168 - Characters in Livestock - Sally Crowe

Music.

Welcome to another episode of Top Lines and Tails, the nation's favorite livestock podcast. And as always, we'd like to thank our sponsors, Harborough, for their continued support and partnership. And make sure you go and have a look and see how Harborough can help you with your nutrition and nutritional advice.

They say there's no real way to measure success. Last week or the week before on the podcast, we had one of the top cattle breeders probably of the last 50 years, a hugely successful guy and this week we've got somebody equally successful there, maybe not quite in the same way there, but she runs a, croft in Caithness, she's a world-class wool wrapper she's a single mum she runs hugely into diversification and inspiration for everybody particularly

women across the country in agriculture, so Sally Crowe that's you I think I'm talking about.

It sounds like a lot of stuff that I do, but it sounds a bit better than what I do to be honest you you are an inspiration and you've been working hard at the diversification side of and making you're making a living from a croft and i think it's something that a lot of people would like to hear about so well we'll have a brief look at the crofts that you have there which i think has come down from your parents and the numbers that you run and

then maybe we'll uh we'll go into some of the other stuff you do and then go back to the croft a little bit later in the program so tell us a little bit about the croft that you have there in Caithness?

The croft I have here came from my mum and dad they were they got it in 1972, they came in as tenants it's 25 acres at the time we rent from a neighbour now so I've got another what do I take about 30 it's about 65 acres in total now my mum was a crofter not my dad dad was ship's captain he's a townie mum was very much a crofter very much a farmer here as well I took it over in 2004, so 20 years ago in April, actually. I took it over in my own right when I was 26.

I started with Texel Sheep for a lot of years. I had Limousine cross cattle, Belgian Blue cross cattle, and I've moved away from all that. I used to show, loved the showing, but I'm not as dedicated as most. You need to be a bit of a perfectionist to be into showing, and I'm not, I'm a lazy sod, basically I want to make life easier so I've moved into native breeds. I have Irish Moyle cattle which are fabulous by the way and I have Hill Cheviot sheep.

Excellent, we'll give a plug to the Moyles in a minute or two and now it's excellent that as you said the showing is a. You'll be dedicated, but also it's a financial dream as well, isn't it? Going to the show is great fun to turn up and have a pint, but when you start taking livestock to shows, it's a huge expense into that. Let's just go back to the early days, Sal. I first met you, I think you were at Harper Adams.

If those of you who don't know where Harper Adams is, it's somewhere where you go and learn to drink down in Shropshire. And I think you learned that one anyway. The first time I met you, I think you were in a wheelbarrow going past me with your leg in a plaster. So that's kind of when I first got to know you, Sal. I think pushed for Duncan McLaren, if I remember right. Yeah, I actually think it was before that.

I think we met at the Perth bull sales when I used to go down, me and mum, well mum went down because there was a crofter. She never bought a bull, she never wanted a bull, but she used to go to the Perth bull sales for fun. I was going down in fifth and sixth year of high school.

So I think it was maybe a year or two before I went to Harbour but yes I remember, the reason I was in a wheelchair at the Royal Show in a wheelbarrow was I twisted my ankle I still have dodgy ankles it's a recurring theme, it was nothing to do with alcohol that one.

Some of the trips down to Perth certainly did include alcohol and fantastic they were Did you ever get to the Old Mart Sal? You wouldn't quite remember that one no? No, no I was never in the Old Mart it was the new Perth Mart I was in. Mum did go to the Old Mart, she bought Herefords there when she first came in the Croft, they had Herefords for a number of years.

Not well, I don't remember them, I've got photos of me beside them when I'm sort of two or three, so that would have probably been, she had them for seven or eight years I think. Okay. And she showed them, she never, I don't think she ever showed a bull but. Okay, so we're going back, you were at Harper obviously, you said learning, you know, doing your agricultural course. And then from then, from what I remember, you got into wrapping wool there.

So tell us a little bit about Harper and how that sort of evolved into what you became a passion for. Well, I went to Harper in 95. I learned a lot about that I can't play rugby. I learned how to make a really good snakebite pint. Didn't actually finish. I'm officially a dropout, a college dropout. I didn't quite finish. I ended up coming home and going to work in a call centre, a computer call centre of all places for a while up here, which did not suit

me at all. And that's when I took the farm on. I actually broke my ankle at the Highland Show in 1999 on the Friday morning but showed my I showed my texel shape and mum and my auntie Susan strapped it up very well Tracy Gunn picked me up off the floor when I twisted it and I ended up in plaster for four months gave up the job that I loathed call centre you're literally chained to a desk it's not for me good to talk I mean I was good at that bit but and I ended up in

New Zealand working in orchards and vineyards for about eight months and I came home I think that was then when I took the farm on and I kind of jobbed around for a bit bummed around with no real plan in life and I got a job here rolling wool in the summer.

Because it was something I could do it was easy to learn it was something I could make some decent money over the summer got friendly with a couple of people in Australia and they were like yeah come over you know come over and I was like nah that's too far I've got the farm and one night I ended up on I think I split up with whoever boyfriend at the point or whatever and I was online and I was on sharingworld.com and I was like oh how about we go to Australia got chatting to a guy on there

a contractor on there he offered me a job on a Friday night I walked through the the house and said to mum and dad, I've got a job. They're like, yeah, cool. When, where? I said, starting on Monday in Perth. That's cool. I'm like, yeah, Perth, Australia. And I flew on Monday morning and that was it. And that's how I got into wheel rolling. And I was right. I was over, I did two trips in Australia.

