Glen Fincastle: Exploring agroforestry success in the Highlands

A FEW miles north-west of Pitlochry, the Glen Fincastle Burn flows into the River Tummel between Bonskeid House and the visitor attraction of Queen’s View. A winding metalled road leads up the steep-sided valley to serve the farms – and an old chapel – above the burn’s tumbling waters, and heads north up the slope to the Mains of Fincastle and Fincastle House. The upland grazing at Mains of Fincastle is now managed by Andrew and Seonag Barbour.

It is said the people who lived between the Rivers Garry and Tummel gave refuge and sustenance to Robert the Bruce and his small group of surviving lieutenants as they fled north after the devastating defeat by the English at Methven, near Perth. Generations later, their loyalty was rewarded by Bruce’s descendants – one being the renowned ‘Wolf of Badenoch’. The lands of ‘Bonskeid and Borenich’ were entrusted to the Stewarts of Garth.

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The history of the estates is complex, and possession of the land on a few occasions has passed through the female line; as it did when Margaret Stewart Fraser married a minister of the kirk of Ayrshire extraction, George Freeland Barbour. Serving his congregation in Edinburgh at the time, Barbour soon became highly committed to improving his wife’s estate, especially by completing the building of Bonskeid House and its driveways and grounds in the ‘Scottish Baronial’ style.

In World War I the big house served as a Red Cross hospital. The then owner – another George Freeland Barbour, grandson of the first George – deemed the property too large for private occupation and leased it to the YMCA. In World War II it was home to pupils from Glasgow Girls’ High School, before becoming a convalescent facility for the Polish Authorities and subsequently housing for Perthshire County Council’s young evacuees. It was sold to the YMCA in 1951.

At the end of the public road, a stand of mature trees guards the driveway up to Mains of Fincastle. Since early times, the agricultural holding was one of the key financial supports of the Bonskeid Estate. While amenity woodlands were part of the landscape designs of the big house down by the River Tummel, over the last few centuries any surviving vestiges of tree cover in the uplands were eradicated by over-grazing of deer and farm stock. (Image: FJ/Hilary Burke)

Over this period the land in Glen Fincastle had changed hands. A Victorian Scottish property speculator by the name of Colquhoun was investing in huge acreages across Perthshire. His offer for what was for a while known as the Fincastle Estate may well have provided the funds for the Reverend Barbour to complete the building of the stately house on the banks of the River Tummel.

There remains some debate as to which of the Barbours brought Glen Fincastle back into the Bonskeid Estate, but the lands associated with Mains of Fincastle have been managed ‘in house’ for generations. Andrew Barbour graduated in forestry at Aberdeen University, but spent a large part of his professional career in the fish farming industry. He and his wife Seonag took over the running of part of the estate stocked with sheep and cattle in the 1990s. Andrew was able, for a considerable number of years, to combine the farming of livestock with the farming of fish.

After World War II the lands of Borenich, Fincastle and Bonskeid had been managed as an entity by Andrew’s uncle. Government initiatives were driving agricultural practices across the UK, and the uplands of Scotland were no exception. The pressure on the land was ever increasing and the extra inputs had done nothing to decrease the workload of the farmer. By the last decade of the 20th century, those increasing demands were falling largely on the shoulders of men and women who, while the spirit was still willing, had long ago lost the boundless energy of youth.

Andrew Barbour, with his wife Seonag, returned to Fincastle in the 1990s. For the last couple of decades the couple have been experimenting – very successfully it appears – with bringing woodland creation and timber production into the management system of Highland farming. Producing suckler cattle for the organic market pays the wages, so it remains the priority. While maximising returns from the sheep is also important, their primary purpose is as a grazing management tool. (Image: FJ/Hilary Burke)

Some were to find that, as the years clocked up, the natural process of ageing was starting to limit their physical ability to get around the estate and manage the holdings. Like so many others, Andrew Barbour’s uncle had found himself obliged to lease much of the Bonskeid Estate to third parties. The numbers of sheep and cattle on the hill continued to rise as the new tenants strived to maintain the economic viability of the tenancies.

Andrew Barbour returned to an estate where the land was overgrazed and the stock were becoming unhealthy and required ever-increasing dosages of medicines. The build-up of years of phosphate application was becoming apparent in the algal blooming of lochans and ponds and in the paucity of species in the grazing. Although Andrew and Seonag initially thought that livestock and tree-planting ‘did not mix’, early replacement of damaged and depleted coniferous shelterbelts with forest communities of species more representative of the Scottish native woodlands was showing considerable promise.

Heavy shading conifers, such as Sitka spruce and Douglas fir, remain restricted to classic plantation formations on the estate. The shelterbelts and copses tentatively established in the early 2000s, with their varied species, have turned out to form an integral component of the Mains of Fincastle venture. Trees are as much a crop as the stock, even if the revenue or value stream they yield at this early stage is significantly different. 

Stock are excluded from the newly planted areas for five years. By then, the sheep are unlikely to do any damage, but the cattle can cause considerable devastation. The time of year seems to have some influence on their mood as well as the other food sources available to them. Andrew has experimented in the shelterbelts by coppicing a few stems to provide fresh shoots at a convenient height for the cattle. They tend to take a nibble of leaves, then a few mouthfuls of grass on the woodland floor.

