Sheep Dogs, Farming, and Food Systems with Miller Farming

Check out the Miller family on IG! https://www.instagram.com/miller.farming?igsh=NnJ6OGJwNzgxbGV0

Transcript

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Welcome to the Global Stewardship Podcast. Want to let you know before you start this episode that if you have not listened to the previous episode with Shannon, it's titled, fall in Love with Farming in Northern England, then I recommend listening to that one first. Just because it kind of sets the scene. We start to chat about some of these topics and then in this episode we actually talk to a family of farmers in the Cumbria area in the Fells that you learn about with Shannon. And so you get the in depth everyday look into what we talked about last week. So go check out last week's episode first if you haven't already. I am honored to have three guests on the show today. All together, the Miller family, and just think you're going to learn so much from them, especially if you are not from the uk, They have a beautiful story of how they started farming and teach us a lot about sheep dogs. And ultimately what this podcast is all about, how to be a better land steward and how they have transitioned over the years to doing that better and putting more care into the land that they are nourishing every single day. We're chatting with Gary, Hazel, and Tamar all on the show today. Thank you for listening.

Audio Only - All Participants 1:20

first of all, can you please give listeners a rundown of who you are? There's three people on this call. Maybe introduce yourselves and then share a bit about your family's story and your history. Well, I'm Gary Miller and I am actually a plumber as well as a farmer. But I spent a lot of my early life, working on my uncle's farm, discovered that I really like sheep. I'm a first generation farmer. My parents had nothing to do with farming, but really like everything about farming, the countryside, wildlife, everything else. Married, Hazel, my wife, Sam, Hazel, yeah, a lot of the farm. What I do is looking after the hens and everything, but I'm obviously the mother. We've got four children. Between us, there's this Tim that's on the call as well, and. the other three have been massively involved with the farm when they were younger, but they've all gone different ways. they still help at weekends and such, like, so yeah, my involvement is basically keeping everybody happy and fed, and just yeah, trying to keep things running as smoothly as possible. And also, I did the finance of the side of the business, so I'm trying to keep the boots balanced a little bit at times. Wow. A very important job. And I'm tamer. so I'm the second daughter. I've always been kind of interested in the farm, um, but in the last couple of years I've started working, nearly full-time here. I'm two days, working for the National Farms Union as well, um, and our local office. Um, I just do sort of general stuff, working, organized events for members and things like that, um, through that role. But what I enjoy most is being on the farm, being outside, working with the animals. I left school and did a diploma in agriculture and then went traveling to New Zealand, worked on, farms over there, and then came back and did a degree in animal welfare behavior. And since I've worked, um, at Scotland's Rural College and then, ended up what I'm doing now, so yeah. Wow, beautiful. Probably overqualified for working for Rose. That's awesome. Can you guys share how you got the land if you were not born into this? Uh, yeah. Well, my parents weren't farmers, just like Gary's, but my grandparent were, were, were farmers. They were on a tented farm, uh, from 1960 to 1980. but the owners of the farm basically wanted them off the farm. so they offered them 50 acres of land. This is at Watermill, four miles from us, if they would leave the farm early. So they got that at a really reasonable price. So they bought that, they came back to pen Ruddick, and they sort of lived off the rent of that farm and pensions as they got older and everything. But when the schemes were changing, how many years ago was that? Uh, 2002 we took over his grandfather's land. Yeah. That land. So we'd, we'd rented some ground off them, which maybe sounds a bit crazy because it was, it was their ground, but it was their income that they were living off. So we had to rent the ground to set off we'd, and then when the schemes changed, and sadly we'd lost my grand, my grandmother then signed the Landover to us. As I say, my parents, they went into farming. they had worked on the farm when they were younger and, you know, had involvement, but they didn't want to farm. My dad had a wagon and he drove a wagon up and down the road when I was younger. And then mom actually, and dad bought milk rounds. So they spent. My youth was spent jumping out of cars, dropping bottles of milk off at people's doorsteps and stuff like that. Wow. So they didn't produce, produce the milk, but they delivered it as a, to the customers. so that's sort of how we got some of the land. so we were really lucky we inherited that 50 acres and there was a couple of fields.'cause originally Grand was from Pen Ruddock, which is where we live now. And he, he bought a couple of little fields while he actually lived in the village before he went to that farm that was attended his farm. so we, we got them fields as well, but we've also bought fields over the last Yeah, it's a funny, it's a funny thing. We couldn't afford to buy a farm,'cause farms are so expensive. so we started off and we had about 18 acres, 15 or 18 acres, which was Hazel's grandfather's. That was in the nineties. Our house that we are in here now was built in the field next to Hazel's grandfather's house. and we never really classed our, until our children were going to school. We didn't class ourselves as living on a farm. You know, we just, we had a house and we had some fields, and we had some animals, but it wasn't, it wasn't like full-time farming. But as the kids grew up, and they had friends or anything, they'd say, well, do you live on a farm? And these lots said yes, and until that point, we hadn't really collapsed it as a farm, but now it's still a little bit disjointed, our farm, because we don't, we only have about four fields, five fields that are joined onto our house and our buildings. Mm-hmm. All of the other fields. We have to go across a road. There's the a 66, which is a, a, a main road through Cumbia, and we've got land on both sides of the A 66. So, it's, and then we've got the 50 acres, which is four miles away. That was on Hazel's, the grandfather's, the farm that he was tenanted to. So it's a little bit. Split up. You know, there was a farm for sale two years ago. Close to us. It was 120 acres. The house was derelict, the buildings were all falling down. There was next to no fences on any of the fields. It was 120 acres, like I say, and it was over a million pounds. Yeah. So for us to get, we, we just, you can't do that. But what we could do was if there was a field came up for sale next door, 2002, we bought two fields that was right next door, which is where we have the hen shed now. We paid 27 and a half thousand pounds for them, or we bought some on the other side of the main road, which was 40,000 pounds. just little bits and pieces whenever we could buy it. We've kind of stretched ourselves to try to build the farm business up. That's pretty crazy. It's an unfortunate story around the world that farmland is becoming more and more expensive. For sure. I think big farmers have the means, the ability and also the, the financial backing behind them to be able to, to buy land if it comes up for sale next door. And small farmers or people like us that are just, trying to get into it, it's really quite difficult to get a foot on the ladder and get started. Yeah. But, we keep doing it. Yeah. For some reason. beautiful. So what is it that you farm? What do you do? It all started with sheep. when me and Hazel met with each other, we were actually in the same year at school, went to SWA High School. We didn't really know each other that much at school. But, when we were met, when we were 21 and one of the big attractions with me was that I was a plumber and they were doing their guest house up at the time and they needed a plumber to fit new bathrooms, heating system and everything else. So I ticked that box and I really liked cheap, so I ticked that box as well. And this is 35 years later. Wow. So you met while you were plumbing their home. no, we were out in the, in the local town. but I, yeah, it wasn't long after that that I was doing the plumbing work in there. At the time I was in business with my parents, and they still had the milk rounds, but my brother was a chef and I'd got involved in, we bought a little restaurant and guest house, so we were starting to do that up. It was a little bit run down. He did work and yeah, went out on a night out with my friends and met Gary that night. So it was a bit weird. It wasn't long after that that we actually know I had a few sheep of my own, because my mother and father had a small field where they used to live, so I kept sheep part-time at my uncle's farm and part-time at, at the little field that I had where I lived, Hazel's mother had a handful of sheep, just round here on a couple of fields that they had. And it wasn't long before we went and bought some sheep. Mixed the flocks together and it was sort of, yeah, since then, then, so what we've got now is, yeah, so that would be, that would be the early nineties, 92, 93 when we would sort of buy a few more sheep and start running things together. and we've kind of built it up over the years. Sheep farming is the main, it isn't the main income because sheep farming doesn't make as much, the prices are really good at the moment, but what it costs to keep sheep and your return from it isn't really huge. The, the hen shed selling, free range eggs. Is the main income on the farm, which we have 6,000 free range, laying. He, and then we've got, what, we've got 300, 320 breeding sheep. Yeah. And then we've got about 30 head of cattle. Yeah. which we've just gone, gone into cattle a bit more these last few years with, with more native breeds of the, the Brit Galloways, belted Galloways that sort of look at themselves, stay outside. we have one jersey milk cow that's for our own, milk, which is very time consuming, but we, it's dried up at the moment actually, but, but, it's good for the tours as well. If we have people come and farm, they can see us milking the cow. It's, it's quite a nice thing. And