I started showing over there, doing the shows, encouraged by one of the ladies I'm still friendly with. And I started doing the shows. It was before the whole shearing circuit came in. So to get on the team at that point for the wool handling, you had to come first at the Highland show. And if there was enough, you had to get points at a couple of other shows. I was second. Very surprisingly, I was second. At the Highland, yeah? Highland, yeah, at the Highland. I'd actually gone and got changed.

I was like, yeah, yeah, I'm done. I'm out. There's no way I've got anything here. Went and got changed. and I was sitting eating an ice cream when Margaret Whiteford, she came up to me, get changed, get changed, you're in the next heat, you're in the finals. I was like, oh no. So I was surprised, you know, getting second was great. But at that point I wasn't getting to go to New Zealand because it was only one wheel handler that was getting to go.

And then there must have been discussions and it was decided that somebody else could go. And I was, I think again, I was second at the Black Isle show and that got me my place on the team. And that was in 2012. Okay. So I went over to New Zealand in 2012 as one of the two wheel handlers at the Golden Shears. There was 32 countries competing. It's huge over there, like huge, properly huge. It's amazing. It was some experience, really was some experience to go.

Fantastic experience. And again, those listeners that we have on here will know the Golden Shears this last year was held at the Royal Highland. And the two Scottish girls, Audrey Aitken and Rosie Keenan, came in there and they came in one between them. They won some of the world events as well. I think they were second in the pair. Maybe first in the, you'll know more than me, sir. Yeah, Rosie's number one. She's current number one in the world.

She's actually living up here near me in Betty Hill now. And Audrey and Rosie, I think they were second in the teams. Brilliant. Brilliant. The two of them are awesome. You know, when I watch them do it, I am nowhere near their level. You know, they are top notch, both of them. And we like to encourage youngsters on here.

I'm sure you do the same, like to encourage youngsters. So just say to some of our younger audience, especially maybe some of the ladies, and it's not specifically ladies, it's the men's and women's. I don't know how it works. Just tell our youngsters if they want to get into that and travel and see the world that they can actually, it's something they can get into and get paid for, I guess. Yeah. You know, going woolrolling around the world or rousing around the world is amazing.

My cousin, Jodie, at the moment, she's in Melbourne, frying home on Friday. She's been in Norway. She started work down about the Black Isle area in summer. She's ended up being in Norway for six weeks, going around the sheds there with one contractor. It's just her and a contractor going round all the farmers' places. Had an absolute ball there. And now she's been in Melbourne working down that area and loving it. Absolutely loving it. It's a great way to travel.

You meet so many people and you're getting paid. And it's good money. You know, it's actually decent money you're getting paid, especially in Australia. Maybe I'm not sure about New Zealand. I've never properly worked there.

But, oh, it's awesome, especially when you're young. And you're getting away from the Scottish winter again. So where would one apply? Where would somebody put their application in to do that job? Somebody obviously needs to have done it already, but how do you go about just picking up a contract? There's a couple of recruitment companies that do it. There's Tiki Recruit, Emily.

She's a Scottish lassie who's set up that she finds, she matches contractors with shearers, rousies, and pressers all over the world. Or you can just find somebody like, you know, I still speak to a lot of friends in Australia who are still shearing. I can hook people up with contacts as well. And generally, there's a lot of the Scottish shearers go over and wool rollers go over as well. So speak to them. OK, speak to the shearers. And if you can't find anybody else,

speak to me. I'll speak to Sally directly on Facebook or Instagram or wherever you'll find Sally Crow.

Sally, let's just move on briefly. Then after the wool rolling, you came back home, as you said, but you took ill, didn't you? You took a long-term illness, I would say, and sort of some mental health issues around that as well. So tell us a little bit about what happened in that next sort of period of your life. Yeah, well, when I came home from New Zealand, I stopped into Australia because, you know, down that side of the world, it's rude not to go and visit friends.

So I popped in to visit some friends down there. And I did an afternoon in a shed and I picked up something called Q fever. Didn't know it at the time. I got a little bit of a cold when I came home and it just never really left. Okay. And it took a couple of years before I got diagnosed that it was actually this thing called Q fever, which is very similar to chronic Lyme disease.

Very similar. More people over here will have heard of it. You know, it's the limited, very limited, what you can do, what you can't do. It causes lots of body pain, fatigue, fatigue that you've never felt before.

And as we say, the knock on of it is that you do have mental health issues because you You go from being really fit to being actually on top of the world when I was in New Zealand, because that was a year that Gavin Mutch won and Mark and Willie did really well and Blades and Hamish had done really well. And it was really, you know, I was buzzing, came home on top of the world and then just never couldn't do anything, basically, for a couple of years.

And as you said, the couple of years would be the worst bit because obviously you didn't know what was wrong with you. I mean, I remember seeing you and you were a shadow of your former self, certainly mentally and when not knowing was the worst but wasn't it really going from one test after another and nobody actually pinpointing what the matter was?

Yeah it was it was you're just you're reliant on your doctor picking up what he think what they think it might be and they just didn't know and none of the tests were picking up and obviously unless you specifically test for Q fever or whatever it is and a lot of people were suggesting in Lyme and I was tested for it many times. And it wasn't until I was speaking to one of my friends in Australia, Nigel, I think it was Nigel.

Oh, one of my friends in Australia, I know. He said, you know, check for Q fever, it sounds like it. So I did and the doctor eventually agreed to test and that's what it came back as. And they basically said, you know, we don't really know much about this. They diagnosed me with ME, myalgic encephalomyelitis.

