I've followed Pauhla's work with animals for a number of years. We first made contact when I wanted to find out more about animal aromatherapy after I had worked for many years with their human counterparts. I found her blog of her time with TOLFA both educational, and at times, heartbreaking. When Pauhla agreed to be the Animal Health Director for Natures Nexus I was delighted, now I'm even happier to have this chance to get to know her better and to discover what life for an Animal Therapist is really like...

What I discovered is that Pauhla is far more than just an Animal Therapist; she's a working organic farmer; a conservation campaigner; she has a hand in running the Cranham community web site; she's a Reiki practitioner; she runs Reiki workshops and courses in animal health care; she has her own essential oil business - AnimOILS - and, as if that isn't enough, both Pauhla and her husband Martin have a large part to play in conserving the heritage of a beautiful corner of England........

Liz: Pauhla, you have a farm in the Cotswold hills, a spectacular area of the UK, in fact its designated an Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA) what does that means? And does it affect how you farm?

Pauhla: The Cotswold Hills ESA area runs right across the Gloucestershire Cotswolds into Oxfordshire. This scheme is designed to protect and enhance the landscape and ecology of the area while recognising that farmers have to be able to use the land to make a living and so there is a grant payment made to farms in the scheme providing they meet very strict management criteria each year. This includes limiting the numbers of animals grazing on it so that farming is more extensive. The scheme is in several "tiers" the lowest of which allows some application of fertiliser up to a certain rate, plus farmyard manure (FYM) but the top tier, which includes a lot of our farm, can't even have FYM on it. It is for this reason that grazing enterprises are limited to lower stocking densities and many farmers take advantage of traditional and hardy breeds who can live off this type of grassland and produce high quality meat from it with little supplementary feeding. We have a mixture of breeds based around native and traditional. The cows are mainly Hereford and Aberdeen Angus cross and we also have some other "interesting mixtures" such as South Devon cross Brown Swiss and Gloucester's with their distinctive white back stripe and tail. We have two bulls, Gregory the pedigree Hereford and AJ (short for Andrew John) who is a South Devon. While the herd is commercial, there is always room for a little sentiment though. Colossus, our pure Holstein steer (castrated male) came as a scrawny teenager with a note on his passport (official cattle ID document that has to accompany them by law when they change home) saying "My name is Colossus". At the time he was tiny and had obviously been a bit of a pet but now, 7 years later, he is the biggest beast on the place and seems to be part of the furniture. Martin threatens that he will have to go some day but each time, he "conveniently" goes lame until the idea wears off. On the plus side, being so friendly meant that I was able to train him to pick his feet up like a horse so dealing with the foot problem was a doddle!

Liz: That is some huge beast! His name suits him and he must produce a fair quantity of FYM! I find it amazing that you can’t use all that FYM on your own land; don't you find this very limiting?

Pauhla: One of the unique habitats in the area is the Limestone Grassland (officially classified CG5) which includes the common in our village of Cranham that borders the farm and is home to a diverse and rich plant community. One of its features is that it is on thin, calcium rich soil, overlying limestone. Adding too many nutrients would simply encourage stronger grass species to crowd out the herbs and grasses that thrive there, so altering the whole balance. Most of the ESA land is also very banky with a thin top soil that doesn't grow a thick crop of grass anyway but it would be unsafe to try and get on with a tractor. Because we practice mixed grazing of both cattle and sheep, there is a fair amount of nutrient put back onto the land from them and we do a nutrient budget each year to calculate the amount of nitrogen that goes back onto the land so we can balance it with what we take off in grazing and hay/silage making. One of the aims of an organic system is that you do not deplete the soil reserves.

As if we don't already have enough schemes and statutory regulations to grapple with, we are also in an NVZ (Nitrate Vulnerable Zone) so because the farm runs along a plateau about 1 1l2 miles long and is a major water catchment area, we have to make sure that we keep within certain limits to prevent run-off of nitrates in soil water. Fortunately, our overall production is about 1/3 of the allowable limit so there is no problem but farming is a pretty complicated thing these days!

Comments

Search

Only registered users can write comments!

whitewitchzita  - Well done     |SAdministrator |2008-06-04 19:08:59 Fantastic interview Liz, really really good! Thanks both of you so much!

Powered by !JoomlaComment 3.20

3.20 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."