Sheep, the blessings and the curses

Managing the roadsides, dealing with a crisis, and making leather for shoes.

Keeping the roadsides clear

As many of you may know, out of control fires are a huge problem in Portugal. These fires can burn thousands of hectares, engulf whole villages, and kill people and animals. Spending as much time as I do in the hills — the same hills which fuelled the most deadly fire in memory — it seems clear to me that the biggest part of the problem are the large swathes of land that were planted with pine and eucalyptus trees, then left to become tinderboxes.

The idea of fixing the problem is mind-boggling. The council and government don’t have the authority, strength of will, or even the support from the community to solve the issue, so there are many little half measures instead. These measures are certainly a good thing, like creating fire breaks around houses and villages, banning the use of machinery that could cause sparks during periods of highest risk, building big water tanks in strategic locations for the fire brigade to fill up their tanks.

Though in some cases, safety measures are done in ways that are really inefficient, ineffective, or perfectly effective for the intended purpose, but ecologically devastating and even counterproductive in the long term. The issue that catches much of my attention is the management of the roadside edge. On each side of the road, ten meters of land must be cleared of vegetation (many people died on the roads while trying to escape the 2017 fires).

Turning the roadsides into a firebreak is another great idea, but in practice, has other consequences that need to be mitigated. It is important to note that in some places, local councils will simply ignore the rule and leave the roads to become suffocated by out of control plantations. Luckily, where I live — a place that has suffered some of the worst fires — the local authorities are better than most at clearing the roadsides. This means that once or twice per year, men and women will scour every inch of roadside with machines and even herbicides, literally killing every living thing in that space. This strategy certainly creates an effective firebreak, but at the same time can poison local water sources.

In my municipality, there are four landscape management companies who are subcontracted for the job, they each take responsibility for different areas, but use different chemicals so that even the environmental department doesn’t know what is being used where…

The other side effect is the creation of a kind of ecological blank slate. Nature thrives on disruption, for example when a wild pig unearths a patch in the forest, or a tree is uprooted by the wind, this disturbance creates a natural opening in the soil, which is promptly refilled by fast-growing annual plants, restarting the ecological sequence and refreshing the seed-bank. I often compare the roadside clearing to the disruptive forces of nature, but the crucial difference is that in the natural world, these disruptions follow patterns which are — in their nature — discontinuous.

The discontinuity of nature is like a counterweight to the risks of disruption. Creating two ten meter strips of disruption on each side of every road is like making an entirely new network of roads, but for invasive species instead of cars. Every time I ride my son to school and back, I see the onward march of species like Acacia dealbata, Acacia melanoxylon, and Oxalis pes-capre. Every time that the work crews make their passes, the first things to recolonize the space are the invasive plants and trees. Many of these species are rhizomatous, meaning that they spread laterally through the roots, and don’t die when cut.

Even when the land is poisoned, it’s no solution, because the neglected plantation just beyond the fire break becomes infested too, acting as a staging ground for invasive species to recolonize the roadside and continue spreading. I’ve had conversations with other residents and with the council. Basically, nobody can offer an actual solution right now, as crazy as it is, what they are doing is the best thing that can be done, even though these invasive trees ultimately make the land even more flammable once they get into the plantations (they can recolonize those spaces faster than the eucalyptus…)

An issue is that the responsibility is divided between the parish council and the municipal council, meaning that in order to make any kind of change, everything must be coordinated between multiple different offices and authorities who often seem to go out of their way to have nothing to do with each other. A longstanding thought of mine is that the roadsides could be managed with goats and sheep. In fact, that is one of the reasons that I bought Heidi. My plans for the flock/flerd are to increase the size over the next years so that I can present an alternative solution.

In the meantime, I’ve begun experimenting by setting up electric fencing along the road within the village boundaries (which were not poisoned last year). This has given me a few insights into the logistics of this approach, along with some pros and cons. I see grazing as a viable option for the roadsides, but it would be a full-time job. If I would register as a livestock farmer, and sell a portion of the flock each year, then I could potentially offer the service at a competitive price.

