Farm Blogs from Around the World

From: Allan Evans

Sheep & wool producer

Corryong Victoria

Australia

We need to do a better job of wild dogs

Dear Editor,

I ask our community and government to consider this:

Sheep killed on our property: 86

Wild dogs: 19 shot, 7 trapped

Where: Less than 6km from Corryong

Time: 5½ months

Our neighbour lost 14 sheep in this time – he has the luxury of being able to bring his flock in close to his house. I don’t. Another few kilometres from our farm, 12 dogs were seen harassing a calf, only one of these dogs has been shot.

As producers we are not sitting on our hands. I have just electrified a further 2.5km of fence but the actions of individual producers are not enough. We desperately need a co-ordinated, proactive approach with strong frontline support from the Department of Primary Industries and the Department of Sustainability.

Wild dogs are a nightmare. For me the continuous onslaught has been worse than any drought. The inevitability of it wears you down. More than once I’ve thought of giving up farming altogether.

Our control approach must be practical, it’s got to work, and it is here department policy makers are making some serious mistakes.

Their worst so far has been the invention of the 3km buffer zone around our Crown lands and parks which means that trapping in this restricted area is the only sanctioned emergency response to dog attacks. To lay baits inside or outside the buffer zone, the DPI must apply to DSE, which manages Crown land, for a permit which can take weeks.

I cannot for the life of me understand what purpose this buffer zone serves apart from protecting wild dogs. What about our native wild life? Wild dogs have wiped out the mob of red-necked wallabies on our property. Where’s their buffer zone?

Wild dog control is a shared responsibility but none of us have any hope while we’re working at cross purposes.

DSE is hampering DPI’s dog control efforts by failing to control its blackberries which provide dogs with protection and food (by encouraging rabbits and deer).

In turn, DPI is thwarting its doggers’ efforts by implementing this ridiculous buffer zone and by tying up their valuable time with administration tasks rather than allowing them to get out and do what they do best. More administrative support for doggers would translate into better dog control.

Dogs can travel large distances very quickly. Doggers should be able to trap and poison on all roads and tracks for at least 15km into the bush without the need for permits.

This is our shared responsibility NOW. We have to act NOW. Ineffective actions that give lip service to wild dog control are not helping anyone. Not me, not other producers, not our irreplaceable native wild life. In the bush, dogs are the top of the food chain and as their numbers grow, everything else vanishes.

Yours sincerely,

Allan Evans

By Pamela J. Podger
Monday, October 27, 2008
MISSOULA, Montana: Chilled by an autumn wind, Enrique Márquez watched from horseback as the sheep gamboled down the mountain. A border collie nipped the heels of wayward ewes.
All summer and into the fall, the flock grazed on noxious weeds infesting 1,000 acres, or 400 hectares, of public lands above the Missoula Valley as part of this city's effort to restore its native prairie grasses.
Throughout the United States, sheep grazing is gaining popularity as a low-cost, nontoxic tool in the battle to control leafy spurge, knapweed, Dalmatian toadflax and other invasive weed species. The approach is catching on in places like the Massachusetts island Nantucket, Civil War battlefields in Virginia, ski slopes in Vermont and vineyards in California.
Tom McDonnell, a staff consultant with the American Sheep Industry Institute, called this kind of grazing a "growth industry." McDonnell cited a study by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University that indicated nonnative weeds had invaded 40 to 50 percent of U.S. croplands, pasture and public lands and were spreading at a rate of 1.75 million acres per year.
Sheep grazing is a long-term solution best used in conjunction with other methods, like beneficial insects, controlled burns, herbicides and hand pulling, officials said.
Jeff Mosley, an extension range management specialist at Montana State University, said sheep were a natural "low fossil fuel" way of controlling invasive plants, with the added benefit of providing meat and wool.
"It's environmentally friendly," he said. "Grazing has an aesthetic appeal and a bucolic aspect. It's a natural form, and people appreciate that as well."
In the mountains ringing the Missoula Valley, about 600 acres of city lands are 75 to 100 percent invaded by noxious weeds, said Missoula's conservation lands manager, Morgan Valliant.
"We're using the sheep to slowly turn back the clock and decrease the density of the weeds and get some seeds" of native grasses and wildflowers sown, Valliant said, adding, "Each year, we're learning more and more."
Still, some local residents are skeptical.
Giles Thelen, a plant ecologist at the University of Montana in Missoula, said that results of the sheep-grazing program were anecdotal and that plots should be used to measure how effective the sheep were.
Thelen also worries about the sheep worsening the problem by picking up invasive seeds in their wool and dropping them in new areas, as well as causing erosion with their hooves.
"There's no data to show if the sheep are making the situation worse or better," he said.
Some herbicides may be more effective, he said, "but people don't like poison on their public lands."
Each year, the city contracts with John Stahl, a fourth-generation rancher who drives his flock to the infested hills from his Missoula County ranch nine miles, or 14 kilometers, away.
The city pays Stahl about $1,300 a month, including a modest stipend for Márquez. The rancher provides Márquez's food, equipment, camp wagon and bus fare from his home in Chihuahua, Mexico.
Stahl said access to the forage on public lands allowed him to continue raising sheep and other livestock instead of selling the ranch to developers.
"I couldn't make a living on the sheep without access to the city land," Stahl said. "And Enrique really knows the sheep and all the places they can hide. He has an instinct for animals."
Before coming to Montana, Márquez, 57, a soft-spoken man with hazel eyes, worked with cattle in New Mexico for a decade, but he had never handled sheep. He said the money he earned each season helped him fix up his small cattle ranch in Mexico.
Márquez pointed out the telltale orange patches of leafy spurge in the dun-colored hills where his flock had not grazed. He said the sheep were effective and better than spraying.
"The chemicals kill the bad plants as well as the good ones," he said in Spanish. "In Mexico, we have a little spurge, but nothing like this. I've learned a lot about bad plants and sheep here."
On a recent Sunday morning, the flock departed the mountains before the first snowfall. The sheep moved through Missoula's streets, their bells clanging and hooves clattering on the pavement as they headed back to the ranch.
The herders included Stahl on an all-terrain vehicle, volunteers on bicycles and Márquez on horseback. The woolly procession rolled past subdivisions and apartments, where children ran alongside it.
A tractor-trailer slowed to a halt as it was engulfed by the flock.
The sheep ran through an interstate-highway underpass, then across railroad tracks and a busy four-lane state highway.
When the sheep arrived at the ranch after an hour and a half trip down from the mountains, they fanned out in the waist-high grasses.
Stahl said the roundup went faster each year.
"They make their way home from memory," he said.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/27/america/sheep.php