The response to it is go away and learn to live with it which is soul destroying when you hear that you know your life's never going to get better I was fortunate enough to get chatting to Estelle and a South African lady who put me in contact with a doctor in South Africa who treated Q fever Lyme Rickettsial illnesses can I just jump in there a second and is that something that's in inherent I mean you said you picked it up in New Zealand in a

shearing shed and I mean is that that something that that is more southern hemisphere is it rare is it is it well has it come from the sheep or you know how do you get it's it's zoonosis it's coxiella burnettii is the official name it's actually not in new zealand that's the one place it isn't they don't have it but it's everywhere sorry the kiwis sorry kiwis they've been pointing the finger at you go back to southern hemisphere anyway yes

so it's all over i have friends that have caught it here it comes through it's an airborne usually an airborne spread so it comes through urine which is why it's more problematic in warm hot dry countries because it can spread there was a huge outbreak in holland i want to say from a downwind of.

An abattoir and it was goats and it was you're talking hundreds of people that was getting it because there's two forms there's the the acute form where you get it and you get ill get a cold and you get better and then there's about two to five percent get the chronic form that you just don't get better basically like a long covid sort of thing but yeah and you you say you don't get better but you did get better in a cell i think you had treatment and sort of medication and various

things and how long ago has that been now you did tell me 2012 was 2012 i got ill around about 2016 2017 i had treatment I saw the doctor in Belgium and I had treatment for a year on and off and it's better it's improved a lot you know I still have to watch what I do which is one of the reasons I don't do so much now you know I take it easy a bit but easier now so I have to watch what I do still well but it's mainly gone

you know it's it's under control I think is what we call it at the moment taking it easy would be a fairly easy thing to say but you mentioned William I just heard him in the background And then, of course, you are now, you're a single mum with elderly parents. So you've got both holding the family together from both sides. And you've got William now who's three or so. And hey, bringing up a youngster on a budget that you have as well and on the time constraints that you have there.

Not an easy task there. So, William, if you're listening there, behave yourself. Yeah, he doesn't. No, he does. He's a good kid, I have to say. He's quite a cool little dude. You know, he's quite easygoing, thankfully. Yeah.

Smart I don't know where he's getting it from but he's a smart cookie outsmarts me regularly, and he's good because he children bring that fun into life you know you've got the laughter and the joking around and everything and it's great you know we don't take life too serious and none of us here or me and dad don't take life too serious it's quite I mean it's it is serious at times mum's still in hospital with dementia she's not going to be coming home unfortunately unfortunately.

And it's that generation I'm in, or it's that age I'm in just now. You know, there's so many people just now at the same stage in life that your parents are getting elderly and your kids are young and everybody needs you. And you just kind of have to get on with it. But if you can do it with a bit of humor, it makes life a lot easier, I find. Well, that's a great thing to say. And again, a lesson for all of us. That's why I said at the top of this thing, you are an inspiration.

And we'll go into what else you do to earn a living, because as I said, bring it, your craft isn't it yes it is sustainable of course it is but you have to supplement your income doing various things and there's a time constraint for for all of that to to fit it in and as you said seeing your mum and your mum Julie who I always had a lot of time for fantastic is horrible and hateful to see her in the way that she's in just now but all that needs to be managed Sal and you just seem to

get on with it you just have to you know I don't I generally don't work too hard a lot of people think I do but I'm really quite I'm quite strict with my time so I allocate time like William's at nursery now so it's great I've got sort of five days a week that I can do stuff at home I don't do I try not to do online work at night time I do it school hours nine to three you know and that's it I don't do it outside of that me and dad

take day about visiting mum and that's part of it that time is built in there as you say on the croft you know a 65 acre croft where the best well in the world with just store cattle and store sheep you're not making a living off of it you know so that's why i've changed the way i do things.

To maximize return on every step of it and it sounds a lot when i write it all down and go it sounds loads but it's all developed over about 10 years you know so it's all bit by bit that's happened let's go into the croft then as you said all change you know texel sheep limbers and cattle and saw the daylights one day and thought we're going to have to do something a little bit more specific in this and as you mentioned you've got the you know the Morley cattle there and obviously took

made the farm a little bit bigger and and the regeneration project that you've more recently gone into I guess so first let's give it let's give a shout out to the to the Irish moored I mean they were a breed that was down to 30 odd cows in the 80s I think and you've got involved in the breed society now how many how many cows we've got now in the country and and why? We are, as a society, I think the Irish moelle cattle are now up to 1,600 females.

So they've done really well breeding up. I didn't really know much about them until sort of six or seven years ago, and I fell in love with them because they're beautiful. They really are a beautiful animal to look at. They're also, they're good doers. You know, they don't need extra hard feed. Good grass, they'll thrive on it. They calve easily. They're really milky. They're a dual-purpose breed. Milk and beef, although more towards the beef style now.

We do classification. We use the Holstein Society, the same classification as the Shorthorns use. So the locomotion, the milk, the other breed characteristics. And we've got a lot of cattle that are coming, grading through, and they're excellent now. And three or four generations back, graded as excellent. You say we, you've got yourself involved in the society, I believe, who are based in Ireland, but I think you're probably there, Scottish Movid would that be right?

