Lake District farming
Farming activity in Great Langdale is now much reduced. No small farm can support a family. at the living standards expected today without additional income. But there has been no reduction in the number of sheep. And added to the equation is the heavy use of the area by tourists. Cheap accommodation rent your room London
Off the footpaths, their trampling feet add to the destruction of good grass pasture, and their occasional loose dogs can cause havoc and interruption in the natural movement of the sheep from pasture to pasture. The difficulties of moving about the roads, caused by heavy tourist traffic, add to the frustrations.
Yet, against the odds, farming still survives and the farmers are amazingly tolerant.'What are you thinking then?' I asked one farmer on the fell who was looking, with no sign of emotion, at a struggling line of tourists climbing a footpath. ‘Well, it's gey throng [very busy]! 'There's mare and mare ivry year.' I asked him what he thought about the work party's paving of the footpaths. 'Well then for't most pairt it's good. But I've been watching' them waste time.
There was this gert big boulder. It's been there thousands 0' years but it had to come out. Why? God knows! Aye it had to come out! It took 'em all day to shift it.'Typically, the Lakeland farmer has grown to accept the strange ways of tourists; but he tends to be critical of all workers, usually the much maligned County Council men, who seem to him a very practical hardworking man to be ineffectual. He naturally feels a bit cynical when tweedy men from the Ministry, or land agents with plums in their mouths, who, he thinks, have never done a hard day's work in their lives, tell him he is doing it all wrong.
Farmers like a good grumble. Sometimes National Park staff are the butt. I remember at a farmers' meeting being told that the Park's Upland Management Officer, who at that time was employed to supply practical help to farmers suffering from damage caused by tourism, never seemed to appear in the valley.
'Does the Ranger Service work with him?' I was asked. 'Of course. It's part of our job to keep him informed,' I answered. 'How often do you see him then?''Very regularly. In fact I had a meeting with him today.' 'Oh, so that's where he was. Why wasn't he 'ere?'
Sometimes it seems difficult to win, but generally the farmers appreciate what is being done even if they do not always show it. In the boom days of Victorian tourism the big attraction in Great Langdale was the lower waterfall in Dungeon Ghyll (gill or ghyll meaning 'ravine'). From the literature of the period it seems that the parties would arrive at Millbeck Farm, order ham and eggs, then go up the gill while the meal was being prepared.
At that time the way to view the larger fall was to walk beside the gill and descend a ladder. The ladies in their long skirts must have had problems; but they were made of stern stuff in those days. Now we have to scramble into the recess which receives the impressive fall, and a huge block bridges the chasm. In his poem,.lamb from the gill, and handing it over to two 'shepherd boys' whom he reprimanded for not noticing the emergency.
Off the footpaths, their trampling feet add to the destruction of good grass pasture, and their occasional loose dogs can cause havoc and interruption in the natural movement of the sheep from pasture to pasture. The difficulties of moving about the roads, caused by heavy tourist traffic, add to the frustrations.
Yet, against the odds, farming still survives and the farmers are amazingly tolerant.'What are you thinking then?' I asked one farmer on the fell who was looking, with no sign of emotion, at a struggling line of tourists climbing a footpath. ‘Well, it's gey throng [very busy]! 'There's mare and mare ivry year.' I asked him what he thought about the work party's paving of the footpaths. 'Well then for't most pairt it's good. But I've been watching' them waste time.
There was this gert big boulder. It's been there thousands 0' years but it had to come out. Why? God knows! Aye it had to come out! It took 'em all day to shift it.'Typically, the Lakeland farmer has grown to accept the strange ways of tourists; but he tends to be critical of all workers, usually the much maligned County Council men, who seem to him a very practical hardworking man to be ineffectual. He naturally feels a bit cynical when tweedy men from the Ministry, or land agents with plums in their mouths, who, he thinks, have never done a hard day's work in their lives, tell him he is doing it all wrong.
Farmers like a good grumble. Sometimes National Park staff are the butt. I remember at a farmers' meeting being told that the Park's Upland Management Officer, who at that time was employed to supply practical help to farmers suffering from damage caused by tourism, never seemed to appear in the valley.
'Does the Ranger Service work with him?' I was asked. 'Of course. It's part of our job to keep him informed,' I answered. 'How often do you see him then?''Very regularly. In fact I had a meeting with him today.' 'Oh, so that's where he was. Why wasn't he 'ere?'
Sometimes it seems difficult to win, but generally the farmers appreciate what is being done even if they do not always show it. In the boom days of Victorian tourism the big attraction in Great Langdale was the lower waterfall in Dungeon Ghyll (gill or ghyll meaning 'ravine'). From the literature of the period it seems that the parties would arrive at Millbeck Farm, order ham and eggs, then go up the gill while the meal was being prepared.
At that time the way to view the larger fall was to walk beside the gill and descend a ladder. The ladies in their long skirts must have had problems; but they were made of stern stuff in those days. Now we have to scramble into the recess which receives the impressive fall, and a huge block bridges the chasm. In his poem,.lamb from the gill, and handing it over to two 'shepherd boys' whom he reprimanded for not noticing the emergency.
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