Tired farmland in need of recovery finds a future within the 100+yr family tenure.
My father wouldn’t let me on the farm unless I had a degree in something other than agriculture. Who can blame him, the farm was exhausted, he was an unwilling eldest son brought back to the land by his recently bereaved father, himself the seven son of a welsh farming dynasty. I found my alternative calling in medicine, a GP for 30+ years, but also keeping a few, and then a few more sheep, and eventually a flock of 40 ewes. Looking back now Yvonne and I are not sure where the energy came from, taking holiday to do the lambing, fitting on calls and courses around shearing and scanning, 12 hour days spilling into evenings and weekends. I used to joke that I had two jobs, each taking four days a week, not so far from the truth.
Larry with his fleece from the previous shearing
My mother Betty was widowed in 1998 so we helped with the flock in Cold Aston in addition to our 4 ewes in Foxcote, gradually doing more and more as years went by. The land had been bought by Samuel Nicholas, my grandfather in 1919, having rented it from Nancy Cunard previously. He had left Monmouthshire with his younger brother in 1914 to farm in Australia, but the Kaiser intervened and thus found himself in the Cotswolds where land was affordable, and in particular this light brashy land that had been growing crops in the pre-enclosure rotation system for centuries. After some discussion about becoming the third Mrs Nicholas in Cold Aston we moved in after Betty moved to Northleach. We bought a flock of 40 Suffolk mule crosses and set about repairing the walls and fences, planting a handful of trees and farming as the family had always farmed. Then COVID and partial retirement came simultaneously, we had sold the breeding flock with a view to fitting in a bit of travelling, but lockdown came and no sheep to graze the fields. Spring brought warmth, grass and previously unseen flowers on our land, Cuckoo flower, bedstraw, purple orchids, lambs sorrel. Butterflies too, clouds of meadow browns, bumble bees, the occasional tentative hare, and a dawn hunting barn owl. Was this really the same land that I had known for 60 years? We started questioning our systems of land management, reading up on farming for nature, regenerative grassland management, and old ways of rearing sheep in the Cotswolds. We made hay as usual, but the grass kept growing and we needed something to graze it, and cattle would walk straight through the less robust fencing, so sheep it had to be. Prices in the market were sky high, at least 50% up on what we had sold for, but by a stroke of luck a flock of Cotswold sheep came up for sale, 20 birth certificated and named beauties, and we had the beginnings of the Aston Cotswold Flock. Larry came from the Farm Park and our nascent pedigree flock was launched.
Next: The Shepherds Year
Aston Cotswold Flock 