Here you can see the results after a few hours of grazing in this patch. Here, the sheep have trampled more grass than they ate (likely because of the slim conditions between the fence lines) this kind of grazing is good because that trampled material can now decompose, enriching the soil instead of depleting it.

If you look closely, you can see that beyond the village sign, the roadside becomes completely barren, this is because the local authorities paid contractors to spray herbicides last November. The challenges of managing regrowth are too complex for the local council to overcome from afar, so the last option is to simply poison the land. In some cases, the contractors were seen to spray their chemicals directly onto natural springs and waterways.

The issue of price is unfortunately a central factor, and the responsibilities of the job are more complex than simply grazing. The reality is that practices up to this point have left the land in a dire condition, much of it is actually unsuitable for grazing, infested with bracken. I think it is a shame. There are hundreds of hectares of land, much of it catching huge amounts of rain water — due to the topography and position of the road — that is being killed and causing so many problems to the environment. But it must be done, as a matter of public safety.

My dream is that this barren land could become a kind of farm, growing spring fodder, perennial shrubs like blueberry and raspberry. Rain water can easily be captured and stored, used to irrigate, livestock utilized to manage the levels of growth during periods of risk. I feel like it needs to happen, for the good of the land and the community. But it is hard to think of a way to make it happen. I believe that if everything were in place, then the authorities would be open to a change, but things are not in place. There are many people are being employed to simply cut the vegetation, a significant part of the economy exists for the purpose. The kind of social structures or businesses needed to farm that land don’t really exist, definitely not at the scale needed.

I helped to organize a community meeting last year to discuss this topic, while I tried to raise awareness of invasive species among local people. The idea was floated that we could work together to turn a small stretch of roadside into farmed land. I think that one day, I’ll find the time to make that a reality. Until then, I’ll keep growing and optimizing the flock, trying to develop alternate streams of income which can supplement and make farming the roadside cheaper. I think that, ultimately, the roadside farm is a lifetime aspiration. For now, we’re more than busy enough just focusing on bringing our own farm into production.

---

Struggling to see

On a morning much like any other, I ate my breakfast, and just after the sun came up above the eastern ridgeline, I walked over to the animal enclosure. The first thing I saw as I rounded the last corner was Crusoe the sheep, lying just outside the shelter. Nothing unusual about that, but normally she would jump up and come directly to me. Her head was half raised, looking into the shelter, no acknowledgement of my presence.

Hmm, I thought. I opened the gate and went inside, then she noticed me and so did the other animals, who came enthusiastically out of the shelter. I hooked Crusoe and Heidi up to a pair of short leashes and led the flock out. Down the road was the second enclosure from the previous day. On the roadside, I let them graze it down quite low, to maintain the firebreak. They’d only been on this patch for a few hours, so my plan was to leave them there for another hour or so to finish it off, then move them to a new roadside enclosure in the opposite direction from our house.

Crusoe was a bit skittish, which isn’t normal, but I wasn’t sure what to make of it at that point. As I was working on the next enclosure, cutting down invasive pokeweed, I heard the bells of the flock much closure than I should have, given that I’d left them several hundred meters away. Then I heard Jackie call to me. I folded my sickle and climbed down the embankment, then walked back home. I found Crusoe, Heidi, and Marshmallow, standing by the front door with Jackie. Now I could see that Crusoe was distressed, more skittish, darting her head from side to side in a confused kind of way.

I called out to her and took her bell into my grasp, then led them back to the overnight pen. Once they were all in, I stood back and observed Crusoe. After a bit of this, it occurred to me that she might be going blind. She couldn’t place me, which explained the frantic darting of her head and eyes in all directions, except what she should be looking at. The slightest unfamiliar sound would make her suddenly bolt in a random direction, sometimes directly towards me, which is very unusual behaviour in a sheep. Crusoe is the matriarch of the flock, the others follow her lead. She must have zapped herself on the fence, without seeing the cable, not knowing which direction to go, broken through the line, then led the others directly back home. 