I, I love the jerseys as well, so, I've worked a lot of dairy farms, so it's nice to have one of our own. no, that's so cool. Pigs. Yeah. We've got, how many pigs have we got?'cause they go through the farm shops, so we have different numbers at different times, but what will it be at the moment about? Yeah. 20. Yeah. 20. Yeah, 20. So nice. and then we've got 11 sheet dogs and five horses, few goats, a mini pony, all sort of collections of things'cause farm tours as well, so, yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely. You have to with the tour. Yeah. So just to give you a little bit of a story on, on, on, what's happened with all that lot. We, we now own a hundred acres of our own, although it isn't all paid for. We rent another 150 acres off local landowners and, and re a retired farmer, that we rent some off. So it, it's still quite a small farm. A few years ago we had borrowed money to buy land. when the egg price was good and then the egg price price kind of crashed. there's the, there's, there's bird flu. Evian influenza is a big worry. The supermarkets have such a hold. There was an oversupply of eggs and the egg price crashed and we really, we were, we were quite short of money. I was still doing three days a week doing plumbing work because that was a regular income. Yeah. we actually had more sheep at the time and like 450 sheep that we were la in it and slightly less cattle. but. We needed to do something because we, we didn't, we were short of money to cover our bills each month, and Hazel said, we need to, it was either me go back to plumbing work, which would've meant we would've to downsize everything on the farm because, you couldn't, you couldn't fit it all in. So Hazel came up with some ideas. One was a farm shop that we sell our own produce of the farm, farm shop. So it's all our own animals, which is, beef, lamb. Although we don't actually sell it as lamb, we keep it till it's older. So it's like, 18 months, two years old. Yeah. We sell pork through the, the, the shop free range eggs through the shop, and sometimes honey, because that's the other thing that we didn't say about, I've got 10 colonies of bees as well too. So when we've got honey, we sell that through the farm shop as well. That was our first sort of diversification. The second thing was, I do a sheep dug demonstration throughout the summer on a Thursday night. For an hour. it's a touristy area in the Lake district. and that makes it a little bit of income. And we started doing farm tours for the general public for people to come. We did open Farm Sunday where we had a lot, about 75 local people came onto the farm to see kind of what we do. it went from there. It didn't really do much the first year, but the second year we had an American travel company get in touch with us, and we've done for the last, have we three years, we've done three years between, between 40 and 52 as each year. Which is kind of, yeah, which is kind of like, they call it a day in the life. So they come on farm, see what we do, have a tour around, I would say, our philosophy on nature, friendly farming, all that sort of stuff. have a bite of lunch in the house. Which is our own produce. And then we do a sheep dug demonstration to finish the tour off and it makes a lot more money than actually farming does. Yeah, no, that's amazing. That sounds really incredible. It's all down to Hazel. I didn't used to like talking to people. Yeah, I know. It is a muscle You have to exercise for sure. Yeah. A lot of farmers are like that. At the time we, we didn't know what would work and we are still at that point where we are still doing all three and but then, I dunno, so we are still doing all three. Ideally we would've liked to said, oh, well this really works, we'll leave the other two or whatever. But it's hard when you get, they all make a little bit of money. Well, the farm too is probably more so as a, as a business we've carried on and it's allowed us in to invest better in different things we wanted to do in the business. So that's sort of how it's worked. Yeah, it's worked well. Very cool. Awesome. you guys have a lot of things going on. how on earth do you juggle all of that? What does a day in the life look like for your family? well, different times of year, different things, but we are, we're always out checking the stock. Got, I've got the eggs to pack every day. so obviously five and a half thousand eggs to pack by hand every day. they do come by down a conveyor convey. Well, yeah. But, but yeah. And then we've obviously got, at the moment there's lot things to feed with hay outside because we, we've not really got any grass left at the moment. and trying to save the land, so for the spring, so some of the sheep are in the shed, so they're obviously to, to bed up and, and feed with hay and stuff as well every day. And then obviously different times of year, there's a lot of going on the summer with, with, doors in sheep and, and shearing and all dipping, all those type of things. So yeah, the moment we're putting a shed up as well, because we've, got a, a, a grant for, it's for water quality to keep cleaning water clean and dirty water, not running off the farm. So we're putting a shed up to do that concrete in some yard. And we're also doing our farm shop up because it was just an old stable and we've kind of lined it out and insulated it and making it into, it's still gonna have a rustic look to it, but it's just gonna be a little bit more professional. So that's what we're kind of busy with as well. We are doing the, we are doing the food prep area in the back of it. And then, what I would like to do would be to like, make, pre-made meals from the farm and source all the ve as local as possible, the potatoes and, everything like that. It's a really good cook. So, she would be good at that, but probably got enough things going on, yeah, I think there's a market for it because, so much of the pre-made meals are quite processed and I think, to say, well, all these meats come off the farm and the potatoes came from, the farm down the road and the veg and stuff. And I think it, we would actually like to grow vegetables and stuff on the farm, but it's just how much you can do. we would like to fend a bit of a field off and say, well, right, we're gonna have a. A horticulture area to grow that produce and sell that produce through the farm shop, but we would probably need somebody. That knew about that to be able to do that because we've got plenty going on without it. Really? Mm-hmm. How we get it done is Hazel's the boss and she tells us kind of what we've got to do when we get on. I think. So, yeah, when the two are on, it's quite hard to to juggle everything and get the other jobs done, but maybe while they're doing a tour, I'll be doing the other jobs on the farm or, or whatever, so we kind of have to make it work. whatever, whether it's working late or starting early or whatever. Yeah, yeah. The starting early bit, I struggle with, I'm not the best person. I'm definitely not the, early morning person. I'm more of the night hour. We tend to work Morning person. Yeah. I go out and work after, so, but on, on an evening, if it's a late night, I often, just work till it gets dark. Yeah. But I'm not quite as good in the morning. I don't get up just as it gets light or anything. Yeah. We don't jump outta bed and go yippee. Yeah. I think a lot of people think farmers are up like before the sun, like really, really early. But a lot of us are out really late'cause that's, that's much better for us yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So how do you navigate working with family every day? That sounds tough. Yeah, there's quite a few arguments at times. Um, there can be, um, it's probably a little bit of os you know, we expect. You know, we don't see what we've got to do with being a big job because when we first started, you know, and you only had 25 sheep and two sheep dogs and a couple of horses, it wasn't a lot. You know, so we always had it that, you know, our youngest child at the time, um, was the one that fed the dogs, you know, as a general, you know, the, the, the children got chores to do and they would help with things. So as the older children, as they got older, they would help us with something outside. Um, and the youngest child ended up feeding the dogs, but always sort of getting a job done. But if we have to do a list for something, you know, if, if we go away for a, a day, a day or a weekend or something, if we have to write a list for everything, that's to do, it's a big list. Yeah. But for our children and ourselves, you don't really see it as a big list because you just say, well, that's you, that's what you do every day. And you just get on with it. Yeah. The thing where it falls down is if somebody's ill in the household. Everyone else falls out with that person because that we've got to do the jobs of the person that's ill. You know, it doesn't happen very often. It doesn't happen, but you're ill enough not to work. That's right. Fresh air does your good, you know, so that's the, I think it's, it's, it's always gonna be challenging working with family, but I think you've got that thing of you just say whatever you think, you get it out. We sometimes might have a screaming match out in the yard, but once it's said it's done, we move on. And that's, that's it. At least we can get it out and move on. Whereas sometimes people, you're not as well equipped where they might not, it might rumble on as a gr you know, as a grievance. Whereas we just, you even some families, yeah, even some families will keep quiet about something. And that's not us. We, if there's something to say, it'll be said. We'll sort it out and Yeah. Get on with things. Yeah. It's definitely not easy working and especially'cause we've sort of built the business up and it's not that we say our ways that the right ways,'cause that isn't, that isn't right. We've learned by doing so many things wrong, financially, wrong, you know, and that's a big learning curve, uh, that you learn by. Uh, but it's sometimes hard if the kids come up with maybe something that we think that's not gonna work or we feel like that's not gonna work. That can be a bit of a challenge for us because, uh, you know, I mean, we've lost many other things like that before and you don't wanna do it again. But then, yeah, you know, it's, you've also got to give your children a little bit of responsibility. You know, it's quite, it's quite hard. But, you know, I always thought it was fantastic when the kids went to school and they came home and told you something that you didn't know