Farmification

The fight against changing the Graves Covenant in 2005/6 was partly targetted on the conservation industry's obsession with farming used as a management tool. The biggest part of Blacka was a pleasure to walk on up to that point because it was a rare place free from farmification. That fight was lost and Blacka is already the poorer for it.

Now we have enclosures, barbed wire, a grazing regime, muddy gateways, paths made into swamps and all sorts of farm clutter no better than litter. What a tragedy that we are blessed with obstinate, tasteless and unimaginative management who can't recognise something special when they're presented with it and are impelled to trash it.

Some of the residents have concluded that their world has become so unbearable they might as well turn their backs on it and go live in a hole in the ground.