The regeneration of soil, plants and fungi is highly dependent on livestock. What works best for species diversity is to have different types of ruminants in pasture and grazing forest. We currently have three types; cows, pigs and horses.
The cows are a collaboration with a farmer who has been here for over 40 years.
He remembers coming here as a boy and sledging down the big hill.
Every summer, the pregnant cows come and graze in two of the pastures on the farm. They are friendly and curious and seem to enjoy themselves here on the farm.
The pigs arrived in january 2023
The pigs were born in June 2022, and arrived here in January 2023, 6 months old. They are incredibly good at digging, eat any leftover food and roots and grass when they dig, so we don’t need a tractor for ploughing. It took some time before they felt comfortable here and we noticed that their tails curl when they are happy. Pigs are said to be more intelligent than dogs, but humans have not developed the same communication with them as with dogs. However they love going on walks they follow you as long as they think you have some food. They are very popular among the volunteers and have been named Heidi Yin and Bernadette Yang.
The pigs dug up a new potato field for us and prepared an area where we want to make a pond. They have also been in the forest in an area that was dense spruce forest to dig and prepare the soil for a more diverse nature. They are experts at escaping through fences and love to run along the road and greet our neighbours.
The horses arrived in may, 2023
We wanted horses because they graze differently from cows or pigs. When you take a closer look at their dung, you see a great diversity of beetles, other insects and fungi that will contribute to soil health on the farm. In the long term, we hope they will be able to help with other farm tasks, pulling logs from the forest and cutting the hay.
Malva and Ciabatta have worked at Fokhol farm for many years as workhorses. But in the spring of 2023, the horse manager realized that there were too many horses at Fokhol. It would have been difficult to sell them, due to Malva’s age and the fact that both had problems with their legs, but they knew that we were looking and contacted us. We accepted!
We already saw when she arrived that Malva was ill, but she woke up during the summer and became fat and happy. Sadly, this last winter was tough on her and she died in January. Then we lost a wonderful horse who we had grown more and more fond of.
Malva and Ciabatta were close friends and after Malva died, Ciabatta was alone for a few weeks.
We put her with the pigs and it seemed fine except she got bored of being in such a small area and broke the fence so we had to put her back in the big pasture.
Soon a new horse will arrive…
The farm cat Bast (after the Egyptian cat goddess) is brilliant at catching mice.
She arrived in October 2020 when both houses were an extremely popular address for mouse families. At the age of 9 weeks, Bast hunted her first mouse and never looked back.
She has received strict instructions not to hunt birds, which she has mostly listened to.
She is incredibly popular among the volunteers and several have tried to kidnap her.
The wild animals nearby the farm
A neighbour told me that there was a lynx that always walked along one wall of the farmhouse, so we have named that room the Lynx room. We have seen tracks of lynx by the barn and elsewhere.
We lucky to be within the wolf zone, though most of the wolves are hunted, and volunteers have seen traces of wolves, not on the farm itself but a little further away. Last year a bear was observed by a neighbour on the farm itself, but unfortunately it was shot as it wandered on.
We are lucky enough to have swifts and swallows living in the farmhouse, barn and storeroom. We have been careful with renovations so that they can still get in and out. We used wood fiber insulation in the attic which we hope will not trouble them as it’s a totally natural material.