Well I'm one of the GB directors I think what do we have I think we have five four or five GB directors thank because of Covid it's all being held on Zoom which is great all the AGMs the meetings and everything is held on Zoom through email a lot as well and it's great because I can be involved in it I'm working on one of the things I'm working on just now is a weaning weight project where we're recording all the weaning weights over a couple of years i'm trying to see if the average is going

up or going down and to see what we're actually at because we don't have any full figures for it so we need to get that figures i do love a good spreadsheet i love excel i've got quite a well i had a really good one with all these fancy macros and tables and everything and i did something to it and i can't fix it so it's gone simple again i could help you on that in a form of life i used to write all those macros and code but uh probably don't have the time for it either at the

moment you mentioned where you are of course geographically challenged so you're up near John O'Groats as you said you're what 100 miles north of Inverness no more more maybe and so you can get to do those things and of course other things that come into that as well from a diversification point of view and we'll we'll go into some of that but just sticking with those moilers a little bit you mentioned a more a dual purpose breed as were the short-horns before they went down sort of two

separate routes and as a few other animals and of course the Kerry cows in Ireland as well well, they'd milk them and eat them. And going back the way they'd milk them and eat them and pull the plowers in, wouldn't they? But as you said, the Irish model has gone more down the beef road. And I've shared a roast dinner of yours, Sally, fantastic it was of a piece of moral beef. They do eat well. Let's just give them a plug on that side of it, too.

The moily beef is fantastic. I'm not, I personally don't think it can be beaten. I'm sure there's others that say their breed's best, but I don't think the moily beef can be beaten. Very highly fat marbled through it. You can get fillet steak that's got fat marbling through it. The taste is just beautiful. It's like one of my customers, she had her granny around for dinner.

So she must, I think she's in about her 80s or 90s. and her granny reckons that it's how beef used to taste when she was a little girl. There you go. I can't get a better advert for it than that, of course. And you mentioned Chivyets, but, Sal, you went into, you put yourself together for a regeneration project, and I think that's something you'd seen overseas.

Just tell us a little bit more about how the region, how you showed me when I was there, to be fair, how you'd move electric fences about, and animals didn't stay anywhere too long in one place.

Just give me a pricey of what you do there at the Croft to keep this. To keep myself parasite-free, I suppose. Yeah, well, I started regenerative agriculture about 10 years ago when I got sick, mainly because, and I didn't know what it was called at the time, and it was mainly because I was broke because I couldn't work and I couldn't afford fertilizer. So I didn't put it on. It was simple as that. And numbers had fallen quite badly.

We were down to only three cows and about 15 sheep at one point because I had to sell them to get some money to live, basically. And gradually I realized well my ground's actually doing okay without fertilizer so I'm not going to bother and I'm starting to get native species coming through again so my swords are getting more mixed more diverse. And it was about maybe five or six years ago that I started hearing about this regenerative agriculture.

And I thought, do you know what? That's kind of what we're doing here. So I started looking into it more. I started doing rotational grazing. Started off the first year, I split a three acre field in half and I put them on the bottom half for three weeks and the top half for three weeks, which is not quite how you do it, but with plenty of grass and it worked. And then over the last few years, we've been getting bigger and bigger groups

of cattle and sheep. but I'm up to 60 sheep and 11 cows this year. And I ran them all together last year. So with lambs and calves, we ended up with about 190 animals in one group. Moved every three days now, and they get around about two acres roughly at a time. I'm probably going to make it tighter this year a little bit. My big 20-acre field, I had it split in five. I'm probably going to split it into six this year.

And I'll leave those cells up because it's quite steep and it's a bit of work to shift them so I just set up electric fences at the start of the season I do need to find somebody to mow underneath them because I tried that last year and I was knackered it just about broke me I picked the hottest day of the year last year to mow underneath it and it just about broke me And you run what, two strand, three strand just electric fencing and wheelbarrowed in and out?

Yep Yep. Well, three-strand electric fence. And I had a rack made for the back of the bike last year. So it's got two bucket holders, a middle bit that I can put all my tools in. And it's got two bits that go up the back that hold the electric fence posts and hooks on it that I can put the reels on. So basically, I can pretty much sit on the bike and not have to get off it when I put the fence up. That's brilliant. The whole work smarter, not harder. Yeah, quite right, quite right.

And you grow a few cover crops as well there, Sal? I don't, I don't actually. I just have, I've got a lot of clover. I worked with shearers up in Orkney and we've made nine clover mix, mainly small to medium size leaves. Some red clover, I think it's three varieties of red clover. And I just, I go around and chuck handfuls of it out once the sheep and cattle have grazed down. I do it at night because the moisture overnight and the feet trampling in helps the seeds go in. And it's working.

It's not the most effective way of getting seeds in the ground, but it's cheap. It doesn't cost me anything. It costs me the seed. That's all it costs, you know. And I'm starting to see some red clover coming in, different varieties coming in now. Okay. And I'm allowing the seeds that are naturally there in the seed bank to come up, which takes a few years. You know, you do have to graze quite hard.

When it's been conventionally farmed for a long time, it probably takes five or six years before you start seeing stuff coming out of them. You get the annual weeds coming up first, obviously, because that's their job. Their job is to come in, get some leaves, and get some energy trapped in the soil. That's what their whole purpose in life is, sort of thing. Once they go out, you start getting the other plants coming through in a natural cycle.

Sounds fascinating and highly scientific as well, but is there somewhere people can go and have a look at the regenerative? Because I think it's something that's come in, and I think you picked up on this quite early, that there's a lot of people who are interested in this, where we can produce the feed a lot cheaper by understanding the science of the soil and the plants that you put in it. So is there somewhere people can go, and is there a society of regenerative agriculture?

