A Borders farmer from yesteryear was asked to address The Teviotdale Farmers Club on the subject of “Blackface Sheep”. He was a temperate man so only reluctantly agreed to a glass of sherry with the meal before his speech. As nerves took a hold, he had another and another after that. His talk began, “Blackface sheep should be fed on heather and hay, heather and hay, heather and hay. If you want them really good give them plenty heather and hay, heather and hay, heather and hay.” Thereupon he collapsed.

Most of the fortunes of my family have been based on heather and grass in one form or another so, although we don’t have heather anymore, I took note that muirburn is facing new legislation. Unsurprisingly comprehensive legislation on muirburn, which is based on protection of nesting birds, already exists. Soon it will be strengthened due to worries about destruction of peat which would release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and also that muirburn increases the risk of wildfires. The association with grouse shooting gives it a whiff of politics. Those who wish to burn heather in the future will need a license.

At Rawburn our landlord controlled the muirburn. This was done with the interests of grouse shooting foremost. My own experience was on my Father’s farm, Bothwell. The job required know how to keep the fires under control.

The only instance of a “hot” fire that I can remember, where the fire got into deep peat, was on the neighbouring farm to Rawburn of Byrecleugh. It was because no heather had been burned there for decades. It was knee deep and everywhere there were bull snouts, which are humps of dead grass which had built up over the years and were about two feet high. The intense heat left these as little piles of ash. Despite strenuous attempts to extinguish it, the fire burned for days. It spread to neighbouring farms totally destroying the march fences. The owner of one of these, a low ground man and a grouse shooting zealot asked his shepherd to assess the damage. The shepherd didn’t know how to answer as his lambs grazing the resulting young heather were the best they had ever been.

Later in life I managed Kettleshiel, which also marched with Rawburn. One of the shepherds, George Gauld, could be described in one word as “indomitable”. He had been brought up in a large family on a high farm in Aberdeenshire. His youngest brother, an apprentice baker, was killed by an unguarded machine for mixing dough. His two other brothers were on the beach at Dunkirk awaiting evacuation when they were killed by a bomb. George had survived polio but had been left lame so looked his sheep on horseback. He described his heather burning method as “dropping the bluebell” which earned him the nickname “Lee Van Cleef”. The heather on Kettleshiel was like a carpet and was a haven for sheep, grouse and wildlife.

Because of his aptitude with fire, George tended the brazier and heated the irons when we branded the Blackie hoggs. To kindle the fire, he had a drum of fluid used to wash the paint sprayer in his son’s garage. We were busy branding when there was a tremendous bang. He had left the drum too near the fire and it had exploded. It shot hundreds of feet into the air showering us with hot diluted paint. We had to roll George in the heather as his trousers were on fire.

The shepherd next door, Simon Reid, like George “dropped the bluebell” and let the fire burn till it came to a stream or rain put it out. Every morning I had to walk about a mile from our house to the lambing field before daylight. Often Simon’s fires from the previous day were still burning fiercely. Despite the method being in the eyes of the environmentalists absolutely horrific, it resulted in healthy sheep, flourishing wildlife and plenty grouse. Because the heather was kept short there was no danger of wildfires. George and Simon would never get a license to burn heather today.

Bracken too, which we definitely didn’t want, has like muirburn been in the news recently. Unlike England, Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland has banned spraying with Asulox, which leaves crushing and cutting as the only means of control. Bracken in the Lammermuirs isn’t the problem it is further West, nevertheless it was a significant nuisance when gathering sheep and it harboured ticks. In the post war period, my Father used a crusher which limited treatment to areas where a tractor could go and had to be repeated over some years to be successful. I tried a weed wiper using Roundup behind a quad bike. This was slow and limited to relatively level ground. My weed wiper touched a hidden stone and broke in half so we never did it again.

By far the most effective treatment for bracken was Asulox which we sprayed by tractor if possible and by helicopter on the steeper ground. It worked well but was very expensive. Thirty years ago, the chemical alone cost £28 per acre on ground which took 2.5 acres to produce a Blackie lamb. The most cost-effective thing we did was spray a product called Finesse, which was designed to kill grass weeds in grain crops, and cost only £4.50 an acre. We used a mast sprayer which resembled a toy windmill. It was light and portable and was powered by a twelve-volt battery. Positioned up wind of the bracken the mini windmill blew a mist over the area. It worked well although the bracken came back quicker than on the areas which had been sprayed with Asulox. Unfortunately, in East Anglia some sugar beet, which followed grain sprayed with Finesse, had failed to germinate so it was banned. A similar product with the label “Glean” is still being used successfully in New Zealand. Maybe we can get Finesse back as there isn’t a lot of sugar beet sown after bracken.

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