Devon SSSI nature reserve and eco lodges - Maggie's Blog
29 June
Counting cows...
We're back to one of our summer tasks now - counting cows, or 'lookering' each day to check they're all there and OK. They've come from Higher Punchardon Farm, just half a mile down the road. Their real job is to reinstate traditional grazing in the nature reserve, but first they go into our biggest field, Lower Newland Moor, where at the moment they're enjoying the birdsfoot trefoil, forget me nots, and buttercups etc well as the grass.
I hope they don't eat it all too soon. There are nine of them, and although they're all small, I worry they may be too much for the field, which I'd rather see being lightly grazed.
This is a difficult judgement, for me at least. I understand the conservation issues, but I'm no farmer, and nothing beats practical experience.
The issue is this. On the one hand we initially said this field would stay as productive grassland so we'd have something to offer in return for asking our neighbours to loan their cows for conservation grazing in the SSSI nature reserve.
On the other hand, the flowers are coming back and now it's looking like this field has good potential for something more ecologically interesting than grassland. Last year, what with the wet weather and various practicallities like TB checks and blue tongue vacinations, the cows were here most of the summer but went home just when we needed them for the reserve. By the time they came back it was
too late really - the grass was going over, and they kept breaking out...
And they ate everything in Lower Newland Moor, right down to the rushes, making me worry about overgrazing. But this spring the field was good again - with many more flowers than others that we don't graze, like the pond field.
So maybe it wasn't too much, and maybe the flowers are there because of the grazing.
I guess we'll learn in time. The top priority is to graze the culm grassland - we'll let the cows go through in a few weeks when the orchids are over. After that we'll play it by ear I suppose - and of course talk to our farming friends who know about livestock.