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On Your Farm: Solway Marsh Cattle

Solway Marsh Cattle

BBC Radio 4 - On Your Farm, Solway Marsh Cattle

Caz Graham finds out about ancient grazing traditions on the northern coast of Cumbria.

Caz Graham hears about ancient cattle grazing traditions on the Solway’s Burgh Marsh on the northern coast of Cumbria.

Burgh Marsh is a coastal salt marsh on the southern shore of the Solway Firth near Carlisle. It’s a wide green plateau dissected by tidal creeks and for centuries it’s been grazed by cattle and sheep, with the grazing rights divvied up according to an ancient system that uses 'stints’. The system was first recorded here back in 1700 and gives each stint holder the right to graze one beast (a cow) or two and a half sheep.

Today, as well as local farmers, there are stint-holders all over the world who sell their right to graze at auction. Over the summer, forty different farmers have cattle roaming the marsh with a ‘Herd’, or livestock manager, overseeing the system.  

Caz Graham joins Jane Hodgson, the Field Reeve, and Robert Dixon, the Herd, as this summer’s cattle are rounded up and trucked off to their winter homes. She hears from a farmer collecting his stock and discovers how this ancient grazing tradition still has a place in 21st century farming. She encounters feisty limousin cattle, snipe, and flocks of barnacle geese. She even manages not to get cut off by the tide – but only just!

Produced and presented by Caz Graham

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