The Southdown sheep is almost too pretty for its own good. Hard-nosed modern farmers have only had to look at its cute, round, teddy-bear face, and observe its docile temperament, to confirm its rather patronising reputation as the ideal breed for "lady" or lifestyle farmers looking for some paddock eye-candy. In an age obsessed with lean meat, its rather chunky physique, which looks as if it might run to fat, has been held as a drawback.
So out of favour was it that for years it has been on the "watch" list of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. But thanks to a new scheme that associates the breed with environmental benefits as well as eating ones, the Southdown is being hauled back from oblivion.
The South Downs Lamb Initiative was set up to encourage the recreation of traditional pasture, lost when acres of downland were ploughed for post-war intensification, while boosting the chances of farmers getting a better return for meat products sold through local butchers. To qualify, the lambs must have been born within the area of the proposed South Downs National Park, and to have been sired either by a Southdown or Hampshire Down ram.
But while the Hampshire Down, a handsome animal with a reputation for quality butchers' meat in its own right, might have been the expected choice for producers, Chris Clark, managing director of the South Downs Marketing Company, which manages supply from about 30 farmers, says that the uptake of Southdown breeding stock has so far proved the larger.
"They are the indigenous breed and well able to cope with the vagaries of the climate," he says. "The grasses on the hills can be quite coarse and of poor quality, but the Southdown will still grow well on them."
This revival of interest is heart-warming for all lovers of Downs folklore. Farmers used to say these sheep, which had roamed the hills for centuries, "had a pedigree older than the peerage." The quality of their thick fleeces was second only to the Spanish Merino. Around the sheep and the shepherds who tended them, a rich tradition accumulated that became a mini-cult in the 20th century. Walkers from the towns would head up the slopes to get a sight of these vast flocks and to prise a fragment of old-world wisdom from the men who watched over them.
Southdown sheep were at the centre of sustainable farming long before the term was necessary. The flocks were outrun on the open down by day, and then enclosed in hurdle folds by night so that their concentrated manure fertilised the ground for cereal sowing. The practice was dying out by the inter war years with the development of the combine drill and chemical fertilisers.
Yet the breed never lost its reputation for prime lamb. And it is this quality that lies behind its resurrection, believes Chris Clark. "If the meat quality was poor, people simply wouldn't buy it."
But by it they clearly have. So popular has the meat proved that its availability this season has been extended to next February, and the aim is to double the numbers of lambs in the scheme to 18,000 in the next two years. They may never return in the vast 1,000 strong flocks of the 19th century, but the South Downs' very own sturdy little aristocrat is back.
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| Paddock eye-candy, the Southdown |
Courtesy of The Telegraph, October 2006