In the old days

What was life like for a hill farmer in "the old days"? How has the practice in the Blackstairs changed since then, and what are possible benefits and downfalls of the RBPS project?

For centuries, the commonage was used by everyone who had a right to it. The lowlands are green pasture, the commons are covered in heather and dry grass after has not rained much in spring.

"At that time – when I was born, in the seventies – I can remember, in the early eighties […] everyone used the commonage. And when I was a child, you’d go up in the summertime and you’d be checking the sheep on the mountain, or be rounding up the sheep, everyone did that." The children were being sent up to care for the sheep, and were sometimes left to their own devices all day long. Nearly every family that had rights to the commons - which were bought or inherited - put up their animals.

Spring time in the Blackstairs.

Things have changed since then. When the green lowland pastures instead of the harsh commons were used for rearing lambs, a lot of farmers started to breed sheep adapted to that habitat. These ones were more productive and would often have several lambs. However, a ewe is usually unable to protect more than one lamb at a time. Therefore, ewes with doubles cannot be put up on the commonage.

Some ewes and their lambs are driven down where they are rounded up for a check and some sorting, after which they are let up to the mountain again. A part of the flock is driven downhill to be rounded up.

Most hillfarmers use the white Cheviot ewes or Scotch Blackface that are known to protect their lambs fiercely. Sheep that are of other breeds will not do well on the mountain and might even die. Those farmers that were using the commonage already continued to do so, but most of the ones that were not did not start now. Hardly anyone who did not own sheep of the hardy breeds beforehand did go out to buy some just for the sake of the project.

"I’ll be cut with my payment I get from the EU, you see now. Cause I own some of the commonage that was burnt you see - even if i didn't set the fire."

The mountain is burnt regularly in some commons. It is an old practice that is believed to help fresh grass grow as well as get rid of dry parts of shrubs. While a lot of farmers want to continue the practice and even joined the RBPS project mainly for that reason, there are others that are against it. If someone illegally sets fire to the mountain, the payments they receive from the EU for the land they have the rights to will be cut. They also argue that it is dangerous as the fire can spread easily to conifer plantations and the lowlands. Most people know who is doing the burning in their area, "but what can you do? They are our neighbours, and I don't have proof of it anyway."

Branding sheep: Sheep are branded so they can be easily identified on the mountain.

Farmers are supposed to use marking fluid that can be washed out when the wool is being cleaned, but with noone paying a good price for it, they do not see the point of that regulation. A lot of farmers use shed paint which is weatherproof. There is a way to remove it - you can simply clip the branding out of the wool and apply a new one.

"A lot of sheep used to go missing on it because there were so many people using it, bad business going on."

Being asked for the reason why the practice of putting up sheep on the commonage has ceased in his area, a farmer replied:

"So, like every year then, we’d put up maybe 200, 220 sheep, someone else could be putting up 150, 200. But every year I remember, we used to lose seven or eight, nine, ten sheep. Some of them cleared off - fair enough but more then would never be heard of again, you know, this sort of thing? So you’d say like - did somebody round them up and bring them in with them, or…? You just wouldn’t know what was happening. In the end anyway, they just got a little bit pissed off, you know, so they just sort of stopped. So rather than use the commonage and lose their nine, ten ewes every year, they rented land instead."

Sheep know their mates and their surroundings because they are used to them.

A flock needs to be made familiar with the mountain. Normally, older ewes teach the younger ones where to find water, grass and other plants to graze on, and they more or less stay in the same area. This is called 'being hefted'. If there are no older sheep in the flock, it will disperse all over the place and some sheep will get lost. The knowledge is gone, and the same process happened to their sheperds: "A lot of people just gave up sheep farming, they were older people then and they stopped, and their sons and daughters then got better educated and they got better jobs... The problem is, there’s a whole generation that haven’t used the mountain at all – aren’t familiar with the mountain." Once the link of passed on knowledge is broken, it is very difficult to mend again.

Little use for the mountain? A farmer showing the fence his commonage group put up.

This is a change that occured over the last two generations: „When we were young, we had fuck all. My father was poor. Small bit of land and a big family. And we had to work. It was bread and butter, we wouldn't eat if we didnt look after the sheep. But gee, you get that life, and you know no other life…“, a farmer in his fifties remembers. The children of these old hill farmers have gone to college and found different work, and the older generation does not blame them for that decision.

A middle-aged farmer about the next generation: "They’re not gonna go up the mountain chasing sheep."

A lot of farmers regard this type of farming as too much work, even with the current project going on: "No one has any use for the mountain. It’s of no financial benefit to us, only through government payments. As it regards farming payments, it’s of no consequence to us. Like there’s none of us gonna turn around and go: Yeah, I’m gonna become a fulltime hill sheep farmer, I’m going to have 300 mountain Scotch ewes. And if I had 300 of them in the morning – would I make a living from them? Probably not."

Boundaries were fenced off by the farmers to make it easier to put up animals for anyone in the commonage group who wanted to.

Nearly everyone enjoyed getting this work done as a group as it was a welcome opportunity to get to see their neighbours and work as a team - some aspect that many farmers miss of the old times. Will the project do enough in encouraging more farmers to take up hill farming again? At the end of the day, money might be the deciding factor for the fate of the mountain and its hill farmers:

"We all start with a romantic notion – that it’s lovely to be up on the mountain, and walking around after sheep, and you are a sheep farmer, fine weather and your sheep dogs. It's like this picture postcard. That doesn’t pay the bills. The reality is: you have to be a dairy farmer, you have to be a tillage farmer, you have to have an off-farm job. We’re all small farmers along here, so we have to supplement our income by part-time work somewhere else. That’s the reality. Would I love to be up on the mountain, looking at the sheep instead of stuck in traffic in M50 in Dublin? Of course I would. But it won’t pay the bills."