From inews.co.uk
By Kiri Pritchard-McLean
Farmers and vegans have lots of the same values
I was raised on a sheep and cattle farm in North Wales. I think when you tell people you grew on a farm they imagine an idyllic, Darling Buds of May existence, when in actual fact it largely means your childhood is defined by unpaid labour, and by the time you’re eight years old you’ve watched your Mum treat a minor vaginal prolapse with some bailing twine.
I come from a fairly long line of farmers, and working with and on the land is absolutely in my blood. So imagine my parent’s surprise when at 31 I turned from a pork enthusiastic omnivore to a vegan overnight. How I ended up plant-based – I have the odd egg from our rescue chickens – is pretty unremarkable. At a gig I was hosting I was chatting to a climate change scientist about what was the best and easiest thing I could do to help the planet and he definitively replied: “stop eating meat”. Easy! Yup, I’m one of those and I didn’t even have to watch Cowspiracy to do it.
Telling my parents I’d turned vegan is probably one of the hardest conversations I’d had with them, and that’s a high bar when you consider that at 20 I had to break it to them I was going to university to study contemporary theatre practice.
I had been raised to believe that vegans were sanctimonious radicals who lived in cities, hated farmers, and glued themselves to the front of Asda. They were out of touch and had contempt for people like my parents who put everything on the line to care for their land and stock as best they could.
I think my parent’s dedication and diligence is one of the reasons it took me so long to come round to veganism. I couldn’t square what I was told about farming and what I knew to be true. As kids we often joked that Mum loved the sheep more than us, so when I heard farmers being spoken about in the media as uncaring, reckless and obstinate I couldn’t understand it. It took me years to realise that maybe I’d happily ingested similar falsehoods about vegans too.
One of my favourite things is a quick fix so I was delighted that becoming a vegan was so easy. Easy that is until you buy a smallholding in Wales and realise that you are now the custodian of that land and accidentally now running a farm.
When we first settled on the farm I was keen to get some rescue chickens. The girls are delightful, they’re named after Drag Queens – Alaska Thundercluck and Latrice Eggs Royale being favourites. We were gifted with a brand new source of manure for the composter but in addition to this I noticed that our garden seemed to flourish when they came into our lives. Those girls are brilliant at digging over flower beds and keeping on top of the snail population. This got me thinking: where else could I use nature to support nature on the farm?
When a beekeeping friend asked if we knew of anywhere on our side of the island that had space for bees, I leapt at the chance to have some hives. Local honey may help with inflammation and allergies but in my case it would help with seemingly thoughtful Christmas gifts for family I don’t know very well. Again, we introduced the hives as a bit of interest on the farm and suddenly the fairly barren yet wild area they were in exploded with flowers and my garden, a short flight away, hums with activity on warm days.
It’s not all that easy and some experiments go wrong. I brought some donkeys in to eat the long grass around the house and fair play they did. But, they also had a good go at a few pairs of my knickers on the washing line, my bedding plans and two fruit trees. Who knew their noises wouldn’t be the most anti-social thing about them?
I’m now addicted to nature-based problem solving, and so comes my biggest challenge yet. I’m about to embark, pun intended, on a tree planting programme. In the next 12 months I’m aiming to add 500 new native trees to the farm. I live near protected wetland so I need to be careful that I don’t encourage corvids as they will eat all the eggs of the ground nesting birds. I’m learning that it’s a delicate balancing act and I want to do this right, not just wade in with the intention of making things better and actually just ruining things.
The more we develop the farm, the more I realise that farmers and vegans have lots of the same values. They care about animal welfare, they have a vested interest in preserving and protecting land and potatoes make up a third of most their meals. I think I might have ended up running a vegan farm?! Part of my journey with these 50-odd acres is discovering that Mother Nature has a solution for almost all problems and it’s just learning to work with her solutions.
This week I have been
Creating… a “she shed”. I’m not sure why we need to gender sheds but I suppose you couldn’t accuse my tiny stone potting shed of being a man shed. There are no witty aluminum signs up and I don’t go in my shed to hide from my family, I go in there to listen to murder podcasts and plant seeds.
Making… lampshades. At the start of this year I started organising amazing small businesses to come to my house and teach my friends and I thinks. We learn a new skill and get to chat, bond and eat crisps. Just the other day the amazing Charlotte at Twin Made, who taught us dungaree making in February, showed us how to make our own lampshades. I don’t have my own children but I finally understand the joy you feel when you create something that lights up a room and all without having to change a nappy, incredible stuff.
Deterring… pests. With chickens comes pests. One clever magpie comes and eats at least an egg a day, I assume he’s bulking. There’s also two large rats who have now cottoned on there’s food regularly on the floor in the coop, and the recent cherry on the cake is a brazen fox who’s started to wander around in broad daylight.
Apparently, men’s urine is a deterrent so my partner has gleefully been pissing around our yard and I bought a cage to humanely trap the rats. I’m delighted to say the rats have enjoyed every substance I have left as bait and not once been caught in the cage.
My final attempt is to try peppermint oil watered down (it’s toxic to lots of animals including my work-shy cat) and spray it around the coop. So that’s what I now spend my spare time doing, spraying a coop with an essential oil. I had hoped it would smell like a spa retreat but to be honest it’s much more like someone has had a wee on an After Eight.
No comments:
Post a Comment