Wild Dorset
HOMESPUN
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Ellen Simon, Tamarisk Farm
e have complicated our lives by having a lot of different breeds of sheep. Each is a different colour, has specific needs and their own rams. And they have very different personalities. We did not select them all for good, hard-headed business reasons. We chose the Herdwicks (our most recent breed) in a reminiscent mood: we lived in Cumbria early in our married life where we saw and loved them when walking and climbing in the fells. Herdwicks are hefted, which means that they learn their territory and stay within it – which is just as well for us as they are very adept at getting over, under, through and around our fences! The handsome black and white Jacobs were bequeathed from my brother’s flock and the Shetlands began as a present to our son when he was about ten years old. Our first Hebrideans arrived unexpectedly from the Isle of Wight: Adam had been advising the National Trust ranger there about maintaining their wildflower pastures and had commented that they might have an influx of fleabane, which you will have seen if you walk at Cogden. It gives a fine, late summer display of bright yellow flowers which attract insects but can be very invasive. ‘Oh no,’ they said, ‘we don’t have fleabane, we have Hebrideans!’ When they in turn came to visit they had in the truck three young ewes! Even though they have taught their daughters and granddaughters to eat the fleabane, we still can’t keep it down. We think of our Dorset Downs as the sensible, commercial flock that fatten well, and so they are, but even these were chosen because our other son, when very young thirty years ago, preferred their fluffy dark faces to the clean white faces of the more popular Polled Dorset breed. Dorset Downs are a rare breed, listed in the Minorities section (less than 3000 breeding ewes) of the Rare Breeds Society, so we are pleased to be part of keeping this breed alive. The wealth of the nation in the thirteenth century, and for a long time after that, was built on the wool this country produced. Indeed, the landscape and social history was defined by the Enclosure Acts which supported the wool industry. The Speaker of the House of Lords sits on a Woolsack because wool was so important when 32 | Bridport Times | September 2018
the office was established. Since that time, however, the trade has declined and for the last couple of centuries the main reason most people have kept sheep in Britain is for their meat. The Wool Marketing Board, the only remaining state monopoly, does its best to sell our wool but it competes with other less natural and less local fibres and it no longer fills British farm coffers. There are new ways being developed to use what has nearly become a waste product, such as house insulation and packaging. For many years income from the wool has not covered the cost and work of shearing, but still the shearing must happen for the welfare of the sheep. With their lovely woolly coats on, they are simply much too hot in summer and they are vulnerable to horrible and life-threatening fly-strike. To bypass this difficulty some farmers are keeping sheep which have been bred to shed their wool (using genetics from the Wiltshire Horn breed) but, commercial though we may be, we are also sentimental and have great pleasure in our established flocks and varied breeds. So we have gone the other way, making a virtue of the necessity to shear by making the wool into yarn.