A new woodland has sprung up at Auchencairn – almost by accident.
But it’s taken more than 30 years for the young trees to grow tall at Torr Farm.
Lee Paton always had improving habitats for plants and wildlife in mind when she returned to the farm with brother Ross in 1986.
But it was only years after her father Hugh had ended winter whin-burning that Lee began to notice big changes.
She said: “Torr has some rough hill ground, wooded pasture, plantation woodland and merse providing a variety of habitats for wildlife.
“Like many farms, some of the best sites were the ones that have been a little neglected agriculturally for whatever reason.
“The hill on the peninsula giving access to the Red Haven beach and Torr Point was not perhaps the best bit of pasture.
“But it had cattle on it for most of the year including wintertime – when our favourite pastime was to go with our dad to burn the whins. That was to prevent them becoming too widespread and encroaching on the grazing.
“But as dad got older it happened less frequently. Then it became the done thing to inform the fire brigade if you were planning on going out with a box of matches to create a mighty blaze on the hillside in full view of the village.
“And because he preferred spontaneous fire raising the fun went out of it and the whins were allowed to spread.”
What happened next took a long time but to Lee was a big environmental plus.
She said: “Without us really noticing, the whins got quite old and leggy at which point the cattle would push under and through them opening things up again.
“At some point I looked up from a busy life of calf and child rearing and noticed that this form of management – or mismanagement – had allowed a fair bit of natural tree regeneration.
“That was because the scrub had provided protection for seedlings that otherwise would have been munched by cattle and deer. So, as a result, the hill has become more wooded but not by design. And we now have young oak, willow, hazel, crab apple, ash and birch where there were none before.
“It’s certainly a cheap way to grow native trees if you don’t mind losing a bit of grazing. Gaining some scrub and trees wasn’t a problem for us and undoubtedly has benefitted the wildlife.”
A fragment of ancient oak woodland has also been given a new lease of life at Torr thank to Lee’s foresightedness.
She said: “We also fenced off a couple of acres of oak wood in the late 80s under a grant scheme. It had some lovely big old oak trees but no young trees and we hoped doing that would help it regenerate naturally. At the time we really didn’t know if that was the best thing to do.
“But 30 years on there is not only a thick regrowth of mainly hazel around the edge but well into the wood itself.
“The old trees have obviously dropped enough branches to make gaps and allow sunlight in for seedlings to grow. So the fencing method did what we wanted it to do in the end.”
Lee’s son Callum now runs the farm business Torr Organic Dairy.
Lee said: “Callum worries that too much regrowth and scrub will restrict access over the hill.
“But what’s happened so far has taken decades and we can always do a bit of selective chainsaw work if necessary.”
“What we have gained is improved habitat for all sorts of critters – including the humans – for very little effort.”