There isn't, actually. But what there is, where I found most of my information was YouTube. To be honest, you start, look up people like Gabe Brown, Ray Archulet, Alan Savory. Alan Savory is kind of the dad of holistic farming and regen farming. Twitter, well, X. X is really good. You know, get on there. There's loads of farmers doing it and willing to talk about what they're doing already.

So you can go on and follow threads on there that give you so much information about what people have tried. And the main thing about regenerative agriculture, and the one thing that worries me about it at the moment, the way we're moving towards it, is its context.

It's very much specific to your farm and to your goals so what i do on my farm isn't necessarily what my neighbor's going to want to do because their goals are different and their farm's different so i worry about politicians trying to legislate for it because i don't know how they're going to do it to to sort of encompass the whole ethos of it is that it's very much specific to your goals and your farm okay so there's no

blueprint no blueprint that somebody Somebody could just pick up on it and say, well, this is what we're going to do. But there is an ideology around it that certainly can get people started, especially people in smaller farms looking at that. And you mentioned you put the Texans away and changed it for Chivis. Of course, the North Country Chivis are indigenous to your part of the world. So they'll stand, although you're not particularly on a hill, they'll stand the weather there.

And you've also got some blue-headed Leicesters there as well, which aren't indigenous to your part of the world. And I'm surprised they're still alive in the weather that you get. I'm surprised they're still alive too, most of it. I love them. My blue-faced leasters are my one indulgence, basically, that all the rest of my cattle and sheep are moving.

I'm gradually or quite steadily moving towards 100% grass-fed. They are not, I think. The hogs are inside. They've been in for the last six weeks, the ewe hogs, because it's been so wet and they were just looking awful. You took pity on them because they're your pets, as you just said there, which is, this is completely contrary to your regenerative project, but you love them.

I do. I love them. They're great sheep. The lambs are just, they're comical when they're born because they're all legs and ears and they've got this little bald spot between their ears that when they're brand new, if you pick them up and you touch between the bald spot, their ears go down. It's quite funny. It's where their very little brain is probably. Yes.

I don't, they're just my, I wouldn't even say they're my indulgence because they do drive me nuts at times, but I just, I really like them. And you get a market for those, of course, I mean, blue-faced Leicester tupps will be in demand around you for breeding mules. And for all I'm rude about them, they're still the most influential sheep, because in Great Britain, if not across Europe, for breeding a mule, isn't it? So there's plenty of trade for this.

I remember seeing on your top line in Tales last year sometime you had a really interesting graph up about the genetics, the relationship between all the different sheep breeds and the blue-faced leasters were like way out on a corner by themselves.

Everybody else was grouped in one sort of area and the blue leasters were way out on their own, which is why obviously it's putting the, I don't know, the vigor and everything into other breeds is why they're so good for crossing i think when you go down the genetic side of it absolutely right and we shouldn't give them a bad press as i said they they are great of the of the british sheep industry and and something you mentioned

when i was up seeing there before we probably won't dwell on this because it's a long subject in itself was about carbon you're talking about the plants and regenerative but of course the carbon sequestration something that can't yet be measured but you have done a carbon audit haven't you and come out on on the right side of it I think. Yes I've done a carbon audit I did soil sampling last year as well which was interesting to see what was happening in the soil.

The carbon thing we're all going to have to do it you know that we're going to have to do carbon audits I think it's the way we're going to get funding to show that we're making a difference. As you say it can't be measured it's very subjective to how you put the figures in as well I think.

I mean I'm doing really well here because we don't use fertilizer we don't buy in a lot of feed and things like that and we don't, run a lot of machinery so you know we're quite low on that where I'm falling down is I do my beef and lamb boxes we have to go 100 miles south to Dingwall to the nearest abattoir and that journey then goes into my carbon audit and it's one journey per sheep which in total I wouldn't didn't even have a whole lorry load in the year going,

but it's one journey per sheep. So that just boosts my carbon quite a bit. No, I mean, I'm still under whatever the average. It's so annoying because we have an empty abattoir a mile from me that's sitting there that we could get going, but as with everything, getting the funding is just dire.

That is sad. It's also sad that you can, as I said, skew your audit just by having to do something that you're doing and by the fact that the figures, when you take 20 in a trailer and each one of them is targeted as one journey, that shows that the carbon audits that we're doing just now aren't exactly right and the science hasn't quite got there yet and we've had this conversation, as I said. Every week I say I won't discuss it and we always end up having a word with it.

Let's talk about the diversification that you've done there, Sal. As we said at the top of the podcast here, that running a 60-acre croft self-sufficiently takes a little bit more than just running the field. So you mentioned the beef and lamb boxes, which is something everybody's getting into now. I do it myself in France. How's that going for you? Great. Absolutely.

It's going fantastic. you know I started 10 years ago and I thought I'd be lucky if I could sell maybe five or six lamb boxes a year last year I think it was about 90% of my weathers went as lamb boxes I also do mutton boxes now which is building up steadily I've they're coming home on Friday actually the last well no Saturday they're coming home my next lot and I had six customers so two two of my ewes off as mutton which I didn't think I

would manage to sell that but last year it was one this year it's two you know so it's building gradually beef boxes I can't keep up with demand I've got two for boxes this year because I had so many females last year which is great I was numbers built up but my beef boxes are pretty much fully booked out for this year already before I even advert they're six months off being ready and they're fully booked out already ready it's great i love the connection it gives

you where your customers you know where it's sad in a way what i find really strange in a way is that farmers selling our product to our end customer has become a diversification true that's a good thing good statement i like that and you're right obviously where you are in case they say your your customers will be up there you're not shipping them down into to in vanessa or london or sort of the high prices people will be getting and a fair product for a fair price, I guess, locally.