yourself. You know, they'd learn something. Um, and, and you've got to accept that when they, you know, Tam's got an animal, you know, animal a degree in animal welfare and behavior. She knows stuff that we don't know. She knows all the science and the, and the um, the research behind things. Yeah. And if she comes up with ideas, we do have to sort of try that out to a certain extent. We don't always totally agree, but it, unless you give your children, you know, that's how we learned, you know, by doing that ourselves. So you've kind of got to give your children that chance. Yeah. True. Super cool. Um, before we move on, you guys had kind of mentioned, uh, Tamer. You had mentioned your time in New Zealand. Are you more involved than the rest of your siblings? Or how has your journey all funneled into what you're doing every day? Hmm. Yeah. So I don't know. I think, uh, like as Deb said, we obviously all helped out when we were younger. Mm-hmm. And I used to think sometimes God, like this isn't always but much fun, obviously the rain, the cold, working hours, all that kind of thing. And to be honest, it probably maybe has put my siblings off that kind of thing, the lifestyle of being busy all the time and, and not making an awful lot of money out of it. But I think I've just got that, that sort of passion about farming. I think I do. I didn't really think I realized that I had that until I went and worked other jobs and things. And it's not till you kind of do that and you go, oh, this just isn't fulfilling. Like working on a farm is Yeah. Um, you know, and, and do having that purpose that the animals need you. And it's also the thing of. You know, if you, I've worked on other farms and things and it's, it's like I still enjoy it, but it's not the same because you're not seeing that animal from, from birth to all the way through to, you know, whether it's a cow and has this calf this year and that calf that next year. It's whole life that you get to, to witness that and, and sort of reap the reward of, of seeing that. Whereas when it's somebody else's cow and it's somebody else's decision, what happens to it and how they look after it and stuff, it's not as, as rewarding as having your own, um, and stuff. And I think that's what, why I enjoy working at home so much. Um, but yeah, I think it's, I think it's just a, a combination of the things that I like being outside and like the animals and, um, and ended up being quite passionate about it. And the same that the ethos that my parents have with the farm, you know, um, farming with nature, um, and all that kind of thing. It sort of aligns with how I, uh, see things as well. Tim is fantastic in that she's really good at recognizing the sheep. She knows most of our sheep, most of our sheep are weight fist. Sheep, you know, they might have speckles on the faces and stuff, but they do look fairly similar. But he, Tim is really good. You know, she can tell you, well, this one had two lambs last year and it was in that field, or, you know, and it sort of gives, you know, life history, you know, and that is, you, you, you only get that with being around them a lot. You know? And, and you know, part of it, when I started, I got three sheep as three weeks wages when I was working on my uncle's farm when I was 16 years old. And I'd never really owned animals before. You know, my mother, um, and father had a, a dog and a cat, and the cat was kind of classed as my cat. Which, but you know, do you own, do you really own a cat? They're quite independent. Yeah. Whereas the sheep, I, it was amazing when I first got sheep because I just thought it was great to own sheep. And it, you know, the, the breeding, you know, the decision which ram you put with them took whatever. It was all, you know, it was within my control, you know, and I, and I just, it's a connection to, it's a connection to food production, but it's also a connection to the land and history, you know, shepherding and, and, and all that sort of stuff. And it just, it's kind of in you. I don't know. It is really hard to explain. Yeah. But it's kind of in you and TE's, I think TE's got it more in her than our other children. Mm-hmm. You know, Kyle, Kyle, our youngest, he's a, he's an apprentice plumber, but he is kind of realized that you can finish work at five o'clock at night and forget about it. That is nice. Yeah. Whereas with farming, you know, and he is really good. There's been odd things that we've done over the last few weeks and he'll come out and help, it'll be after work and, and whatever, or on a weekend, but, um, I don't think he wants it full time. Mm-hmm. So you guys keep saying nature friendly farming, that's kind of a term that is really like a UK term. Um, we definitely call it different things here. Can you give like your definition of nature friendly farming on your operation? Yeah. Um, I was really into bird watching and wildlife and moths and trees and all sorts of things when I was, when I was a kid it wasn't really cool, you know, to, to like all them sort of things. Um, as I was a bit older, working on a farm and, and having sheep, you know, I worked in the construction industry. It wasn't really cool to like farming and sheep and it's just, it is just something that we've always done. We didn't want to farm in a way that was going to. You know, be negative to the, to the environment. You know, I don't really like labels of, of nature friendly farming or regenerative agriculture wherever, because it, it, it, it, it puts you as if you've got to fit into a box. Right? And we don't really fit into a box. You know, a lot of what we're doing is um, you know, it's centuries old, you know, you know, we don't, we don't use fertilizer. You know, we did use a little bit of fertilizer in the past, but not much. But I'm also a fly fisherman and I've seen the state of the rivers and how much they've got enriched with nitrogen and phosphate and everything else, and the pollution. And I didn't want to put, you know, a fertilizer on our land that was going to run into the rivers and enrich the rivers and the lakes and stuff too much. So it wasn't really that much of a conscious dec decision. It was just something that we wanted to do. You know, talking to Hazel's grandfather, he used to lay. Um, a hedge a a year, you know, and this is something that other people don't do all over the world, but if you either copies a hedge, which is chop it right off, or um, lay the hedge, you're creating a stock proof barrier out of a, a living groin, you know, bushes and trees and everything. And that's gone on for years and years. You know, it's fantastic for the wildlife and we just wanted to do that, you know, so we've planted lots of trees on the farm. We don't use chemical sprays. You know, we, how many trees is it that we've planted? We've planted over 17,000 trees on our a hundred acres in the past. Well, since 2002, it, it hasn't reduced. You know, a lot of people say, well, if you're planting loads of trees and you're going down that nature friendly, um, route, you know you're gonna knock the production. Well, I think our, our sheep flock is actually more productive than it was in the past. We're farming, you know, we're, we're, we are grazing. Um, the livestock in a, in a different way. You know, it's mob grazing and moving them around a lot more than we used to. We, you know, we didn't, we didn't set set stock anything in the past that did get moved, but maybe just between two fields. Whereas now we'll rest nine, 10 fields, you know, and there'll be one and they'll, and they'll go around them and come back to the start, you know? So all of that sort of stuff, we have changed it a little bit, but it was kind of what we were, it was, it was our approach, you know, to, to look after nature at the, at the same time as farming. Mm-hmm. And it always has been. Really? Yeah. Well, we always thought, why would you not, why would you want to make, you know, you wouldn't want to make a negative impact on the environment.'cause that's where you are living with. You have animals all around, you just didn't, you know what I mean? To was, but a lot of people thought we were a bit crazy and probably still do, do think we were a bit crazy, but that just, yeah. I think it's catching on though, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It's like, obviously now the schemes have changed in the uk you know, you're not getting paid per, um, per acre anymore. That of land have you getting paid to, to help nature, which in the past we were doing it, well, some were in schemes, but doing stuff off our own backs. You know, double fencing, hedges and stuff like that, um, to protect them and to create that corridor off the wildlife and stuff. Whereas now the schemes are paying people to do that, to paying me able to put ponds in and, and wetlands and places like that to, um, to encourage nature to come back. So I think as daft as we might looked, you know, now people thinking, well, either I do this or I'm not gonna be making any money anymore. Um, so it's all kind of catching on and people, you know, if you've got healthier soil from all the things that you do, if you graze them properly and, and with the hedges and everything like that, the, you know, the roots and stuff and you grow in your grass longer before you graze it and stuff, you know, you've got healthier soil, you've got healthier animals. It like all works in a balance, doesn't it? But yeah. It's not for everyone, obviously. Some, I think there's a place for, you know, a lot of grain feeding of, of animals. I don't know if it would really be viable for everyone to farm in the same way that we are, but because I don't think there'll be the pro the produce coming through and then, but also there is, there isn't, you know, it can't be a one size fits all. No, exactly. Yeah. D farm in different areas is Yeah. Yeah. It's different, different ways of doing it, isn't it? So, yeah, yeah. Um, you had mentioned like mob grazing and just some of the things with the hedges. Are there any other practices that you guys do there that maybe are unique or that you've found like really work for your area? Uh, no. All, all, all the, I know one thing we do, all the hedging hedges that we lay is obviously a lot of branches. Um, and we, a lot of the time you would just have bonfire and burn them, but we've actually started wood chipping them. Um, and then we sort of use that wood chip for into the, in the sheep shed. So when the sheep come inside to get laid in for the winter, um, we'll put, use that wood chip. On the bottom, uh, of the bed. And it kind of helps keep things a bit drier and a bit