Drowning in paperwork

Help I am drowning in paperwork!

We moved to the Rock with thoughts of being more productive foodwise. Not self sufficient, that's a bit of a high ambition, but more self supporting as it were. Our aim is to produce as much of our own food as possible and luckily for us we were able to find this haven in the hills complete with fruit trees, fruit bushes, a couple of fields, various ramshackle outbuildings and a fantastic garden with fourteen raised vegetable beds.

The plan is sort of working, given the difficulties caused by Mother Nature, having to work to pay the mortgage, accidents, goats and bureaucrats.

Its the paperwork that's a complete night mare. Forget plagues of slugs eating your seedlings, or forty ton rock falls that bring trees down obliterating part of the garden. You can forgive goats who frolic amongst your brasicas. Sheep that eat the entire apple harvest can be let of with a caution. But the bureaucracy that surrounds the smallholding is getting beyond a joke.

To be able to run a smallholding you have to have a smallholding number.

Not a problem, we had one as we moved in.

When it came to registering our livestock we then found that actually we didn't have a smallholding number because the rules had changed and the number was now attached to the person who lived there and our number went with the previous owners.

OK.

We apply to the Welsh Assembly for another.

Do we want, or will we want to claim grants, if we do this will make getting a number difficult and it will mean filling out different forms.

OK.

We don't want to claim any money for anything, we just want to be able to keep a few animals for food.

OK.

Can we have our number?

Yes we can but its not the number you need to keep animals.

That's from a different office.

Contact is duly made, can we have a herd number for our pigs, a flock number for our sheep and goats, what, we have to contact a different office for the cow, OK, we don't want a cow just yet, fanastic, the numbers are issued.

We also inform Defra that we have over 30 birds, as required, we keep a medicine log for all animal treatments, a flock book to record births and deaths amongst the sheep, the horses have passports, as will the cow, movement orders have to be filled in every time we move the sheep, pigs and goats. We had to apply for an exemption to the movement order rules to be able to let our animals wander onto the common that surrounds the house, otherwise every morning I would have had to fill out an order as they wandered away from the food trough, their bellies bursting with sheep nuts, to lie under the trees on the common to ponder life the universe and everything that matters to sheep whilst chewing the cud.

Now we have to tag our sheep in both ears, once with the flock number once with the individual identity number, if they lose a tag we have to replace it with a red one. New rules are coming in for the movement of birds, so taking a couple of hens to give as a gift to some friends in Somerset might now entail more paperwork and and adhering to yet another welfare checklist.

We also complied with the annula survey to establish how many animals we had. The annual survey to establish to what use the land was being put and the annual survey to establish if we were full or part time farmers.

Why am I having this rant?

Well, we are as you might have gathered having some buildings put up to house our animals.

A fantastic kennel block has been completed by Karl, he has also done a couple of animal shelters for the sheep to lamb in. Steve is coming over in a week or so to put up a block of stables, a goat house and a dairy. We only have one particularly mental goat called Maggie at present, our milk goat caught a fatal dose of endotoximia last year. We have put off getting another until the housing is complete as goats like nice warm dry houses to live in wheres sheep are all weather animals.

This Saturday we have been told we have to collect the goat from the breeder as Defra have decreed that you cannot move animals from a blue tongue area into a non blue tongue area.

We live on the border of Herefordshire and Powys, about 200 metres into Powys.

We are collecting the goat from Herefordshire a blue tongue area and moving it to Powys a non blue tongue area.

The goat also lives 200 metres inside the county line. To be able to move it we have had to have it blood tested to make sure there are no nasty thingies swimming in its system so its blue tongue free, we also have to fill out the movement order and comply with a welfare checklist while transporting the beast.

And it all has to be done Saturday.

Before midnight.

Why?

Well that's because Defra have decided that Sunday the 16-3-08 is the day the blue tongue midge will start to fly again. Saturdays fine, they wont be flying so you can move blood tested animals. So the goat will have to move to a building site on Saturday or it might not be able to come at all.

Its a good job the midges recognise county borders though otherwise we would be in trouble. Its also good that they have announced they are only going to start flying Sunday.