You're not going to go on too high a price point. But it's a lot more profitable sending animals that way. Well, I basically go with the average of the whole of the UK. There is a rough average that most people seem to sell at. With the Irish Moil, with the pure boxes, we have the Irish Moily Beef part of the Irish Moil Society. It's a slightly separate bit, which is set up to promote Irish Moily Beef.

And one of the things we do is at the start of the year, or we're looking at doing is the start of the year, setting a price point for Irish Moily Beef so that every producer is selling at the same price.

To get throughout the uk and republic of ireland you know it'll give us it'll keep the market fair for all the breeders that way okay and it's something we're promoting and it's great one of the things i do as well as i i've started teaching other people how to do it and the irish moyley society they actually have got me in at the moment and i'm teaching the whole society members how to set up and sell boxes that's brilliant which is great to to give everybody the same information to

know exactly how to start and how to do it so that it's easy to do it's not hard to do you know it's a lot of people worry that it's going to be hard to set up but it really isn't that's brilliant sal that you're doing that and probably and i mentioned before the sort of geographically challenged if that's not a rude word about case and this does give you the reason to to use the internet as a marketing tool and to use online as a marketing

tool and i know you and and I've spoke long and hard about some of the ways that we can do promotion through Facebook, through all the channels that are out there, but obviously starting with selling beef boxes online, so you're picking up your customers rather than off-page advertising or wherever people have done that in the past, if at all.

But now, as you said, you're doing courses for boxes and you're doing other things, and the whole online thing, that's where your diversification has really taken off and come into your bottom line, sir.

Definitely, 100%. and you know the internet's amazing a lot of people's like oh social media you put all your life on there it's like yes but lots of people are on it all the time you're going to find the other weirdos that want to do what you want to do and what you're selling the people who like what you're selling you know you can find your tribe or your people on there easily and if you've got something that other people want it's free you know that's the best part about social media it's

free to advertise and the reach like TikTok I'm on TikTok and I don't do any sales on it because I haven't figured out how to do that yet because I'm probably about 30 years too old to figure that one out but the reach on there is fantastic one of my first videos I put up had like four and a half thousand views I only had 10 followers at that time you know it's it's great I'm getting comments from people all over the world about and on TikTok all

I do is me talking to camera and then I show them my sheep or my cows and I have a moan about the weather. One of the biggest ones I put up was a complete moan about the weather. And I had heaps of comments and views. It was amazing. It's unbelievable, isn't it? And when we talked to Cammie Wilson on this program, we all knew Cammie again, inspiration to all of us, the way that he's embraced social media and the likes of the Hoof Doctor and Gareth Wynne-Jones and these other guys.

Incredible the way they've taken the media away from farming a little bit and brought in a whole diverse audience who aren't actually farmers, who don't actually earn a living from agriculture or even totally understand agriculture, but they're buying into the concept.

And I remember Gareth Wynne-Jones saying to me that we have a duty, all of us to try and sort of educate the public a little bit as to what we do and what's good for them yeah and i mean my facebook page i have a page up and running and it's just it's a blog as much as anything and it's about what i do and it's the the ins and outs of it you know one of the videos i did last week was these are my empty use they're going off you know these three

are three of them's going to the market and two of them's going to the abattoir and i personally i'm getting into the stage now, I don't like animals going through the ring because of the stress side of things for them. I'm getting soft in my old age basically. And I was saying about. You know, I quite like it. The ones that are going direct from here, they've had a good life here and they go direct from me to the abattoir and that's it.

Whereas the other ones are going to have to go from me through the ring, through another one. And I had a little bit of a chit chat about it. And it was interesting to the feedback I was getting from it, from farmers and from the general public. You know, one lady, she said, you know, it's nice to hear that it's not just a business decision and there are emotions behind it.

You know you don't just treat your animals as a commodity they're not just a unit you know they're an actual living breathing thing and then other farmers were like well you know what it's part of life and i'm like yeah it's part of life but it's also okay to say that we maybe don't feel good about it all the time brilliant absolutely absolutely right and and we mentioned mental health earlier on in in the show there and again a subject that raises its head or

through social because social media has done a fantastic amount for people with with mental health issues which is something in farming going back the way with sort of a huge issue that we all buried under the carpet and and I believe that things that you're doing like that is is good for for for everybody's um mental well-being really yeah yeah I think so you know it's it's being okay to talk about the things that that bother you

you know it's being okay to say that you know I do it because we have to but it's maybe not what I want to do I'd prefer to do it this way and when you start saying you'd prefer to do it this way there's other people come out and say well do you know actually yeah that's kind of what I think too so you don't feel quite so crazy or weird or whatever.

Like the the regen agri thing you know it's I thought it was a bit nuts when I started doing a bit of a hippie sort of thing and not really sure but then I found the other people on social media who are doing it and to start chatting to folk who are doing what you're already doing. It's great. You know, it just gives you that, I don't know, just another word. Togetherness. Yeah, absolutely.

And it makes me happy. You know, the other side of social media for mental health that a lot of people miss out on is you're keeping up with friends. You know, you and me, we chat through social media quite a lot and we would have lost contact many years ago if it hadn't been for Facebook. Absolutely right. Absolutely right. And I called in to see you last year.