more drained and stuff. And um, and also when I was at uni, I actually did, one of my, uh, studies that I did was, um, looking at lameness in, in the house. Sheep obviously, obviously it becomes a bit of a problem when they're inside. Um, and we'd looked at straw versus wood chip, um, and we found that the wood chip had a lot less instance of lameness and severity. Um,'cause like the straw obviously gets quite clagged up on their, on their feet as well. Um, but also just staying a lot dry and it's actually sometimes they, they suggest that the sort of an, um, bacterial properties in the wood as well. So, um, so yeah, that was quite a, we also look at, yeah, we look at that as a bigger picture as well because we use wood chip in the hen shed in the scratching area for the hens, you know,'cause there's an area in the shed that they can go down onto the concrete. They're on slats for a lot of it where they get fed and, and drinkers and stuff like that. But that scratching area, it keeps it dry with the wood chip. Also when we muck the sheds out, that wood chip actually goes into the midn and among the muck gets spread back onto the field. And your micro isal fungi and everything that comes from the, the wood being broken down, that's good for your, you know, it, it's looking at the big picture, you know, to try to think it's, it's all a, it's all a cycle and, and we want everything, want everything to work together. Some of the stuff that we've done on the farm with the trees as well, some of it's been a shelter belt. You know, we're quite, we're 900 feet above sea level. We're in a high rainfall area. It's often windy and wild here. So if you've got trees, it's a bit of a shelter. Not just, not just for, for us, when you are out working, you know, around the farm, but the animals, you know, also the benefits of it through the summer, you can guarantee if it's a hot, sunny day and we don't get loads of hot sunny days here, but if it's hot, sunny day, all the sheep and the cattle will be in the shade of the trees. You know, so there's lots of advantages from from that as well. I, I don't think we've done. We did plow and re-seed a couple of fields in the past because we thought it was a good way to go to get some new, new seed varieties in and faster growing rye grass and stuff like that. Yeah. But we've, we've kind of came back to the, the, the idea that some of the more native and traditional type grasses and things that you would probably class more like as weeds. We've got a lot of wide wild flowers and, and herbs and all sorts of things like that in a lot of our fields. And we really quite like that because it's, it's, you know, you see more butterflies, moths, insects. Also the sheep and the cattle seem to like them fields better. If you've got just a monoculture of ryegrass and white clover, yes, it's really productive, but if we mow them fields and make it into here. They don't actually like them. Bales quite as good as our own, you know, that's like the species rich hay meadows and stuff like that. So, you know, we just, it's kind of, it's not something that we, we said, you know, we, we, we made, we did it at the time and then kind of thought, well, there was no real need to do that when, and also you, like, as I said, we spent the money, it was 350 pounds an acre and, and really it wasn't any benefit to us. So if you lose, if you lose money on something, that's a fast way to learn, isn't it? Yeah, it is. And it didn't make it any better. Well, in fact, it made more problems, didn't it? Yeah, more weed. Right? More weed. Some of the, some of the fields we had, we bought a couple of fields and they had a proper prob problem with dockings, you know, which are a, a deep-rooted, um, plant, which is, you don't really shape, don't eat it. It's, you know, and, and, um, the reason we plowed it to, to, we used round up glyphosate at the time. To try to kill them all off. Well, two years after we'd plowed it, we had a bigger docking problem than we had before, you know? So it it really be 10, 15 years ago. Yeah. 15 years ago at least. Yeah. So we, we don't do things like that anymore. Yeah. When I first started my farm, uh. In the US we have in every state there's like an extension agent, which is someone who is supposed to be the expert on farming, who you can ask any questions and they give you recommendations. And they recommended for one of our pastures for us to like spray it with Roundup and just plant like one or two species. And I didn't at the time because it was very expensive, um, and I didn't have the money. And I'm so grateful. I always remember that, that I'm so grateful because I've now learned that we have like native prairie grasses. That are going extinct, that they wanted me to just plow over and kill like indefinitely and they didn't stop to think about those things. And our animals love them and they've brought those pastures back to life. Like That's right. Just fascinating that, that a lot of times what someone else is doing or what the recommended thing is, like it's just may not work or it really may not be best practice, like honestly. Yeah, that's right. And some of them, you know, some of the people they're being advised by the first fertilizer manufacturers that are being advised by the seed manufacturers. You know, all of that sort behind all these things isn't there? There's not big money behind, you know, like having those, those old meadows and stuff like that. There's nobody making money having those. So you know, you can see where it comes from. Yes. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. There's no money behind keeping the grasses that have been there for thousands of years, like don't need any help. Yeah, no, that's so true. So. You guys do a lot with your dogs, your herding dogs, your working dogs. Um, that's something I think a lot of listeners won't know much about. You, you, um, I really like sheep dogs. I used to work on my uncle's farm and my uncle and my cousin didn't have very good sheep dogs, which meant that I did a lot of the running around and chasing the sheep. Um, and for anybody, if you've got any number of sheep, you know, they had 450 sheep at the time. Um, the sheep really take the mickey out of you if you haven't got a dog chasing them around with a quad bike or something like that, or trying to tice them into an area with a, with a, with a bag of, of cake. You know, like, you know, grain feed or anything doesn't always work. Um, I realized. Quite quickly if you've got a decent dog, it just makes things 10 times easier. You know, the sheep respect the dogs. Uh, you know, if you've got decent dogs, you just get things done so much easier without the force, without the hassle. Um, also now that we've got bigger mobs of sheep and we're moving them around, you know, we have a lot of little roads in this area. Small fields, you know, and, and that to move around different areas. If you didn't have d good dogs, you couldn't, you couldn't work, you couldn't manage our flock. And, uh, well even our cattle, we, we move our cattle around regularly and, and the dogs are usually there, um, you know, to help us move them. It just makes it a lot. Can you explain though, how we start the training of the dogs and at what ages and, yeah. So. I like, uh, it doesn't interest me buying a, um, a a for some farmers, it's probably the right way to go to buy a trained dog, you know, a dog that's already been trained. But I like to get a dog as a pup. I like to learn it a lot of manners and basically how to behave before it goes anywhere near a sheep. You know, I usually pick, um, a sheep dog. That's, I'm really bad with people's names, but if you've had a sheep dog and you've got in the prizes, not even in this country, but, but you know, different places. I usually know how your sheep, dog's, bread, I'll know its parents and grandparents because I focus on that stuff. I really like certain lines of dogs, you know, if certain lines of dogs and, and they're offspring. I take notice of how they work and how they think and how they, you know, how they do when they go to sheep, dog trials, stuff like that. And I'll pick a pup that I like the breeding from. We do breed odd ones ourselves, but, but basically as a replacement for one of our older dogs, usually it all starts with their instinct. They have to have an instinct to want to herd the sheep. You could let a young pup into, um, among the sheep at five or six months old, and it would use that instinct and it would chase after them. It would probably split the flock up. It might try to grab hold of one, pull some wool probably end up pinning some of the sheep into a corner of a field and, and it would sit there looking at them. That's, that's its instinct and that's really good. But we want that instinct to be working with us. So if we have the pope as part of our pack and part of our family, we learn them some manners. We don't let them jump up. We learn them to sit, lie down. We don't let them bar through a door before we go through the door. If they're shouting and if they're barking and stuff like that and making a noise or being naughty, we will tell, tell them off, and they then learn that we're the packer leader. Once you go to a, she into a field with a dog like that, maybe not on the first training session, but half a dozen training sessions in the dog will realize it only gets to run around the sheep and do what it wants to do if it's working with us as a pack leader, once you start to get that, you can then mold the dog. You know, if you walk the, a certain way around the sheep, if you are stood in the right position, the, the dog usually likes to be on the other side of the sheep from the handler, you know, so there's you sheep in the middle, and the dog will be on the other side. If you move in a anti-clockwise direction, the dog will usually balance the sheep. Yeah. You know, in the anti di, anti-clockwise direction. Or if you move clockwise, the dog will move clockwise as well. You start to put commands on that, so you learn them a left and a right. You'll learn them a stop, which is usually lie down and then a walk on, which is just to walk towards the sheep. Once you've got all of that in place, you can then start to do jobs with the dog. It's, it's a long-term thing. You know, some dogs, I've got a dog at the moment, which is two years old. No, see what other, well, yeah, I've got one at two years old, but I've also got one at 18. I was thinking of Dottie, um, Dottie's. What? Yeah, 18 months old ER's got one out the same litter. And Zach that works here, uh, that's a friend of Kyle's, he's got a one out the