THE nights are drawing in, the fire is lit and the cows are home.

Ruby remains at large in Brockenhurst but we will hopefully get her home in the next few days. Grandad’s cows were very obliging and brought themselves home.

It is lovely to see the fields full of cattle again and to hear them gently calling through the day. In another month our cows will begin to calve.

Lots of people ask why we calve in the late autumn rather than in spring.

As with many areas of common land the cattle are out in the Forest during the summer months and it would be very difficult to tend to them if they needed help calving or to tag the calves.

Although some commoners do calve on the Forest we prefer to calve at home.

Land is both scarce and expensive so we have to make the most of the little we have, meaning during the late spring and summer months we have to lay up our fields to make hay.

Calving later also means we can avoid the summer heat and flies which can cause problems.

We were delighted this week when the twins announced their plans to have a calf of their own, so that they can eventually have their own herd. They plan to sell the meat they produce in their own farm shop, apparently it is going to be in a converted tractor trailer so they can tow it around the campsites. The ingenuity of children never ceases to amaze me.

With the draft Agricultural Bill having just been published I do wonder if commoning will still be thriving when they are old enough to realise their dreams.

The bracken has been cut and will, weather permitting, be baled this week.

Bracken baling is a traditional practice. Not much straw is produced in the New Forest as the soil is poor, so commoners in the past used what they had.

My granny told me how they went out with a scythe to cut the bracken and brought it home where it was stored for winter bedding in a large rick which was thatched with heather.

Today we use our modern haymaking equipment which makes it a much easier job but perhaps just a bit less social…

One of the sites where we bale our bracken is home to the rare Wild Gladiolus – a flower we love to hunt for in the summer months and which relies upon traditional grazing and management for its survival, liking a habitat with a little bracken but not a lot.

Many of the New Forest’s rare and precious flora and fauna rely upon traditional management and grazing for their survival.

I hope that Michael Gove and his colleagues at Defra recognise the many public goods which commoners provide, not just in the New Forest but across the country, our future to some extent is in their hands.

Lyndsey Stride

Commoning Family

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