Snowed In!

Sam Gray reflects on a particularly challenging winter on her smallholding high on the Long Mynd in Shropshire

- Sam Gray

It was in early February 2009 when we first heard of Middle Farm coming on to the market. At 1,000ft above sea level and 200ft above the snow line, it was, unsurprisingly that winter, covered in several feet of snow. It looked absolutely stunning. Despite the cold, ice and copious white stuff, our enthusiasm for starting a new life running a smallholding was not to be quashed. How hard could it be?

Later that same year we started to get an inkling of the answer to that question. And by the end of the following, unrelenting winter of 2010, we were starting to wonder why we’d moved here in the first place! Even with only chickens on site at the time, winter conditions were nothing like we’d faced in the lowlands, temperatures dropping to -19 degrees and snow in mountainous quantities. I suppose it didn’t help that the boiler broke and we ended up living in the one room that had a fire for three weeks. But by the time spring arrived, all was forgotten. Livestock numbers were added to as pigs and sheep were introduced to the farm.

Cuddling day-old piglets on a pig-keeping course in the middle of July was indeed the perfect introduction to a life with these beautiful and intelligent animals. It was also a long way away from the realities of facing farming in snow and ice.

Smallholders who choose to keep animals solely for fattening up during summer and early autumn do so with good reason. I have since learned, like many others who have chosen to breed stock all year round, that there’s nothing quite like working with animals in two or three feet of snow. Any romantic notion of this outdoor, smallholding lifestyle ‘choice’, is quickly amended. A good sense of humour and a slightly more flexible feed budget is definitely required, and this winter’s snowfall, up here in the hills, has been a harsh reminder of that fact.