same litter, and Tamers and Zach's dogs are working really well. And they'll go around the other side of the sheep and they're stopping and they're, they're doing really well. And I'm really having quite a bit of. Bother with Dottie, this, this little dog, because I can't get to get to the other side of the sheep. She'll chase after the sheep. She'll run alongside the sheep. But yeah, it is working. But they all come along at different stages, you know? So Zach and Tamer are actually doing jobs with their dog at that age, whereas I'm still in the training field and not really doing any jobs with her yet, you know, so it's all, it's all learning the dog what we want. Um, once the dog knows what we want, they'll just do it every time. You know, a dogs in the general rule, don't do something to be naughty. Um, they'll do something wrong if we haven't trained them properly. If you've trained them properly and they know what you want, they'll usually do it, right? Like, I know for anybody else in the world, you know, you, that you. They don't handle sheep in, they do to a certain extent. There's lots of other countries now that have border collies that do, you know, sheep work. But in this country there has been a lot of moving sheep around. You know, right from three or 400 years ago where they were drove, you know, they were moving cattle and sheep from upland areas to lowland areas. They were moving them. A lot of the roads in this country were drover's routes where they would move great numbers of sheep on foot over miles and miles. You know, you think of big cattle drives as being in the US where you were moving cattle over big distances. Well, it was actually happening in this country. You know, before it was happening in America, there was a sheep drive that used to drive sheep from Keith nesting to north of Scotland. And they drove them right down the country, right down the A one into Smithfield market in the middle of London, which was over 700 miles, you know, and that was 350 years ago. Colie, the word colie in Gaelic is useful, you know, so co a colie dog, you know, it's translated to a useful dog. If you've got a useful dog, it's helping you, you know, and that, that's what, that's what we needed with, with dogs. So, but also on the fails in the Lake District, you know, the mountains, uh, the Highlands in Scotland, Wales, a lot of the upland areas in the uk it's unfenced, you know, and the sheep are hefty in this area and company. We call it heed, you know, the, the, they're bred on a certain area and they stay in that area. But if you are gonna gather them sheep up, they don't always want to come down to be sheered or to be dipped or to wean the lambs or whatever. You know, the, for sure you, you couldn't do it. You know, even quad bikes or motorbikes, you can't get to some of the areas on, on the fells. Whereas your dogs, you know, your dogs can gather them all up, and it may, it makes it easy. Yeah. Also, when you're saying about training them on the commands, eventually we'll put'em onto whistle commands. Um, so it's much sharper. So when they're working really long distances, they can, they can hear from the whistle rather than the voice. That is so fascinating. That works exactly the same way. You know, we, we learn all of our dogs. Usually a way to me is, um, a command for the right, you know, for them to go anti-clockwise. Um, you could learn them, right, but you could also learn them up and down. You, you know, you'd say it doesn't matter, you know, the, the command is just, you have to associate that command with the way the dog's gonna go. Mm-hmm. Once you've done that, lots of times, once you say away to me, it just turns to its right and it'll go round them and come by Is the command for the left hand side. But your whistles are a, are a variation, you know? And dad has lots of different whistles for each different dogs. Well, some of them will have the same ones, but if he's going to be working'em together, he'll try and have'em. So they've got different whistles. So you've got like sets of whistles in your head for different dogs and you need to remember them, which wow sometimes. Um, I've, I've got one I've trained on whistles and then the other one, a kit that's coming on now is a year and a half old. I'm just starting to put her onto like different whistles and it's so hard in my head to, to get the right one. So I dunno how dad does it with so many others. But it's usually, you know, I usually have a sharp whistle, uh, um, on one side he is like away to me and he's come by. So, you know, the, there's totally different sound and then there's variations like can be to the right and it can to the left, you know? So it's just once the dogs get used to it, the, the, no, it's pretty, it's usually me that gets it mixed up rather than dogs getting it mixed up. Ah. But then it depends on the dog's temperament.'cause we do have dogs. That'll take everybody's whistles. You know, the whistle, a left whistle, and they all go left, whether it's their whistle or not. But then the better trained ones, the ones that I compete with at the Sheep dug trials, they get quite, quite good with it. Some, some of them are just like, you'll train them and you maybe do the trials and stuff with them, but they're maybe not built for doing the precision of a trial, whereas they're maybe just better working on the farm and getting jobs done at maybe a little bit too fast sometimes. That for, for a dog trial? Yeah. Yeah. They're all suited for different, different things really. It can be rough and ready at work. You're not, you know, as long, as long as you're rounding the sheep up and you're moving them around and the dogs aren't misbehaving, um, you know, pushing them too fast or anything, you know, you're okay with that. Whereas when you're at a sheep dog trial, it's about getting the sheep. Under control, nice and calm, keeping it flowing, making sure that you've got nice straight lines the way the sheep are going, getting'em through the gates and into the pent and all that sort of stuff. So it gets a little bit more complicated. And I'm still at the bottom. I'm not, I'm not the, the level of a lot of these other sheep dog trialers. Yeah. Can you share a little bit about the sheep dog trials, for people who don't know what they are. Um, it's just a working test really, of how, you know, how your dog can handle sheep. A lot of the smaller trials might just be on three sheep, but if you go a lot of the bigger trials, it'll be five sheep. Different sheep, you know, everybody gets different sheep. You'll go to different areas. Some of the hill trials will be a hill breeds. Sometimes you'll get lowland breeds, which are, um, a lot heavier as in the walk, move away from the dog as good. Um, sometimes it's a smallish field. You know, a small field could be maybe 200 meters to the other end of the field to where the sheep are, so they start off with the sheep at the other end of the field. And if it's a nursery trial or a novice, which is for your, your younger dogs or your dogs that haven't progressed as far, um, you send your dog on the gather, which is an outrun, and you can go either left or right. That's to get to the other side of the sheep. If they go nice and wide round the sheep and don't disturb them, you'll get your full points. If they cross the course or anything like that, you'll start losing points. The lift is what comes next, and that's once the dog is at the other side of the sheep. When they start moving the sheep towards you, it wants to be quiet and controlled. You know, if you have a dog that just runs up the other end of the field and chases the sheep, you're never gonna get a good controlled run after that because the sheep are being upset. So you want your dog. To move them quietly, but in a controlled manner. You know, the dog sheep are really good at working out if a dog has a weakness. Yeah. Or if they don't like the dog because it's just chasing them, whereas a dog that is confident and has authority, the sheep won't challenge that, and they'll behave themselves around the course. Right. Then comes the fetch. That's supposed to be in a straight line down the middle of the field and back to the handler. And you've got two gates in the middle of the field, which are seven yards apart traditionally, and you've got to get your sheep through them gates. If you miss the gates or your sheep are offline, you'll be losing points. Then you start driving element, which is pushing the sheep away from you, you know? So it's usually in a triangle. You'll push them away to one side of the field through two gates. You'll do a cross drive, which is across the field. In front of you through another two gates and then you fetch them back to yourself. And if you go offline or miss the gates again, you're losing points. Once you get'em back to yourself, there's a small pen and you have to be able to put them in a pen. If it is a bigger trial, you might have a shed and the shed is splitting two sheep off and a single after you, you know, you'd shed them first split two sheep off to, so to show that your dog can sort the sheep in the field, you know, often when we're in the field, if we have something that's ill or needs its foot treated or anything like that, we'll split off two or three sheep, get them into a corner. We can get them in the back of the quad bike trailer or catch hold of them and we can inject them or treat the foot or whatever's needed rather than gathering up 200 animals or something, you know? So that's just a working thing that, that your dogs do. And I used to think that, you know, I've got, I'd go to a sheep dog trial and I'd been reason reasonably pleased with my dog. I'd managed to get'em through the gate and I remember get, get them in the pen. And I used to wonder why I was not in the prizes. But basically you've got to have everything perfect. And there's a lot of good dogs and good handlers around that will win trials. Well, I've actually won a couple of trials myself with 93 points out of a hundred and you know, you, you haven't had a lot go wrong if you're only dropping seven points. Yeah. You know, so it, it's, but it's basically a working test, you know? Yeah. You're comparing yourself to other shepherds and farmers and sheep, dog handlers, and you're. You know, sometimes you'll have good days and sometimes you'll have bad days. Yeah, that sounds pretty fun. Yeah. If you come off the field and you're happy with your dog, that's the main thing I think. Definitely. So is that, is that just a way to connect with other people who have sheep dogs or is it historical, cultural thing? Or is it