that's all right with you. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Super.

1:06:24

If you enjoyed this episode today, next week and the following, I'll be posting interviews from other folks in the uk. One, a farmer in this area we chatted about, and then another, a basket weaver in Scotland I think it will all blend together very seamlessly. So tune into those.