Anton Coaker farms 1,500 acres of tenanted peat on Dartmoor, lying roughly between 900ft and 1300ft, enjoying just under 100inches of rain. he is also an active grazier on the adjoining common, the Forest of Dartmoor.
Livestock is currently 40 South Devon cows, 70 Galloways of various hues, and followers, and 350 ewes, split between Cheviot and Scotch. Forage is almost exclusively home-grown grass, and the land hasn't been tilled since some 'interesting' attempts during WWII. (The farm was signed off as unploughable.)
He has diversified into hardwood sawmilling and beef retailing. He his helped by his wife Alison and their three children. Anton also writes a monthly column for the south west edition of British Farmer and Grower magazine.
There is a bitter irony in my life just now.
We have had to jab several weaned heifer calves, thought to have cycled a bit quicker than I was expecting, to rid them of unwanted surprises next summer. Backalong, Joe also spotted- in time- a freshly calved pedigree Angus heifer get herself tangled up with the wrong bull within very few days of her calving. Another jab.
Conversely, there’s a Riggit Galloway I can’t get to hold to the bull for love or money. She is one of the two ‘Floras’ I managed to secure, from one of the herds-Mochrum- re-started in the 80’s. The heifers were both in-utero when Scottish breeder Miss Flora Stewart sadly passed away. The estate weren’t that interested in the more arcane lines that Miss Flora had bred*, and quickly dispersed most of them, including the Riggits.
These two were left skidding about with some store cattle, before good fortune found them heading South. They are, for me, the last drop of an irreplaceable vintage, and frankly, I’d have crawled over broken glass to obtain them.
For them to now be living on the hill with an unrelated Riggit bull would no doubt, given what could so easily have happened, have delighted Miss Flora.
Anyway, the best looking one cycles as regular as you like, and has now had her chance of various husbands, but conceives not. T’vet has tried various techno tweaks, but to no avail. The heifer blooms in every other way, getting steadily plumper, and we’re now wandering if we should shut her in with nowt but straw to get some flesh off her again.
We’ll see.
* Flora had breeding groups of three different coloured belted Galloways, Whites with both black points and red, the aforementioned Riggits, and, rarest of all, a beautiful herd of solid red Galloways. (I say ‘a herd’; I mean ‘the herd’.) She was by every account a most remarkable character, and simply a lovely person. I kick myself over and over for never getting to meet her, beyond passing pleasantries in the pens at Castle Douglas.
I suspect that the poor teachers who have to deal with my kids dread the little urchins arrival. Daddy kindly sends them ready charged with difficult questions, and scurrilously supplies science info of all the wrong kind.
The poor lady vicar who comes in to skool once a week and tries to spread the word gets asked for proof that would hold up in court. Agnes, when she was at primary, was especially good at this, and would read up on other religions to spice up the discussion. Eventually, we decided it was probably kinder to show some pity. The lessons were treated as an extension of care in the community.
For the record, I object strongly to my offspring being told, as facts, stories that are demonstrably not actually verifiable. You believe whatever you wish, but don’t foist it onto my kids. RE classes notwithstanding, I also notice a bit of a bunny-hugger veggie liberal trend among the teachers generally. How they reacted last week, when John and Polly went to skool jumping up and down with excitement, cos Daddy had finally nailed the squirrel that was coming to the bird table (Daddy had hung out of the bedroom window, at dawn, with the musket to achieve this.) It was all we could do to stop them taking it in as a trophy....
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