Hadn't seen you for ages and call in and chat on the things that we do to keep up with people and that's not just locally it's around the world as well so i mean i mean it does have its downsides and i probably won't go into them just now but yes it's brilliant that it does that and the other thing that i want to go on to sal i know you've sold a few products in the past you've been agent for one or two mineral supplements and various things but you've gone more down the the.

Diversification online route with this one and this is i think something maybe i've come through your your mother's illness or what have you where you've come up with a with a planner where people people can tell me tell me about it come on tell me about it i'll let you i'll let you let you tell this one basically i i did the king's countryside but it was a princess trust at the time and the rsabi they had the farm resilience

program last year and it was in caithness they go around different areas if anybody gets i don't know if they do it further south they definitely do in scotland i don't i think they do it because it's all over the uk if they do it in your area do it it's free. You get sex meetings, you get a dinner, you get a summer visit somewhere or a summer...

Meeting somewhere you get things like we had an environmental night we had a guy and talking about funding we had somebody talking about accounts how to handle accounts i missed that one because i had covid but i've got an agency in accounts i wasn't too worried about it somebody comes out and takes your accounts from you and goes over all your accounts they go away and they get benchmarked against everybody in your group plus randomized ones as well they're They're all randomised,

so you don't see who it is. But you can see where you're picking up, where you're falling down, where you could improve, and you have a meeting discussing that as well. And then you have a meeting about succession as well, which is a big topic that we all need to talk about, you know, and farming especially with the businesses and everything. The whole succession thing is a topic you need to have sooner rather than later.

Absolutely right, Sal. I was playing golf at the Bell this week, and succession was one of the subjects that took us halfway around the course. So you're right, it is something that as the farm generations are getting older and the youngsters not coming into the business quite so much, that succession planning is something that's huge. So this is why admiration, as I said, talk us through how you took that forward.

Yeah, well, it was Heather Wildman that did the meeting. And one of the things she said is, you know, do you have your information written down? Like, you know, if you die, is somebody going to be able to get into your phone for a start or your laptop? And are they going to know anything about your business? Because as farmers, we do have.

A hell of a lot of information stored in our heads. We maybe don't write it down or it's on a scrap of paper or it's in a bit of book or, and generally, this is a vast generalization here and apologies to anybody it doesn't fit with. Generally, it's the woman in the partnership who has all the information, does the bills and does all of that and knows everything. And if I went home from that meeting and I'm like, right, I know you get life

planners where you can write all this down for personal life. I'll buy a farm one. They don't have them. And I spent ages looking. There's none in the UK. There's none worldwide. So I wrote a farm emergency plan. I thought, oh, it'll be maybe four or five pages, and that'll do it. And it'll take me a couple of days to write it.

And this will come a little bit through from your mum, as you said, taking dementia and knowing, I suppose, knowing that she would have had to know where the bodies are buried, for want of another word. Yeah. Well, mum actually had a brain tumour as well about eight years ago.

It suddenly came on overnight, basically. like we didn't know what just middle of the day one day didn't know what was wrong and she because it was so big it damaged she had brain damage from it and she had to learn to walk and talk and everything I had taken over but I hadn't done all of her stuff you know the house stuff so I had to then step up and take over sort out all the accounts sort and phone everybody and notify them change mum's name off

the accounts and everything which all took a lot of work so that's what the planner is basically it's somewhere you can write down absolutely everything about your business there's a personal bit at the back of it as well so all your government logins all your sprayer tests your who your vet is your phone code your laptop code all those sort of things there's a space in there for absolutely everything and you helped me with andy

you had a look at it and gave Gave me some tips and some advice and things to add in, as did quite a few other people around. I sent it to people all over, which is why it took six months to write, basically. And I've got a list on the wall for edits for the next version as well that I've missed out that other people have come to me with. And something when you've written all this down, you stick it in the safe, and as long as you know the accommodation to the safe, the rest of it stays

in there out of the way. Because I think some people maybe had a little bit of apprehension. They'll say, well, if I write every single thing down, if I get burgled and somebody comes in, and they know how to nick my car and my gun license and all the rest of those things. Yeah, 100%. And I would advise, and one of the things, but it was actually my midwife, when William was little, her house burnt down, sadly. And one of the things she said is get a fireproof safe as well.

You get fireproof files on Amazon that you can put everything in. If the house does burn down, the basics that you need are in there. And it's a morbid kind of subject to talk about at times, I find, as well, because basically... The planners for when you die, it's not actually going to benefit you. It's going to benefit your family. Yeah, it's kind of a hard one. I find in a way, how can you say that nicely? Well, that's just it with you.

Nobody's done this, but I mean, to come up with that idea, fantastic. And then obviously to get out there and market it, you can't just phone people up and say, look, you'll be dead in five years' time if you've written everything down. It is quite, as you said, a difficult one to sell, but you've taken that on as well.

I mean, you've found ways to get this marketed out there. And if you guys haven't seen it, we'll probably give you a link to where you can pick up. And it's not putting your life savings into buying one of these. It's a fairly cheap extension to your daily budget. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's been a huge learning curve. And I'm still learning. You know, I'm still learning. I can sell beef boxes, lamb boxes, wool. That's one of the things my blue-faced leasters is great at,

is wool. You know, I've got various bits and pieces done. I can do that. This is a different type of thing. And it's not about, one of the things is, for me, the huge thing is, it's not about making money out of it. It's about knowing that I'm helping people. It's about knowing that there's a family out there that's going through a rough time, a horrible time, because it is a horrible time when you lose someone. But I've made their life a fraction easier, a tiny bit easier.