for prize winnings,'cause you're so busy, why do you continue to choose to go? Because I love dogs and I love competing with them. And that bond that you get, you know, with the dog and um, and working with sheep and stuff, it is just, it's quite an achievement to, to train the dog and then. You know, take to work and it's successful at work, but to take it to a trial and be successful, it's like a real achievement of what you've kind of produced as well. Although I'm not very competitive and every time that I've gone it's not gone very well. But, um, but I can see why, why dad loves it so much for that. But, um, but yeah, it's a great leveler because you could have a fantastic, you know, you could go to a trial and have a fantastic run and, you know, you might win the trial and the next week you can go to the same place with the same dog. And you, you, you could be last, you know? Yeah. Because the sheep misbehave and some of it can be luck, but other times the dog feels different. It, when you think about it. What other thing do you do, on any other. Hobby, pastime spot. There's nothing you are controlling up to five animals with another animal and you're just whistling at it, you know? And that it's just such a, it's, yeah, it's, it's amazing. I like nothing better than working two dogs together. You know, they call it brace running, where you have two, two dogs together. And to see two dogs working sheep around the field effectively, it's like poetry in motion. It's just, it's fantastic. Mm. I just lo I love that bond with the dogs. Yeah. But about friendship, you've met loads of people. Oh, yes, yes. It's, and there's always a little bit of competition between people, but Yes. A lot of like-minded people that do it. And historically as well, you know, people, well, it's the first cheap dog trials. Uh, were running about the, the 1890s, you know, uh, longshore, which is one of the biggest ones in down in Darbyshire, that started in 1898. You know, and to go and compete at a, you know, at a sheep dog trial that has been running that long on that field, it's, yeah, that's cool. It, it's it's heritage, it's history. You know, there's a, I actually won the BRACE competition at Longshore a few years ago, and my name is on the trophy alongside lots of other sheepdog handlers that I never thought that I would be as good as, you know, and things like that. It's not for the prize, yes, it's for winning a prize without doing it for money. It's just that thing of, you know, going Yeah. But also we've, we've been to Devon, we've been to the north of Scotland, we've been all over the country to go and compete with the dogs and, and meet other people, see other good dogs and other good handlers, and it's, it's part of a community and it's, it's sheep farming, you know, it's, it's all about sheep and and handling sheep in the correct way. That's beautiful. Yeah, it is. It's, it's fantastic. So I'm sure you have so many memories with the sheep dogs. Do the three of you have favorite memories with the dogs over the years? You said, you said about calf, didn't you we, we had a sheep dog a few years ago called Kaf, and we had a, he, he, we had some troughs that went through the, the sheep were all in at lamb in time and we had some troughs and CAP was convinced that there was something under one of these troughs. Right. Yeah. And, um, I wasn't, I think I was at work at the time. You had the cap and, um. He was looking under this trough the whole time, and Hazel thought, well, I'll have to have a look and see what's going on. And he had found that there was a lamb that had been born and it had got stuck under the trough, separate from its mother. Yeah. And you know, without the dog, that lamb would died. We wouldn't have known it was being quiet, you know, it wasn't making a noise or anything, but it was stuck there, so things like that. There's other times I had a dog called Snip. I was loading some cattle, some heifers that we'd sold to someone into the trailer, and they bust a gate open next to the trailer. And there was two heifers that was, well, three quarters of the way out. And just about any other dog, them cattle would've gone over the top of the dog and it'd been outta the shed and we would've had to start all over again. And she stopped them. And reversed them back, and things like that, you know, invaluable. I have a bearded colleague. All of our other dogs are board colleagues. Um, but I think, when was it you've seen an advert in the paper for. Um, beard did Coley pups and I said, oh, well we were gonna get another dog. Um, and dad said, oh, we'll have a beardie. So we got, got Kelsey and as that was as my dog, but, um, bearded Coley's a little bit more unruly to train and she was, um, always quite handful, even as a puppy, she was always been in one for barking and misbehaving and stuff and, and really hard to train. Um, dad helped me train her, but that was obviously my, my first dog. I did actually end up taking her to, um, a dog trial locally. And, um, there's a couple of times we went to trials and it went wrong, but there was one day that she did actually get them round the course and she got'em in the pen and everyone, everyone clapped in there. And it was really, because not many, not many people actually. Yeah. And, and also like being colleagues aren't traditional dog for your dog trials. And that was sort of a, a proud moment for me that, that we got'em in the pen. Um, she's 13 now, so she's, she's about retired, but she's a bit older. Bear character though, so, um, so yeah, some, some of my most memorable, you know, winning that brace competition at Longshore was fantastic. Um, sometimes some of the ship dug trials that I've been to where I haven't actually got into prizes, but I've had really naughty sheep. Sheep that wanted to break away, and not stay together and stuff like that. And lots of people would've walked off the course. But my dogs, you know, I'm really proud that even if the sheep are, are misbehaving, my dogs can handle them. And I've had, I had a really good run at the local Sheep dug trial where one sheep just wanted to take off the whole time and I kept putting it back together with the others and I thought, oh, well, I'll just get them down the field to me, and then I'll walk off. And then I thought, oh, well no, I'll just carry on and I'll drive them round. And then it split off again. And then at the drive I thought, oh, well I'll just walk off and retire. And then I thought, no, well I'll just carry on. So then I penned them and then, and then when it come to, and I shed and I completed and everybody when I came off the field said that was fantastic. You know, for my dog to have handled them in that way when they were being so naughty. Yeah. Uh, you know, and not, not win any prizes from it, but for people, other people to see and say, well, your dog did fantastic there, you know, that's really, you're really quite proud of them with things like that. Yeah. Wow. Those are some amazing stories. Would you say that you've seen changes over the years in the UK of how people value working dogs? Is it becoming more popular or is it a practice that's fading away? Um, it's changing. It, it, it definitely is changing a lot. We don't have the big estates and the big numbers of sheep on, on the fells and the upland areas the same. So there isn't the full-time shepherds, you know, nowadays, um, uh, a shepherd would kind of be expected to look after a thousand yas, like for anyone else in the world that's used. But in, in Cumbria, we call'em yas, female sheep. Mm-hmm. So if there's a shepherd that looks after a thousand, they don't have time to do stuff the same, in the past they used to take the sheep up to the higher ground for the summer months. Different farms, they would actually move. Some sheep would be moved around just about every day. You know, you'd move them up the fell in the morning and you'd bring them down the fell and, have them overnight somewhere else. And it isn't really like that. Now, you, you, the sheep kind of look after themselves out on the fells because. It's not really worth paying a shepherd to do all that sort of stuff with them. So now we've got different kinds of dogs. There isn't as many of them that work away by themselves, maybe even up to a mile away from the handler. You know, they could just gather some sheep up and they'll just move them along, uh, and, and bring them into the pens and stuff with very little commands nowadays, because it's more orientated towards the trials. The dogs don't think for themselves the same. They're little bit more robotic, yeah. It's a whistle every time. I really like to see a dog that does it for itself. You know, if you put a dog on a line, if it's fetching them down the fetch in New Zealand, I think they do this, they do, they call it a silent gather where they send the dog out with one command and it has to gather the sheep up and bring them back to the handler. Without any more commands. Yeah. Wow. Whereas, whereas in this country, you're commanding them more, so if they're not quite online, you'll give your dog a little whistle to, to get them. That's comes from the trials, but that comes from the trials to try to keep them straight lines and, and, and that maybe takes a little bit away from the dogs thinking for themselves. I, I, I think the top dogs probably not, you know, the ones that are winning at the national and the international and the world trials and stuff like that, they are probably the, the type of dogs, like your old dogs that can do that. You know, I've never really seen, a fantastic trial dog that wouldn't be a fantastic work dog where sometimes you'll have trial dogs that they're quite good and they'll get away with it at a trial. But they're not good enough. They haven't got enough push, they haven't got enough, you know, think for themselves and enough authority for working awkward sheep and stuff at home. It's that thing that if you always go to a trial on a weekend and it is flighty sheep in quite a small field, you need a dog that is gentle with the sheep and works further away from them. So that's a lot of the dogs that kind of get bred these days, you know, we're breeding a dog that is a little bit less authority, you know, more gentle, and then relies on the handler to command them more, you know, whereas in the past, the, we had stronger types of dogs and dogs that would think for themselves, like bearded collies, like bearded collies to a certain extent. But it's, it's also as well, you know, with less shepherds, we've got more people that are. And, and I'm not getting at anybody else, you know, in