January 2025 – The Lakeland Auctioneer

I do a bit if singing at weekends, sometimes in our band The Soul Survivors, sometimes as dynamic duo Only Smith and Day, and sometimes solo. Music replaced rugby many years ago when my body was starting to break, and it amazes me that a rotund old lad with a goatee beard gets bookings, but it happens!

Two weeks ago, OSD, me and guitar player Rob, played Egremont Young Farmers Christmas Social in the Market Hall. It took me back to the early 80’s when I was a member of Greysouthen YFC

Our Christmas Social was a bring and share supper in the village hall which was very handy for the Punchbowl pub on the other side of the road. My mate Bill would only eat the food his mother sent with him. The rest of us scoffed a vast array of farmhouse kitchen prepared sandwiches, pies and amazing puddings whilst Noddy Holder blasted out his trademark “It’s Christmaaaaaaas”! in the background.

As was evident at the Egremont do, my generation are now club leaders and Presidents. Indeed, Jimmy Crichton did a sterling job handing out the club prizes and trophies before a large crowd of young farmers from many other clubs, who had come to support.

A while later as me and Rob worked through our first set, an eclectic mix of genres including a few Irish and country tunes so beloved of young farmers there came an unexpected request. Could we possibly do some reels and country dances like the Gay Gordon’s and a Strip the Willow? It took me back to my Greysouthen days when we too learned traditional dancing.

Luckily, we can play this music and as the first tones of the accordion tunes rang out, amazingly the young farmers took their places. Where else could you go from The Killers to a Canadian Two Step?

What a community. Teaching old fashioned values in the modern world. Prizes for stock judging, valuation and field day competitions. A floor full of people young and old engaged in a St Bernards Waltz and of course the consumption of a Christmas drink or two. Twas ever thus!

Right now, those young people entering the farming industry in whatever role they are taking, must be wondering what the future holds. DEFRA set off with every good intention, having a New Entrants partnership and working group. It was challenging and frustrating and despite sound advice from many in the industry, it went wrong and then seemed to disappear altogether.

I hope it returns in future, because we will need these enthusiastic young people to be our food producers and custodians of the land. They are so keen and committed to the industry and they need to be supported and encouraged at every turn. These guys are our future and if the Young Farmers movement has anything to do with it, they will be well prepared in many ways to approach their role with confidence, knowledge and respect.

As Rob and me packed our gear away at the end of the night, many of the young farmers were getting ready to head off to town, just as I would have done all those years ago. I was ready to get home to bed.

Happy Christmas to you all. Let’s see what the New Year brings. We must approach it with the same enthusiasm as our young people. Work hard and play hard, as long as you are able.

I write a monthly blog for the Cumbria Farmer magazine. I try to keep it light hearted, but sometimes you have to have a rant! Here is my piece from September 2024:-

We are fast approaching the autumn sales. It seems to have been a rough year weather-wise right from the start. Wet and cold, we hardly seem to have seen the sun. Many of my farmer pals in the hills may be glad to see this year’s lamb crop get away. The only solace may be the fact that there is good demand for breeding sheep buoyed up by confidence in the sector and rising demand for sheep meat.

I was a trainee auctioneer at Lazonby in the late 80’s when sheep numbers across the land were at maximum. This was of course driven by government policy with headage payments encouraging farmers to keep as many breeding sheep as they could. This fact is either not known or conveniently forgotten by those wanting to see a continued diminution in sheep numbers in the hills in order to drive a different agenda.

There was a huge furore in 1987 when the brand-new Penrith Mart at which I started almost as it opened in July, was not actually big enough to hold a sale in early September of 17,000 Mule Gimmer Shearlings or Thaves to our southern friends. The decision was taken to move the sale to the long-established Lazonby Mart, also run by the same auction company and located a few miles to the North West of Penrith. Lazonby was known nationally as one of the foremost sheep markets in the land with buyers flocking there from Cornwall to Caithness.

That day auctioneer Gordon Teasdale rattled through the sale, rarely travelling more than £5 to £10 on any lot and finished by early afternoon. The sheep were often going the ring through in multiples of 100 and being bought by farmers and large estates from across the UK. The headage payment was of course a major influence.

As a trainee, I was manning the gates either in or out of the ring, often to the cry of “He takes the lot, 300 to you Sir, let them be going Adam-Lad”. They were often gone before the hammer had even fallen! A constant and perpetual motion of sheep, moving from sellers pen, to sale ring, to buyers pen, and then onwards to a new farm and a new flock.

Today the sheep industry is far removed from what it was. The sheep breeds are pretty much the same. Some would debate whether they have improved or not as there are always “trends” and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The traditional and precious skills of upland flock management and the local knowledge on common, fell and moor are still there, but many hill farmers fear the future right now. They are under attack.

Headage payments are long gone, replaced by evolving and far from complete environmental payment schemes. Now in some areas of Cumbria and Northumberland, shepherds protest that that have been left with too few sheep with which to manage the upland environment and make a living, the payments offered being too meagre.

Natural England, a non-governmental organisation with seemingly governmental power has very fixed ideas on how many sheep should live on the hill wishing in some areas to introduce a blanket sheep stocking rate. In some harsher parts of Cumbria, this will be right. On many commons it will be way wrong. That is what I hear from many shepherds and conflict continues to brew. Even more conflict occurs when whole flocks are removed from the fell, never to return.

Many farmers do not want to be paid- off to remove sheep forever. The damage it is doing to remaining but reduced hefted flocks is all but crippling in some areas of Lakeland. Most want to find the right balance between farming and nature. This is new untested science, but that balance could be found between willing partners. Instead, in some cases farmers have been pressured with almost no choice and no debate, to remove the sheep from the hill.

Thousands of sheep buyers will visit Cumbria this Autumn as they have for decades, putting millions of pounds into the local economy. Behind every farmer you can count another 40 or so businesses that support the farmer to a greater or lesser extent. With the loss of the sheep and shepherds, the majority being displaced tenants, also goes the rural community and the bedrock of the rural economy. We’re in danger of losing it all as trees and environmental schemes replace livestock, and formerly tenanted farmhouses become Air B&B’s or second homes.