Blogger: Aggie Rothon, Communications Officer
I remember picking up our Christmas turkey one year. I was only small, but I can still recall the slow drive up a rain sodden path following signs for ‘Norfolk Black turkeys.’ A few sheep grazed in the fields to the left, bundled up in their thick winter fleeces. Fluffy-footed chickens padded around pecking at stray pieces of straw avoiding the low-lying sheepdog in the farmhouse porch.
Some would say that the turkeys met a rather grim end, reared for Christmas. But I wouldn’t have wished a better life for a turkey that was destined for the table. The woodland and pastures of the farm providing year round foraging, with straw beds in airy barns for when the nights drew in.
With only a small number of mouths to feed this Christmas, I’m on the hunt for the best possible (slightly smaller!) alternative than a Christmas turkey. For me, the best has to be meat reared in a natural way, grazing outdoors, in what’s called an extensive system. Not only does this seem to produce better tasting, happier meat, but this way of keeping livestock can reap huge rewards for wildlife.
To see this in action I visited the RSPB Ouse Washes Nature Reserve. Long ditches fence in acres of grazing, dotted with the white and caramel colours of cattle. It looked like they had room to spare and that’s because they did; these animals graze at half the density of intensively reared cattle. Over the expanses of flood plain that they roam, they find not only grasses but plants such as yarrow, parsley and buttercup. The cattle’s selective grazing over this mix of vegetation produces what is called a ‘mosaic sward’, the lumps and bumps, tufts and short patches that create the Washes rough grassland.
This varied grassland means the Ouse Washes cattle eat a mixed and natural diet. In the process however, they also create perfect habitat for ground nesting birds such as lapwings, redshank and snipe. In springtime the reserve is alive with the nasal, bubbling call of lapwing and the bounding and downward flutter of skylark defending their nests. Redshank alight on fence posts like children in the first flush of adolescence with their ungainly stick like legs, long beaks and reaching neck.
If I buy beef from the Ouse Washes, I will know as we all sit down to Christmas dinner that I have ‘bought in to’ the conservation of wildlife. My custom will support a process where I know where my food has come from, the good life it has lived and in turn what it has created to support further life.
Want to know more? Go to www.riversidebeef.co.uk
As featured in the EDP, Saturday 10 December
Erica, RSPB Communications Team, East