the sheep dog world or anything else. If you do it as a hobby and you don't own your own sheep mm-hmm. To be able to go and compete at sheep dog trials, you're doing a fantastic thing. You're managing to train your dog, um, probably with the help of going somewhere where somebody's got some sheep and stuff, but it isn't your full-time job, you know? Right. And I think I would want to do that if I didn't have the, the sheep and the work for the dogs, I, I would still like to do that. But some of them dogs, they'll struggle to get to that top level because the need more sheep work, the need more farm work. It's, it's also for the handler to have, you know, if you've got more experience yourself, because you're out there every day, you've got to have that little bit of an advantage over somebody that's just doing it on a night and a weekend. So, you know, so it is, it's changing from that, there's still some very good dogs around, some fantastic dogs around the level of competition. It's, it's brilliant really. But we are maybe breeding dogs that, that rely on that command and really sharp dogs. You know, sometimes, sometimes dogs that are really sharp and fantastic when they're under a year, year old look really good. And we have a lot of sheep, dog sails and stuff in this country. Them dogs are making really high prices, but in the long run, I don't think that maybe they're may be the best dogs. I think some of your dogs that might take a little bit longer to train they might be a bit too boisterous and unruly. Or you need to build a confidence up some of them as well. So, you know, some of them that maybe aren't quite as confident by the time you get them to three or four years old, they might make a better dog than some of these ones that look fantastic when they're under, under a year old. But it's really complicated, you're not just thinking about working ability, you are thinking about the dog's temperament. How can it take the pressure of, of you controlling it? How can it, can it take the pressure of being at a trial where there's loads of other vehicles there? There's loads of other dogs, there's loads of other people watching. There might be a crowd of spectators that are clapping and stuff like that, and not all dogs handle that as good. It's, it's such a lot about, it's the dog's temperament. Yeah. And it personality as well as its work and ability. Right. I know we talked this, the question was kind of about what's changing with working dogs? What about farming in general in your area? And I'd love to finish off with the question of what are you guys dreaming up envisioning for the future of farming in the UK with the changes that you're seeing? What are you the most passionate about protecting and seeing happen for farming? I think that, I think probably that there is still gonna be plenty of farms in the uk. I think lately it has seemed like a lot of farms being bought for, for solar, for planting trees, for all these other things which are, are important in the scheme of things. But I think it's important that our government and in people in this country know that famine's important here and like traditionally the heritage of the landscape and all that stuff. Mm-hmm. Um, but also like being connected to the food system and that's obviously a big part of what we're trying to do with the tours and stuff and the Instagram page that I have. Trying to educate people and see a little bit more of where the food's coming from. And having that respect for the food and maybe wanting to pay more for it, knowing what's in the stuff you're eating for health reasons and, you know, for, for the environment as well. Um, yeah, I think that's, that's something that I hopefully, um, in policy and everything else gets, um, it stays, you know, the focus of, um, the policy and stuff like that to, to protect the landscape and, and keep us farming, and the farming can go with nature like we, we are doing and hopefully other people can continue to do that as well. We only produce 50% of the food that we eat in this country, you know, global. Everything's globalized now. You know, we're affected by the war in Ukraine or politics in America, or lots of other things, you know, weak prices, um, beef, you know, the, the imports and exports and all of this sort of stuff going on. Our government in this country has pushed to have cheap food. We've got really quite cheap food in this country. Um. That possibly helps our economy because it gives people more money to spend on other things. You know, in the fifties, uh, after the war, 33% of people's income went on food in this country, now it is 6% of people's income that goes on food. And I, I really don't think, you know, there isn't anything more important. You know, a Netflix contract or a new mobile phone or whatever it is, is not more important than the food that you eat. You know, the food is the most important thing, you know, we, it's really quite unpredictable with everything that's going on in the world at the moment. And, and I think our government needs to focus more on, you know, the, the, they're trying to get rid of a lot of the sheep off the, off the lake district fails. Yeah. Sheep have been in this country for 6,000 years. You know, we've been farming in a big way, and I know sheep the way the government policies have worked and everything, they've pushed. In the past, you know, you've, you've made more money. If you kept more sheep, that wasn't really the farmer's fault for keeping more sheep. It was because sheep weren't making much money. But if you kept more, you were getting paid. You know, the government was given a subsidy towards it. The subsidies actually first started as a compensating sort of pay payment to the farmers, because we were producing food that was undervalued. You know, so it topped up the farmer's income. Yeah. All of that system, you know, the food, it doesn't really work, you know? It can't be blamed on the farmers that, well, you've kept too many sheep because the farmers were struggling to make money. You know? Right. It's, it's, it's a funny thing. They're pushing now. They want more technology in farming and stuff like that, and they want less sheep on the fells and stuff. Basically, if we're going to live on off our soil, which we all anywhere in the world, any civilization is living off the soil. If we don't look after the soil, we won't have food in the future. The only way to produce more fertile soil is to have grazing herbi forests in the, in the mix. You know, it's, it's part of the system. You know, cattle and sheep are being part of that. We need to get a balance, you know, we don't want it to be overgrazed, but we don't want all of these sheep removed from the fells in the lake district or the upland areas in Scotland, Wales, wherever else in this country, because we are just about the last rural. Industry that's left in the lake district. We used to have mining, we used to have, um, coal mines, we had copper mines, we had lead mines. We had quarries producing slate. Slate was shipped all over the country. We had, um, woodland workers producing timber copies, all sorts of things that went on in the rural areas. And the way that it's gonna go is that Cumbria is just gonna be a rich person's playground. And there's gonna be no, there's only farmers left. Every, everything else has been lost, you know, so we're the last working actually on the land. On the land. Yeah. You know, and it's a tradition that that needs to be carried on. But it's not only a tradition, you know, in this country that. I've got, we read, I dunno if you can see behind, it's got a bookshelf full of books and stuff, and we read a lot of books. You know, and there's a lot of these conservationists that say, well, sheep farming is, it isn't value, you know, it doesn't make money. If there wasn't for a subsidy, farmers would not be making money from sheep farming in this country. There's 220,000 sheep going to the food chain every week. How can that not be a worthwhile industry to be in? You know, people are eating this meat, you know, it's, it's like fruit and vegetable growers. There's orchards being ripped up in the south of England. They're taking all the trees out. They're not producing fruit anymore. They're putting solar panels on the fields instead, which I know solar panels are a good thing because it produces electricity, but we are importing all of that fruit. From somewhere else, Spain or North Africa. Loads of different, and they've got water shortages, so they're having to irrigate all of this for, you know, you're exporting your problem to somewhere else. Yeah. And, and, and we need to think about doing that, but also technology and everything. This sounds like I'm ranting on, on about this. No, I love everything you're saying. Well, this thing about having more technology and tractors that drive themselves and stuff like that, AI for the future. It's absolutely, it's crazy. It's really cr what we, what's everybody gonna do in the future. To me, we want more people working on farms. You know, a farm that has three people employed at the moment. Wouldn't it be better if that farm was employing 10 or a dozen people, if it could make enough money that it could employ them. People we need more people connected to the back, you know, like Teer says that education and that people, it's, you know, the, the, the stuff's there to say, you know, if people grow. Vegetables. They then appreciate them vegetables so much more. If you get your hands in among the soil, it it boost mental health, everything. It, it produces endorphins in your system to make you feel better. You know, there's so many things that we, we want people to, you know, get into with farming and stuff like that and appreciate and, and realize, you know, it's like the value industry. It's, it's like, it's like corporate companies. You know, there's about six corporate companies that produce that, that control 90 something percent of the food that's eaten in this country. And a lot of it's ultra processed food. You know, we want to get away from that. We don't want corporate companies making loads of money from producing a food, which is not good for people. We want people to be appreciating local food, less food, food miles, seasonal stuff, you know, eating stuff that's been. Born, raised, grown, produced, you know, in these local areas. I love what you said about like how people, people should really value spending more money on food because it is what fuels you from day to day. Those processed foods are not going to fuel your life or your quality of life. The same as the most nutritious, nutrient dense food that might have been grown down the road. Yeah. People do need to reconnect with that reality. