MARY Alford farms at Moortown Farm, three miles from Tavistock and on the edge of the moor.

Her family — the Reddicliffes — have farmed at Moortown Farm since the mid 1850s and she is the sixth generation of farmers.

At Moortown, Mary and her son, Daniel, have a nucleus herd of Galloway beef breeding cows, which have been developed over many years by crossing some of the cows with Hereford bulls to produce prime beef for butchers.

They have a flock of Scotch Blackface and Welsh Beulah and recently introduced Badger Faced ewes producing lambs for local markets.

She also has a herd of coloured hill ponies, which is one of the oldest herds on Dartmoor and a few of them can be seen around the Pork Hill Car Park befriending and being photographed by locals and visitors.

In the first of a new, seasonal series, Mary takes a look at the winter period for Dartmoor farmers.

THE first month of a new farming year approaches and over the festive period the farming community has reflected on the good and not so good parts of 2013.

It's been a better year in many ways than 2012, mainly due to the good weather during the summer months enabling a good forage crop to be harvested, after a bad start with freak weather and late frosts in the spring.

A good supply of supplementary feed for the winter months always leaves a good feeling for a farmer, and in addition, the livestock have had a good grazing season, not constant rain on their backs, as they endured in 2012.

Their condition is now good to go into the winter months with a build-up of fat in their bodies. It gives them a 'store cupboard' to fall back on in the harsher winter conditions, such as we experienced over the Christmas period.

Since December work on the farm has generally settled into a daily routine of feeding the cattle, which are mostly housed, and scraping the dung produced in the cattle yards, plus other regular stock duties.

Rain makes the daily yard tasks more difficult, and although we have passed the shortest day of the winter, we are looking forward to longer days.

There is nothing worse than having to tend to your stock in the dark, with all sorts of lighting being used, from miners' head lights to mobile phones, employed in desperation when all else fails at the crucial moment.

Dartmoor farmers care for our farms like anyone's garden and winter is a time to mend fences, trim hedges with a constant roundabout of repair jobs.

The sheep have returned to the commons of Dartmoor after being in on the farm for their annual health check and tupping with the ram. Like the summer tourist the less hardy breeds have not returned to the commons but have to stay on the farm pior being sent to lowland grazing for the winter months.

One of the many difficulties which faced us at the end of 2012 was when DEFRA produced a consultation paper on pre-movement testing for bovine TB. This could involve having to pre-test cattle which graze the Dartmoor commons every time they go on and off the commons, which would be extremely difficult.

Many commoners (farmers who graze the commons) use the commons as part of their farm and move their cattle to an adjoining pasture through the 'moor' gate. This is yet more red tape, which we were promised would be cut by the Government, not increased, and for no benefit to 'man or beast'.

The second difficulty is a CAP consultation paper produced by DEFRA in the autumn, resulting in many meetings to discuss the best way forward. We are paid an invaluable payment by Brussels and each EU country's government has the flexibility to take a part of this payment to allocate towards running rural and environmental schemes, which in turn supports hill farms like ours.

The commoners put their case as forcefully as possible. We spent a huge amount of time and energy explaining the situation to politicians and the so-called experts, which left us drained.

Today, there are many less cattle on the commons due to overzealous agri-environmental schemes introduced in the last 20 years, and farmers have been forced to make major investment into buildings to house the majority of cattle over the winter.

The ponies, the Dartmoor National Park Authority's emblem, although sadly dwindling in numbers together with the hill sheep, still continue to graze the moorland all year round.

All of our hill livestock, be it cattle, sheep or ponies, are specially bred to withstand the harsh weather and moorland grazing conditions. Years of selective breeding of the correct animals to graze the open moorland helps to produce the landscape it is today, which we can all enjoy.

Without livestock grazing people would find it increasingly more difficult to walk on the moor as grazing keeps the scrub at bay — no strimmers needed!

The Dartmoor farmers need support in many ways. Hill farming is fragile and its role needs to be understood and recognised by the Government and local authorities like the Dartmoor National Park.

On the continent many upland areas have been abandoned, which throws up huge problems for the enjoyment of the public in these special areas.

I hope we never see such a situation on Dartmoor — but who knows?