Limestone Country Beef

Longhorn cow taken at dusk on Malham Moor

The Yorkshire Dales is a magnificent landscape with broad horizons, craggy limestone uplands and dry stone walls. It is one of the wildest yet most beautiful places in England. Farmers have been grazing hardy native breed cattle and sheep here for centuries using a clever system of dual action grazing. As the cattle graze they tug up the coarse grass and tougher deeper rooted plants such as thistles and ragwort with their long tongues, while sheep nibble off the top layer of grass leaving room for wildflowers to flourish.

Over the past fifty years EU subsidies introduced to farmers for the number of sheep they kept has all but dismantled this ecological, dual action grazing system.  So too has the introduction of continental cattle breeds which grow more quickly indoors without needing to graze on rough upland pastures leading to an overgrowth of unkempt scrub-land with fewer flowers and less wildlife. In recent years native beef all but disappeared from shelves in supermarkets and the Yorkshire uplands. 

Fortunately Natural England and the Yorkshire Dales National Park together with a group of fifteen farmers forming the Limestone Country Beef Group have worked together over the last ten years to reverse this trend and restore the limestone upland to the condition it once was. The idea was to return native breeds such as Longhorn Cattle, Blue Greys and Belted Galloways to more than 1,000 hectares of the Dales. The beef would be promoted and sold in such a way as to make it particularly relevant to this part of the country while at the same time managing and conserving this precious and rare limestone habitat.

So has the project worked? Substituting sheep for traditional breeds of cattle has helped farm business but only if they are paid premium prices for the beef they sell. Farm income still relies on subsidies and environmental grants for up to 80% of its income.

The famous limestone pavements with square slabs known as clints and deep crevices know as grikes are now supporting ferns and other wild flowers such as mossy saxifrage. 

Baneberry, angular Solomon's-seal and bird's eye primrose now flourish amid blue moor-grass which is washed by the lime rich water that percolates this area. Rabbits which also threaten these plants have also been better managed.

Longhorns look scary but are docile

The photographs above and below are of Longhorn cattle taken last week on Malham Moor close to the Darnbrook Estate. The Longhorns remind me of  ancient pieces of furniture. Their coats are a beautiful palette of antique colours - oak, chestnut, roan and cream. The fur is woolly, tangled, ragged and tagged. They bear magnificent horns which look terrifyingly sharp making the cattle look ferocious which they are not. Many do not have matching symmetrical horns but a queer arrangement with one pointing up and the other down. Or both pointing downwards. I liked this look.

Longhorns have a docile nature and allow you to come quite close as I did to take these pictures.

Longhorn calves stay with their mothers for 6 months

Longhorn calves are known as 'sucklers' because the young are kept with their mothers for at least six months. They are hardy, calve easily and have a long, even lactation which is good for the calf. The milk is famed for the quality of its butterfat which is rich and nourishing for the calf and was used traditionally to make cheeses like Stilton and Red Leicester.

During the Middle Ages Longhorn were used by peasant farmers for pulling a plough  Their creamy white horns were treasured by manufacturers of buttons, cups and cutlery. Their fat was used for tallow to make candles. There was little of the animal that was not used for something. 

                  

It was a wonderful experience coming across these ambling, gentle beasts so high on the moor just off the Monks Road, a footpath that snakes above the road from Arncliffe to Malham. They give a sense of history, majesty and presence to the wild, windswept rain soaked  landscape. And they are doing a great job of managing the landscape to boot. So perhaps when you are buying beef you might think of choosing cut from one of the native breed cattle which will also help keep the landscape as beautiful as it has been for centuries.

Limestone beef is available from:

Paganum's, Kirkby Malham  

Town End Farm Shop, Airton

Colin Robinson's Family Butcher, Grassington

There is an informative essay referring to Limestone Beef in Chapter 5 of 'What to eat? by Hattie Ellis and published by Portobello Books. Hattie discusses what kind of beef is right to eat. 

Belted Galloways watch us eat lunch

Mossy saxifrage growing in a grike at Malham Cove Peny-y-ghent one of the famous Three Peaks - limestone country.