I'll be dammed if I can hold this flood back: Streams on my land are too full of rainwater and my attempt to stem the tide is going downhill (March 14)
Storm Darcy, or Brian, or Enid, or whatever the last bit of bad weather was called, is only part of the perfect storm that's currently causing half of Britain's farmers to think about selling up and doing something more rewarding. Like being a town crier. Or a lamplighter.
They are no longer allowed to spray what's necessary onto their crops, which means their barley is 9 inches tall and the same colour as a Royal Navy destroyer. Then there's Brexit, which has screwed half their markets, and Covid-19, which means their fields are full of bewildered townies shouting "Fenton!" at the top of their voices as their dogs tear around eating sheep and knocking over walls.
The government is not helping either as farmers have been told that if they want any income at all in future, they're going to have to stop growing food and turn their land into a sort of eco theme park for the uninterested children of Britain's delusional Guardian readers.
On top of all this, vegetarianism has gone from being a niche-interest activity for sixth form socialists to a mad nationwide craze — like clackers and pet rocks. Farmers, then, spend all their lives making their cows happy and are then lambasted from all quarters for having cows in the first place. Small wonder that on average one farmer commits suicide every three weeks in England and Wales.
And I suspect that number is about to become even more troublesome because we were all promised global warming, which doesn't sound so bad. Everyone likes a warm day. But what we got instead is a nationwide soaking. These days, barely a month goes by in the winter without some rainfall record being broken. February 2020 was the wettest ever. And in parts of England and Scotland, this January was twice as wet as normal. That's irritating for most people but for farmers it's catastrophic.
And to make matters worse, our esteemed leaders have decided to design floodwater defences so that farms are sacrificed to protect the three-piece suites of people in towns and cities. And are farmers compensated for this? Ha. You're having a laugh. There are proposals but for now they simply take one for the team and then the team throws excrement at them for selling meat.
I've been told that to help I should dam the streams on my hilltop farm because water held in ponds here is not able to enter the houses of people who live downstream. And being a good citizen, I've spent the past year doing just that.
I like damming streams. As a kid, we'd holiday in Swaledale and I'd spend all day in the river outside Muker, trying to block the water's path with stones and rocks. It was an entirely pointless pursuit then and it's an entirely pointless pursuit now.
Water is relentless. It's a Terminator. It absolutely will not stop looking for a weakness, and when it finds one it's not happy to escape in slow motion. It wants to get cracking in one big rush. It took me six attempts to block the path of one stream and I succeeded in the end only after buying ten tonnes of stone, 14 big sacks of cement, two men, a sluice gate, a digger and a massive pump.
For the next stream I got super serious. I pulled on my Hoover hat and went berserk, creating a scene that Sam Mendes could have used if he'd decided to make 1918. Huge escarpments were created, mighty trees were felled, the air was thick with diesel smoke and the sound of hydraulic power waging war with nature. The lake that all this created is 70ft long and maybe 30ft wide, and I felt proud because the water it contained could not be coming out of the plug sockets in your house.
Sadly, however, I was underthinking the problem because Oxfordshire is currently a building site. When I first moved here 25 years ago, the half-hour drive to the motorway was pretty and green and full of leaves. Now it's like driving through Surrey.
Every village is ringed with new-builds and the city of Oxford is now bigger than Los Angeles.
So let's do some maths. In January 2.2 inches of rain fell in Oxfordshire; so, if the roof of your house is 20 feet wide by 50 feet long, this means that 1,142 gallons of water fell on it. That's a lot.
And there are plans to build 28,000 new houses in and around the city in the coming years. Which means that every year, more than 300 million gallons of water that would normally seep into the earth gradually are cascading down gutters into drains and into rivers. Which means they'll become raging vindictive monsters.
And remember, in addition to the problem caused by roofs, you've got the driveways and the roads and the decked gardens to think about. Britain's getting wetter and soon there'll be nowhere for the extra water to go.
I see the effect already on my farm. I recently built a small barn. It's maybe 40 feet long by 80 eeft across. And outside it is a newly concreted yard. It all looks very smart, but in January more than 3,000 gallons of water that should have seeped through the brashy soil shot through the drainage system and straight into my streams.
I did a flow test the other day and couldn't quite believe the findings. In the summer about two million litres of water were flowing down one stream each day. Last week it was handling five times that amount.
Ordinarily there are about 15 little springs on the farm. Now there's one big one. Water is leaking from literally every pore. And the effect on my new big pond has been dramatic because the 4 inch outlet pipe simply can't cope. Water levels consequently rose until the banks were breached, and that meant my trouts escaped. So if you're reading this in Oxford and one of them swims into your living room next week, can I have it back?
In the meantime, I've had an idea that may help farmers and landowners in these desperate times. Britain has always been useless at managing its water. We live in one of the wettest countries on earth, but somehow every time there's a two-day dry spell we are told to shower with a friend and not use hosepipes. This may have something to do with the fact that during the Sixties and Seventies, we built all our reservoirs in the north because we assumed people would move there for work. Only to find that everyone moved south, where there are hardly any reservoirs at all.
So let's build some. The government doesn't want us to grow crops and the nation's vegetarians want cows to roam free like their cousins in the Serengeti, so let's dam our valleys and grow water instead. We can rent it to idiotic wild swimming enthusiasts in the winter and then sell it in the summer to gardeners and people who are dirty. Everyone wins.