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Ian Walthew


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My wife being Australian and having three Australian passport holding kids from 2.5 to nearly 7, I am always keen to find good farm blogs from Australia, to help keep the Australian in them alive and well, given we live in rural France.

So I am delighted to recommend Bredbo Valley View Farm, in New South Wales, Australian, which was brought to my attention by farmer/blogger Martyn. (Martyn has also sent me some great recommendations which I hope to post shortly.)



Here's what Martyn has to say about his blog and farm:

I grew up in the Army, following Dad from posting too posting, 11 schools in 10 years. When he discharged we settled in the hinterland of the Gold Coast. My parents found a beautiful old dairy farm tucked away in a green valley above a crystal clear mountain creek and I lived there until I joined the Army.

I love the outdoors, I love the solitary, the feeling of self and the isolation of farm life.

My wife had a different up bringing, she is the youngest daughter of German immigrants, grew up in the South Australian outback and loved having her family around.

Farming is something that we both talked about and always wanted to do.

Around 2000 we started looking to move into the country, but as Australian real estate prices skyrocketed and rural property prices exploded we began to worry it would become way too expensive. So we jumped in boots and all. In hind site we probably shouldn't have bought a place in the middle of a drought - but hey, it was cheap.

So for the last eighteen months it's been adventure after adventure. We usually have more animals in the house then humans, it's getting that bad I have started calling the house the Barn.

The kids love the adventure, the wife loves the freedom and I love getting up early and fixing electric fences.

So what did we do on our farm?

When we started we had the brilliant idea of breeding free range rare breed pigs and growing heritage vegitables. We started with six pigs - I now have eighty, we have 15 hectares of oats, recently acquired 40 sheep and have been given three goats. The fun never stops.

