How do you stop grazing animals walking up streams where they cross fields? By installing water gates.  Before we came here it was a problem we never even knew existed, but if you look after cattle sheep or goats in a place where fields encompass flowing water, it’s a real issue. Here our Iron Mill Stream can now rise to over 4 feet deep owing to the extra drainage work carried out on the moorland which feeds it and yet in the summer, in dry spells, can be no more than 6″ in places. Animals will often just limbo dance under  barriers .

Water pouring down the valley now carries heavy branches and even trees in the flood and we have lost all our normal hurdle type barriers recently. Ian, who has just completed our fencing of the Culm wetland area for us, is a local man born and bred and knows instinctively how to deal with this. A couple of Ian’s “Specials” should  deal with most problems. The problem is to stop cattle walking upstream and out of your land, and yet allow the water and any debris flow through. This is the solution.

It looks solid, but in fact, if you look under the top log you will see that the two down bars are attached by chains. The whole lot is suspended below the oak log so that it moves in the water and will be pushed up and out of the way when debris pushes through.  The animals will not challenge it. It’s such a neat design and yet Ian knocks one up in no time at all to fit every conceivable awkward crossing point. Here he has even used one of our own oak trees as the top log. Why use a telegraph pole when you have loacal oak? It’s cheaper and will last about 4 times as long!

I stand in awe of people like Ian. He thinks WE are the clever ones because we have spent years studying and sitting in offices or in front of computers but there is more than one form of cleverness. His is the raw, basic commonsense problem solving ability of the true countryman and farmer – something you rarely find in those born elsewhere.  It’s skills like these we should support and nurture as well as the more academic kind. We never know when we might need them!