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not only is it more nutrient dense, but you're supporting a local economy. Mm-hmm. Every time that you go and spend money, you're making a choice. You know, if you make a choice, do you want to put that money into a big corporate company that's gonna pay their, their bosses a load more dividends, or bonuses or whatever? Or do you want that money to go to, you know, and not just those lots of others, but do you want it to go to a local farm? That cares about the environment, cares about the animals, cares about the local community, about the soil, you know, all sorts of things. You know, if you spend money at a small farm like that, you know, you're helping you, you're helping the, you know, individual people rather than just a company stays in that community. And, you know, if their people are paying more food, they're less likely to waste food. That is one thing I'm really passionate about is like the tackling food waste. It's people throw stuff away. You can buy something that's so cheap, like the fruit and vegetables in this country that're so cheap and, and like, isn't it a Christmas, about 60% of it goes in the bin or something ridiculous like that. And you just think that that is such a massive issue. Mm-hmm. Um, and there's enough food to go around if people didn't waste it. So if they're willing to pay more and less likely to waste it, it's all a benefit as well, isn't it? Yeah. Hazel, what about you? Do you have anything? Any inputs? I mean, these two have covered everything, but Yeah. We are passionate about, especially with the, we have some skill kids that come on the farm and getting them to understand the food system. You know, people go get chicken nuggets. They have not got a connection. What a chicken is really, nevermind how much crap probably in the chicken nugget. But, and that, that's what we feel really is that connection and, and just that understanding and then that respect and then that zero waste and all that things. Follow through, but yeah, you know, you know, children is where you need to aim things to, isn't it? Because that grows with dead and children as they grow. And we, and there is like a, we, is it countryside stewardship that we get, that we can get paid for having, um, so many visits a year. So like, stuff like that is, is good and getting those people, and so it's like for, um, it's like school kids and stuff that yeah. Come onto farm and they'll do like a, a tour or a session on the farm. Um, and we do like, get subsidized from the government for that. So stuff like that, like for the future, it's really beneficial if you can or encourage other farmers to do that sort of thing and, and get people. I think that's a massive stepping stone for, for children if they've had an experience on a farm, you know, is a career choice, like they consider it more. Whereas if they've had nothing to do with a farm, um, you know, they, they wouldn't consider that as a career path. And, and there is so many jobs in agriculture, like yes, it is under underfunded and you get, you don't get, um, paid well for the produce, but, hopefully. In the future, that'll change. But if, but, but if, if, the only thing we got from that was the fact that children, like the animals, you know, like they could get so much more, couldn't they, they could learn that, that that animal is producing eggs or it's gonna be meat or it produces milk or whatever, but on a basic level, if they actually like the animal, because there's lots of children that never get to interact, interact with animals, and, you know, just like it might be like teer says in the future they might want to actually come and work in, in agriculture, but. If they just think where the food's coming from and stuff that's, they're the, future, aren't they, you know, they maybe want to spend the money more wisely. They maybe want to support them, maybe want to work on farms, you know, but yeah, it's, that's planting those seeds. Yeah. Yeah. We work a little bit with the, uh, Carlisle College, in the catering department. Young, uh, people are gonna be chefs, uh, and they've been on the farm a couple of times and we've got a pig that's gonna pig in a few weeks, and we are gonna allocate a piglet to them. And we'll do a, a life story of it to them and interact and then probably it'll eventually go to slaughter and then they'll make a meal out of it. That's what's hope. And I think that's such a good connection because, you know, we'll do a weekly video of that piglet, they'll come and probably see it on farm as well. Uh, and we thought that was quite a good idea to try and do. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Those are all great ideas. Is there anything we haven't covered that you guys would wanna chat about? Yeah, no, I think we've, we've talked about a lot. Sorry, it's maybe been a bit disjointed, but Yeah, we've covered most things. I think it's beautiful. Perfect. The, um, I really like, um, birds and insects and all sorts of things. You know, we went to a meeting, the said that you'd been, um, at Neil Heseltine's. Yes. Yeah. And we went to a meeting, we actually have a bull we bought off, off Neil. Um, but we went to a meeting with him and difference of people, you know, like Neil said, you know, you need to have time away from the farm to then think about the farm in a different way, you know, if you slog away at work and stuff like that. Wildlife and nature. Somebody else said to me, and, and this is probably been my philosophy. Notice the little things, every day I go out, you know, there was birds singing in the trees, and I know what most of the birds are, but if, if I don't know what they are, I put the, the, the Merling Bird app on my phone and, and I'll know what birds are singing. We went from having, you know, I've got a list of birds that we used to have on the farm, and we only had 25 acres at the time, but we had 36 species of birds on the farm, and we are up to 74 species of birds that we have on the farm now. Wow. We, we haven't really changed that much round. We haven't done that much different. Yes, we graze it slightly different. We are a lot less inputs as fertilizer and, and feeding animals grain and things like that. But, but just doing them things and realizing that it does make such a big difference to, to wildlife, it doesn't take much. Leave wildlife a little bit of space and it'll fill that space and, and little things like that makes your life more complete. It's, if there's a chimney, sweeper moth or a grasshopper out in our garden, I'll stop and look at it because I like to see stuff like that, you know, and, and just them little things, every day. It's part of the farm in life and it's part of just enjoying being around your animals. You can be so busy that you don't stop and look and sometimes you just stop and look. Yeah. I think that's an amazing way to finish up. But I did want to ask, you guys did say the word dipping or dip. Multiple times, and I know people are not gonna know what you meant. Can you just quickly clear that up for people who have no idea what you were talking about? So we tend to dip the, the sheep once a year, which is basically just putting them in a big tub of, of water with a sort of chemical in which gets a bit of any skin, um, like sheep, scab, mites, anything like that unluckily for us. We have got some bordering fields that as some neighbors who occasionally have sheep scabs. So our sheep sometimes catch it off them, which is unfortunate'cause we have to dip all of them again. Um, but yeah, instead of giving them an injection, it's like a long acting, um, uh, what do you call it, insecticide. Um, it's, it's, it's kind of better for the environment and for the, the sheep. It's horrible for two minutes going in the tub. But, it's over fast and it, it just treats all those, it's like a big bath. It's like a big bath and they have to go in and they're in for about a minute each, and they have to have their head plunged under, you know, because a lot of the mites can live around their ears and stuff. Mm-hmm. Um, on the chemicals, you know, we sort of said we want to reduce chemicals and stuff like that. Um, a few years ago the, you know, there was people that had got ill from. The chemical that's in the dipping and it's organophosphate that's in, that's in the dip. It can be harmful to people's health if you don't wear the protective clothing. It's not really harmful to the sheep. It is very effective at killing sheep, scab, lice, and m and it is less harmful to the environment than a lot of other chemicals. A few years ago they brought out a chemical called Terrin, which was a pore on that you just poured down the back of the, oh, you can also, the injectable that Teer was on about is ivermectin. And ivermectin is overused so much and is really bad for dung beetles and aquatic life. The cethrin was 100 times more, detrimental to aquatic life than organ organophosphates. So we've kind of gone back to the dipping, you know, as, as an industry over the years we've gone, we've gone back to dipping the sheep with organ organophosphates because. Not long after they've dipped the, the chemicals ineffective. If it gets spread on the fields, which we have a license to spread the dip onto a, um, a certain field. It breaks down really fast in the soil and stuff like that, so it isn't a sample to the environment. But the way that the, um, the sheep industry is, there's a shop. A lot of sheep still get moved around. At one time, dipping sheep in this country was compulsory, had to dip twice a year, and it was, it was getting on top of the sheep scab problem. Nowadays, there's people that don't bother as much, so the sheep scab problem keeps coming round. You know, if you have a sheep that's left that hasn't been dipped, it will be infected and then it'll reinfect your whole flock. So once a year, we do all of those and it's awful for them. If you ever seen them, you know what I mean? They, it's like a mic that burrows in the skin. You can't see it on the skin. And obviously they wool all falls off. They lose loads of weight. They go really poorly in sick. So yeah, it's really like I important we keep on top of it. Well, thank you for clearing that up. I know people were gonna Yeah. I'm gonna be mad that I didn't ask. Yeah. Perfect. I really appreciate you guys giving me your time. It'll be really fascinating for people to hear, especially about the dogs. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thanks everyone. Yeah,