‘The Summer that never was’ has long since gone, taking with it the misery of that wretched holiday spent in a leaking tent on a washed-out campsite. The passage of time may yet lend charm to all those soggy days as the fiasco of Summer 1980 becomes another memory – the holiday that all others can now be compared with – “At least it’s not as bad as 1980 when . . .”
Spare a thought then for those whose problems have only just begun, livestock farmers now faced with the cruel heart-breaking results of that weather. Certainly here, in the Marchlands, we had the worst hay harvest in living memory – and for some of our more venerable neighbours, memory goes back a long way. There is no doubt that the devastation caused by this Summer’s weather will affect everyone eventually; what it will mean for beef and lamb prices next year is anyone’s guess.
Closing my eyes for a moment I can still remember Maytime when the grass in the meadows by the dingle was sweet and young – at its lush and leafy best. Bullocks and heifers, grazing adjoining fields were stretching as far as they dared for just a few mouthfuls of the fragrant young shoots that were to be the winter hay. The crop should be cut and bailed by the end of June in a good year. It is then in its prime – before the fall back in growth that afflicts most native British grasses in July. Hill grass (such as Nardus) is adapted for the poorer soil nutrients found on the uplands, but at the time of year when long sunnier days would be expected to accelerate its growth, it actually suffers a 50% drop. The rate of food manufactured per unit area of leaf falls to less than half its maximum potential value. All this means that grass cut before June 30th makes a fine crisp green fodder with a high nutrient value, ideal for sheep and calves. Hay cut later, in July and August, is stemmy, coarse and difficult to dry – good only for traditional beef cattle.
All that May promised was lost. We watched hopelessly while this promising grass crop, battered by weeks of storms and torrential rain, rotted in the fields. In desperation, some was bales while still damp and then mouldered and steamed out all its goodness in the barns. Through August and September the sweet sickly smell of decay pervaded rickyards. Some farmers have already suffered the fires which result from packing damp hay too tightly into their barns.The only good hay we have is the few bales that were stacked around a commercial fan we ran at full blast for a month.
There will of course be some fodder on farms this winter. Many lowland farmers will have grabbed silage crops. Some grass, originally cut for hay, will doubtless have been sprayed with formic acid and turned into makeshift silage. However, where mature grass is ensiled it’s almost impossible to exclude all air, so many of these silage clamps will deteriorate rapidly and not keep beyond Christmas. Over the country as a whole there is bound to be a shortage of quality fodder this winter. And with shortage comes profiteering.
Let’s hope the fates relent and send a short Winter. Farmers are not optimists though and already show signs of preparing for the worst. The annual sales of breeding ewes at Kelso, usually a good indicator of market confidence, showed a make drop in prices. Come January, ewes will need a lot of hay, which will be a scarce commodity, so many farmers may decide to cut back flock numbers. Coinciding with this is the beginning of the long awaited EEC sheep-meat regime meaning that British lamb can now freely enter France without payment of any tariff (which has been as much as 78p/kg). This would have meant fewer quality lambs available in the UK next year anyway, without a fodder crisis. This be a good time to buy some meat for your freezer.
The decline in the British national beef herd continues with beef cow numbers down 3.6% last year and at it’s lowest level for eight years. Numbers of beef-type heifers in Wales are down an alarming 11% this year alone. Imports of Irish beef (some of which originates outside Ireland) have cushioned the consumer from the effect of this decline so far but . . . perhaps you’d better put some beef in your freezer as well . . .