That's what it's about for me. It's the helping folk more than anything.

Very commendable as i said you can come at that from an angle of your own experience as well and and and a brilliant thing and and you remind me what it's called uh sally it's the farm emergency planner you go farm emergency planner you can you can google that or you can find it or go to sally's facebook page or i think the well tell me you've got on amazon as well actually surprisingly there you go it's um and and wait wait 20 30 quid or something along those lines,

25 pound it is So you guys out there That haven't thought about that Sally said it's not an easy job, the chance to ever think about it just uh go on there get one bought ticket and fill it in put it away job done and and made everybody's life a little drop me a message i have some here and i quite often have discounts and farmers don't need discounts they got plenty of money and you do a few other things sell online our time is running up here but you

do further things on online as well and bringing more things on all the time i mean you're finding finding ways of once you've got that presence out there you're finding ways of making that start to pay to pay pay some bills yeah definitely you know it's the online thing is great i can be sitting here in my oh well i had a course the other night and i had somebody in lanzarote and i had somebody in australia and i and people all over uk and ireland you know so i had 21 folk on a course.

Listening to me talk which is excellent i'm good well you've probably you've probably got a good few thousand listening to you talk just now but i i do know that also you've started getting demand on, as I said at the top of the show, again, an inspiration to me and a lot of other people of how you've made this work. But you've been on, is it Women in Wellies? What do Women in Wellies do? What are they talking about? What's it?

Little Natter, is it? It was the Women in Wellies is a podcast that started up about a year ago, I think. Charlotte and Hannah, they do it and they just interview women to see what they're up to and get a chat. I recorded, I did a podcast with them last week. I think it goes out in the end of the month, end of February sometime. It's actually going out. And is this an agricultural, sorry, Sally, is this an agricultural podcast? Because we do get a lot of women listen to this program as well.

It's agricultural and rural based. So it's not, there's, I think, one of the ladies that was on a couple of weeks ago, she was a forester, you know, so it covers a lot. It's mainly, it's just agriculture and rural and it's just a chat.

And see what you're doing see what you're up to I got it was a lady who bought a dog for me my dog had pups a couple years ago and she bought a dog for her dad and she's been following my page since and she messaged them and said that I'd be good on it so delighted I'm sure enjoyed it I'm sure you would be good on it you've been really good on this one as well and just to go back to that when women in well is look it up wherever you get

your podcast from and if you want to find more about Sally Crowe friend or on Facebook or Sally you've got a you've got a Facebook page is it called the WeCroft? The Croft. Yeah, I'm on TikTok. Twitter, I'm on Twitter. I'm not on it very much. Instagram, I seemingly have an Instagram presence, but I've never actually linked my account and I don't know how to use it. So I should probably look into it. Me likewise, I have to admit, it's an open admission that I don't know how to

use Instagram. In fact, I struggle with TikTok, to be honest. But that's brilliant. That's where our younger generation come in. They'll know where all this stuff is. But it's been an absolute pleasure to have a chat with you, Sally. I've been trying to catch up for a while now, Now, as I said, an inspiration to a lot of people.

And if anybody wants to get in touch with Sal and learn a little bit more about what you do or how you do it or whether you can help them to take their business in a slightly different direction, then please get in touch here. I love talking to folks. So just give me a shout. You know, I'll talk to anybody about anything. Even me. Well, I know you've got some hellish weather up there. And you were talking to me this morning about putting a weather station in because

your last one blew away. So I think you've still got the weather fairly rough up there in Case Ness, but. I hope you're inside and rugged up fairly warm from that. You had a bit of snow last week, I know. Yeah, it's been a rough winter, in all honesty. It's probably been our worst in 20 or 30 years. I've never seen the ground as wet. It's been... And wind, so much wind. We have had gales after gales. It's been quite depressing this year, I have to admit.

Although we've had two good days together, which has been about the first two good days we've had together since about June.

Well, at least you can get online and have a moan at your TikTok friends.

All about that and they'll dial in from Australia going hi it's 30 degrees Sal I've really enjoyed your company I hope everybody else has enjoyed an hour with Sally Crowe it's been absolutely fantastic and Sal I think you're going to make it down to the Highlands show this year I'm looking forward to catching up with you there and us having a yarn maybe even sharing a wee drum I think so I'm looking forward to it Andy I'm definitely coming it's been 10

years since I've been to the Highlands show through ill health and money and everything so I'm fairly looking forward to being down this year and catching up with folk I haven't seen in a long time.

Okay. And yes, potentially having a dram or two as well. It has been known to happen in the past. And say hi to that wee William from me and tell him, I'm sorry we couldn't take him out in the camper when we were there last time, but next time we come up there, promise we'll give him a way day in the camper. He's still talking about Haggis the dog and how it's time he got a little dog. And mum actually said to say hello as well. I told her last night I was going to be on your podcast.

And it's funny how the brain works because I can mention other friends and mum's like, oh, yeah, no, but I say, oh, I was speaking to Andy Fraser. Mum goes, oh, tell him I said hi. How is he doing? For some reason, we were trapped in mum's brain forever. You give her a big hug from me. Give her a big hug from me. I will. Sal, thanks very much. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you. And you too, Andy. Thank you. Thank you. Take care.

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