I could see that she was relying on her sense of smell and her ears. She was calm around me, but when Jackie and the toddler sat atop the boundary wall of the pen, Crusoe would tense up and want to bolt at the slightest unfamiliar sound and smell, particularly of the toddler. I asked Jackie to take him away as I sat down on a block of wood, Crusoe nuzzled her blind eyes into my arms and held her head there resolutely. I reassured her that all was ok. The distant buzz of an engine made her uncertain, without her sight, she had no idea how close or far it was, this made her uneasy. I was uncertain now. Would this get worse? Would she need to be put down? I shed a few silent tears at the thought, the memory of Franky’s end was still fresh, I really don’t want more blood on my hands right now.

After some research, it seamed to me that the most likely cause of the blindness is a condition known as Polioencephalomalacia (PEM) or Cerebrocortical Necrosis (CNN), I’ll use the term CNN to describe it here. Unfortunately, the only way to diagnose this condition with certainty is through a post-mortem examination and lab analysis of the brain. But, if treatment is effective, then it can be surmised that CNN was the culprit.

CNN is a condition of the brain which results from a deficiency of vitamin B1. The simple way of putting it is that B1 is needed by several enzymes to metabolize glucose, glucose is a source of energy for the brain, therefore if the supply of B1 is disrupted, then the sheep’s brain cannot function properly, which is what causes the blindness and a number of more advanced symptoms, and will lead to death within a week if not caught early. I spoke to the vet, explained to him the symptoms, a brief rundown of their feeding patterns during the last few weeks. I mentioned the possibility of B1 deficiency, I don’t like the idea of telling medical professionals how to do their job, so I added it as a little addendum at the end of the run-down of the facts.

The vet said to give her a wide-ranging vitamin supplement which includes B1, telling me that it could well be the problem. The root causes of CNN are usually found in the gut, and I think I know how this may have happened (if it is actually a case of CNN). The digestive systems of sheep are quite fragile, small or large changes can easily cause unforeseen side effects. Last year, I was so careful to manage their grazing to prevent bloat, which was a great success, and this spring I was so careful to ease the flock onto the rich spring grass again. 

The first challenge was with Heidi the goat, who came from a farm that grazed their fields very low, and at only three months old, would have still been drinking her mother's milk not long before coming to us. This meant that her rumen was still developing the set of bacteria needed to digest food and break it down into all the usable nutrients and minerals. When she got access to the rich, rested pastures around us, her rumen would swell up like a football, so I limited their access to the good green grass until she was able to handle it. It was a bit similar with Marshmallow, when he joined us. He came from the next village, so I can see exactly what he was eating before this. His last flock were living in an incredibly dirty courtyard of an abandoned house, and spending days and days on the same pastures, giving them a buzz cut all the way down to the mud. It was also a bit of an adjustment for him to come up the hill to us and start feeding on rested pasture, extremely rich in protein.

After a month of carefully increasing the levels of grass, I got the flock to the point where they could all stay out for a full day, and sometimes overnight if it was close to home. Up to that point, I had been supplementing their diet with hay. When they were finally ready to begin the grazing rotation in earnest, they needed to eat the grass around the house first, quite heavily, in order to comply with fire regulations. The grass that was available was more than ample to feed them all, so I cut back on the hay, only giving it to them when it was raining.

My theory is that this reduction of hay caused a bacterial imbalance in Crusoe’s rumen, which was no longer able to produce enough vitamin B1. I’m keeping them all in the overnight pen for now, Crusoe is comfortable in that familiar place and already knows where the fences are. I’ve been giving her the vitamin supplement, and increased the hay again. After a day of this, I think she is showing signs of improvement. When I went over there this morning to check on them, I was happy to see that she was no longer darting her head around so much, which suggests that her eyesight is improving. We’ll see how it goes. It seems that if it is a case of CNN, we caught it at a very early stage. It appears to be a relatively common condition on commercial farms, but it shouldn’t have happened here. Given how much care I took to ease them onto the grass, I should have done the same thing when reducing the hay from their diet, gradually reducing the ration. 

Consider unlocking the rest of this newsletter to read about making leather from natural materials found on the farm, and how I plan to turn that leather into a pair of boots.