Onwards and upwards

We don't own any sheep but we let the keep for 100 ewes to one of our neighbours. The advantage to us of having a few sheep on the land is that they eat some plants that the cows don't or shouldn't eat. In particular, sheep like to eat a small amount of ragwort, which in large quantities is poisonous and fatal for cattle and horses.

Ragwort is the tall brassy yellow flower that flourishes on the side of roads later in the summer. From a farming point of view it is an "injurious weed" under the Weeds Act 1959. The Ragwort Control Act 2003 sets out a code of practice on ragwort. The sheep nibble off the leaves and flowers which stops them spreading, but they don't kill the plants. The only way to kill them is to pull them up by their roots. When the number of plants starts to build up, we have a campaign of pulling them up and burning them - not my favourite job :-(

On the other hand, ragwort is incredibly attractive to a huge array of insects some of which are very rare, so it's good that it's common, even if we don't want our cows to eat it...

The sheep work their way from one end of the farm to the other, field by field, and we time it so that they are not on the chalk down lands while they are flowering or they would eat those flowers as well :-))