In West Bank, attack on Arabs is filmed
KHIRBET SUSIYA, West Bank: The conflict between Arabs and Jews over grazing land and water wells in the ancient, arid hills south of Hebron in the West Bank has a distinctly biblical feel, like the flimsy tent encampments and dank caves in which some local Palestinian farming families dwell.But the primeval feud took on a modern twist this month when Muna Nawajaa, one of the two wives of a Palestinian shepherd from Khirbet Susiya, used a hand-held video camera to capture footage of what appeared to be masked Jewish settlers viciously beating members of her family with clubs - images that have since been broadcast by news networks all over the world.Nawajaa, 24, the mother of a four-month-old, said it was the first scene she had ever filmed.Had it not been for the camera - one of about 100 handed out in the West Bank by the Israeli human rights group Btselem to document violent incidents - the assault June 8 might have ended up like many others that have occurred in these parts: unresolved.But the graphic images and ensuing attention by the news media seem to have spurred the Israeli police.
By Friday, the Judea and Samaria branch had arrested three suspects from the nearby Jewish settlement of Susiya after what a police spokesman described as "an intensive investigation." Two of the three were under 18."The only weapon we have is the media," said Khalil Nawajaa, 61, a patriarch of the clan, which raises livestock and teases wheat, grapes and zucchini out of the sun-baked, thistle-spiked earth, while showing his scars.The Nawajaas maintain a proper home in the sprawling town of Yata, a few kilometers away, but they usually prefer to stick close to their land. The encampment has no electricity. Water is drawn from a well, milk is kept in sheepskins, bread is baked in a traditional outdoor stone oven and extra shelter is provided by an underground cave.Sitting on the floor of a tent in the family's encampment in mid-June, Imran Nawajaa, 33, Khalil's nephew, recalled the morning of the attack.He said was out tending a flock with his young sons when two masked settlers rode up on a tractor and ordered him, in Hebrew, to leave."I said, 'This is my land, this is my flock, I'm not going anywhere,"' he related. "They told me, 'If you are a man, stay here for another 10 minutes,' then they left."Imran sent for Muna, who had been taught to use the camera by her brother. She arrived on the scene with Imran's wife, Rabiha, and Khalil and his wife, Tamam.The camera captures four lean men, their heads swathed in colorful cloth, striding toward the farmers, clubs in hand. In the background are the whitewashed, red-roofed houses of the settlement.One masked man strikes Imran with a series of swift, hard blows. There is a fleeting frame of another assailant grappling with Khalil before the camera shuts down.Muna said she partly hid the camera under her scarf while filming from a nearby rise, until she got scared. "I was thinking of my baby. He was alone in the tent. I also ran away to call for help," she said, explaining why the footage ends abruptly after the first blows.Other shepherds helped the dazed and bleeding farmers down to the main road. There they flagged down an Israeli Army jeep, which called for an ambulance, and the videocassette was handed over to the police.Tamam, 60, was taken to an Israeli hospital with a broken cheekbone and a gash on her right hand. Khalil, who received a head wound, and Imran, who said he had briefly lost consciousness, were treated in Hebron.The violence was foreshadowed. Khalil said that a year ago, he tried to shoo settlers' sheep away from his newly planted wheat when two settlers grabbed him and smashed his face with a stone, knocking out a front tooth.Khalil was unable to identify his attackers from any of the photographs in the police files so they closed the case, he said.The south Hebron hills are the scene of constant tension, according to Btselem and the police. The fierce competition for sparse resources is compounded by security fears and deeply conflicting national claims.Ancient Susiya contains the ruins of a synagogue dating from the Roman period, attesting to a long and robust Jewish presence here. Jewish settlers started moving in again after Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 war.In the persistent war over the land, blood has been spilled on both sides. In 2001, at the height of the second Palestinian uprising, Yair Har Sinai, a well-known Jewish shepherd from the settlement of Susiya, was murdered in the Hebron hills.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/23/africa/settlers.php

Paula runs the Locks Park Farm blog at http://locksparkfarm.wordpress.com/

She has a small organic farm on the Culm grasslands near Hatherleigh in Devon, England, with sheep and beef cattle. She has been farming in the county for more than 30 years.

A couple of years ago she was approached by the Council for the Protection of Rural England (the CPRE) and asked if she would consider writing a farming blog. At the time she said no.

Having sold her ‘direct’ organic meat retail business she began to rethink the direction the farm should take. The CPRE were still keen for the blog to go ahead; Paula said yes and http://locksparkfarm.wordpress.com was born.

She was a "a snow-white blogging virgin… little did I know what I had begun!"

Paula writes: "Farming, food, environment, energy and climate change, and now credit-crunch, are having a huge impact on the way people and governments (hopefully) think. I would like to use the farm to develop a centre of learning and teaching. From purely hands-on practical skills and producing food in the most sustainable and environmentally aware way possible to the more complex issues of carbon footprinting, self-sufficient energy, eco builds and our food security. In other words, our’s, and the planet’s, survival."

I'm hoping to get some farm blog recommendations from Locks Park Farm soon.

www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com

www.ianwalthew.com

Hi again,
I told you I was a little slow and that I confuse easily. I did check out the farm blog and have linked it to my site. Great idea and thank you for doing it.
There is a german blog http://sheepmama.twoday.net/ I like it very much and noticed that you don't have a german blog. she writes in German and English AND she raises black sheep.
Alex

Black Ram Farm





http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/
http://www.ianwalthew.com/