Storm Darcy, or Brian, or Enid, or whatever the last bit of bad weather was called, is only part of the perfect storm that's currently causing half of Britain's farmers to think about selling up and doing something more rewarding. Like being a town crier. Or a lamplighter.
They are no longer allowed to spray what's necessary onto their crops, which means their barley is 9 inches tall and the same colour as a Royal Navy destroyer. Then there's Brexit, which has screwed half their markets, and Covid-19, which means their fields are full of bewildered townies shouting "Fenton!" at the top of their voices as their dogs tear around eating sheep and knocking over walls.
The government is not helping either as farmers have been told that if they want any income at all in future, they're going to have to stop growing food and turn their land into a sort of eco theme park for the uninterested children of Britain's delusional Guardian readers.
On top of all this, vegetarianism has gone from being a niche-interest activity for sixth form socialists to a mad nationwide craze — like clackers and pet rocks. Farmers, then, spend all their lives making their cows happy and are then lambasted from all quarters for having cows in the first place. Small wonder that on average one farmer commits suicide every three weeks in England and Wales.
And I suspect that number is about to become even more troublesome because we were all promised global warming, which doesn't sound so bad. Everyone likes a warm day. But what we got instead is a nationwide soaking. These days, barely a month goes by in the winter without some rainfall record being broken. February 2020 was the wettest ever. And in parts of England and Scotland, this January was twice as wet as normal. That's irritating for most people but for farmers it's catastrophic.
And to make matters worse, our esteemed leaders have decided to design floodwater defences so that farms are sacrificed to protect the three-piece suites of people in towns and cities. And are farmers compensated for this? Ha. You're having a laugh. There are proposals but for now they simply take one for the team and then the team throws excrement at them for selling meat.
I've been told that to help I should dam the streams on my hilltop farm because water held in ponds here is not able to enter the houses of people who live downstream. And being a good citizen, I've spent the past year doing just that.
I like damming streams. As a kid, we'd holiday in Swaledale and I'd spend all day in the river outside Muker, trying to block the water's path with stones and rocks. It was an entirely pointless pursuit then and it's an entirely pointless pursuit now.
Water is relentless. It's a Terminator. It absolutely will not stop looking for a weakness, and when it finds one it's not happy to escape in slow motion. It wants to get cracking in one big rush. It took me six attempts to block the path of one stream and I succeeded in the end only after buying ten tonnes of stone, 14 big sacks of cement, two men, a sluice gate, a digger and a massive pump.
For the next stream I got super serious. I pulled on my Hoover hat and went berserk, creating a scene that Sam Mendes could have used if he'd decided to make 1918. Huge escarpments were created, mighty trees were felled, the air was thick with diesel smoke and the sound of hydraulic power waging war with nature. The lake that all this created is 70ft long and maybe 30ft wide, and I felt proud because the water it contained could not be coming out of the plug sockets in your house.
Sadly, however, I was underthinking the problem because Oxfordshire is currently a building site. When I first moved here 25 years ago, the half-hour drive to the motorway was pretty and green and full of leaves. Now it's like driving through Surrey.
Every village is ringed with new-builds and the city of Oxford is now bigger than Los Angeles.
So let's do some maths. In January 2.2 inches of rain fell in Oxfordshire; so, if the roof of your house is 20 feet wide by 50 feet long, this means that 1,142 gallons of water fell on it. That's a lot.
And there are plans to build 28,000 new houses in and around the city in the coming years. Which means that every year, more than 300 million gallons of water that would normally seep into the earth gradually are cascading down gutters into drains and into rivers. Which means they'll become raging vindictive monsters.
And remember, in addition to the problem caused by roofs, you've got the driveways and the roads and the decked gardens to think about. Britain's getting wetter and soon there'll be nowhere for the extra water to go.
I see the effect already on my farm. I recently built a small barn. It's maybe 40 feet long by 80 eeft across. And outside it is a newly concreted yard. It all looks very smart, but in January more than 3,000 gallons of water that should have seeped through the brashy soil shot through the drainage system and straight into my streams.
I did a flow test the other day and couldn't quite believe the findings. In the summer about two million litres of water were flowing down one stream each day. Last week it was handling five times that amount.
Ordinarily there are about 15 little springs on the farm. Now there's one big one. Water is leaking from literally every pore. And the effect on my new big pond has been dramatic because the 4 inch outlet pipe simply can't cope. Water levels consequently rose until the banks were breached, and that meant my trouts escaped. So if you're reading this in Oxford and one of them swims into your living room next week, can I have it back?
In the meantime, I've had an idea that may help farmers and landowners in these desperate times. Britain has always been useless at managing its water. We live in one of the wettest countries on earth, but somehow every time there's a two-day dry spell we are told to shower with a friend and not use hosepipes. This may have something to do with the fact that during the Sixties and Seventies, we built all our reservoirs in the north because we assumed people would move there for work. Only to find that everyone moved south, where there are hardly any reservoirs at all.
So let's build some. The government doesn't want us to grow crops and the nation's vegetarians want cows to roam free like their cousins in the Serengeti, so let's dam our valleys and grow water instead. We can rent it to idiotic wild swimming enthusiasts in the winter and then sell it in the summer to gardeners and people who are dirty. Everyone wins.