Not much to see here, it may be thought, for either farmer or forester. This fairly non-descript stretch of shelter belt, established in the early days in a gully between the lower grazings and the upland paddocks, was to provide an intriguing clue as to the livestock’s relationship with the woodlands. It was not immediately obvious whether it was the time of day, time of year or the weather conditions that persuaded the cattle to shuffle down the bank and slowly wander between the tree stems. The Barbours knew getting even halfway to understanding the cattle’s behaviour was key to running the Fincastle Estate efficiently. (Image: FJ/Hilary Burke)

A reduction in sheep numbers was essential for restoring the quality of the land at Fincastle – a prerequisite for regaining environmental accreditations and for converting to organic farming. The Blackface had been the customary breed, surviving the harsh winter up on the hill, the lambs being sold to store. The white-faced Texel/Lleyn now serves to produce lambs that can be sold as fatstock or for store. Although the size of the flock has been more than halved, the ability to watch the market prices and despatch the lambs according to their saleability has increased the margins considerably.

Four hectares of hilltop woodland, which serves the white-faces as a shelter in the hardest weather, is key to the breed’s success in an environment that can be more hostile than that which the animals are customarily used to. As it happens, the lands of Borenich have recently returned to the Barbours. With the agreement of the then tenant Andrew, 50 ha of woodland was established on the hill ground there in 1999. The objective was to simulate grazing conditions in open areas surrounding native woodland. It is now envisaged that the Borenich flock of Cheviot sheep will be using the tree cover as woodland pasture in the future.

Catherine Barbour (who has returned to Mains of Fincastle and now works alongside Andrew and Seonag) in one of the grass alleyways between the rows of tree planting; in this case birch on the left and oak on the right. Birch removed as thinnings may well be chipped for animal bedding while poorer-formed oaks will be used for fuel. The most promising oak stems will be retained to allow the eventual selection of sawlog producers. Later plantings tend to favour, soil conditions allowing, central rows of oaks flanked by nurse species to improve the oak stem form. (Image: FJ/Hilary Burke)

Despite not being woodland animals, sheep enter woodland to shelter from the wind or the hot sun. Thermal imaging cameras at Fincastle have shown sheep – despite their innate fear of predators – are often surprisingly active in the woodlands in the hours of darkness. Cattle, on the other hand, are descendants of the denizens of the forests and use top canopy cover to shelter from the sun and the rain.

One of the main benefits of the copses and shelterbelts, especially in locations where spring comes late, is the nutrition provided by the grasses that sprout weeks earlier under the trees than they do in the open fields. When 10 of Fincastle’s cattle were failed by one of the bulls, they were remated and were only ready to calf after the winter feed supply was finished. Turned out to graze on the woodland’s early grasses, they calved successfully in one of the copses.

The notion that woodland establishment could enable the farming venture to improve the quality and value of its core products – fatstock lambs and store cattle – was fairly quickly proven. The intention is to provide each of the upland paddocks, between which the cattle are moved during the summer months, with enough woodland to cater for their requirements. With the basic needs of the livestock provided for, subsequent woodland creation on the estate could be more innovative.

Fincastle in Gaelic means the ‘place of the castles’. It has the highest concentration of Iron Age forts in Scotland and there is also evidence the glen had previously been home to Bronze Age peoples. A large proportion of the land at Fincastle has been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). The two Scottish Government agencies charged with conserving the historical and natural environment, as stakeholders, therefore have an interest in the Barbour’s management plans. Both appear to be more than satisfied with the agroforestry model of rural enterprise. (Image: FJ/Hilary Burke)

The emphasis is now based on designing plantings to create woodland pasture. One 50 ha area of rough grazing on Fincastle’s lower ground was considered for conversion to woodland that in a comparatively short space of time should allow the stock free access for ‘walk-through’ grazing. A strip system of trees alternating with grass alleys was overlaid on the land form, avoiding historical archaeological sites and the rarer ground flora communities. Glen Fincastle is particularly rich in both. Concessions were also made to locations known to be favourite resting spots for the sheep.

The grant aid required a stocking density of 1,600 stems/ha. This was achieved by relatively close rows of saplings in the tree alleys and no planting in the theoretical rows in the grass alleys. A few official eyebrows were raised, apparently, but it had been ascertained that there was no requirement to plant equidistantly to qualify for the grant funding.

Oak had been an emblematic species on the estate in the early days of the Barbours and in the time of the Stewarts before them. Andrew and Seonag were keen that it returned in quantity to the land and in a form that would provide, for those that came after them, top-quality Scottish oak logs. One common format used in the matrix is central rows of oak with coppice species or birch edging the grass alleys. Already some of the oaks in the 2009 planting have been high pruned in a preliminary selection of candidates for 4–5 m clear stem log producers.

Thinning will be the main management tool and formal design is expected to eventually allow reasonably efficient operation of small-scale forestry harvesting systems. Already firewood production from the woodlands supplies the heating needs of Mains of Fincastle. There are plans afoot for chipping thinnings with a view to using the material as compliment bedding in the cattle sheds. 

Mains of Fincastle has always been interested in promoting the Barbour vision to farmers and foresters, as well as to the general public through both the Scottish Government’s Integrating Trees Network and the Agroforestry Open Weekend event. Predicting revenue streams for farming activities in the nations of the UK remains very difficult. The plans governing the distribution of financial rewards for carbon sequestration appear to be still on the drawing board. Planting trees on your farm – to be used for fuelwood, animal bedding or production of fencing materials – in comparison, looks like rock-solid investment. (Image: FJ/Hilary Burke)

Whereas forestry operations are rarely time critical, livestock management on the Fincastle Estate is. In the summer, the cattle need to be regularly moved on the paddocks up on the hill. To maintain the quality of the grazing and maximise the nutrition available to the lambs, the sheep may need to be moved on the lower ground a couple of times a week. The timber work will have to adapt to the daily workloads of Mains of Fincastle.

Andrew Barbour has pencilled in a management plan for the woodland pasture. A 60-per-cent canopy cover will be maintained until the selected oaks, with their clear stems, are given free rein to grow as strongly as they can. The stocking of the final-crop oaks is planned to be 70 stems/ha.

Whoever is in charge by then can bide their time, watch the markets and reap the rewards.