LAST month, during our driest July on record, I drove down a tranquil lane to Swordlestown Little, not far from Punchestown.

The obvious angle to take on Mariann Klay and Des Leadon’s Co Kildare farm would have been to chronicle the horses who have been raised there since the breeding operation began in 2001.

Homebreds include Arrest, Detain, Dinozzo and Lilbourne Lad, while Celtic Swing, Miss Mambo and Terebellum have also spent time at the 55-acre farm, which regularly top the tables at the Goffs Foal Sale.

“It’s been a great little farm, because we didn’t ever have massive financial resources to purchase stock, but we’ve bred very good horses. I think the most expensive broodmare was €60,000 and she was a disaster,” Mariann Klay says with a laugh.

While we could have discussed the farm’s success at length, I was there to learn more about how the farm is managed in harmony with nature. The subject is a great passion for Klay, the sole equine ambassador for Farming For Nature, a non-profit initiative supporting, encouraging and inspiring farmers who wish to farm in a way to improve the natural health of our countryside.

Some may be tempted to stop reading, believing that this approach requires more time and money, but that is not necessarily the case, according to Klay.

“I think that you maybe need to think a little bit more and not have rigid systems,” she says. “It may take up more time, but I don’t think it costs more because the main cost is fertiliser, and that’s huge, especially with what is going on in the Middle East.”

Swordlestown Little’s honour roll is testament to the land here - land which has undergone minimal intervention, the famine ridges - physical markers of potato beds from before the Famine - are proof of unploughed land that is still in its original divisions of 11 paddocks, lined with ancient hedgerows.

Climate-proof

The advantages of the multi-species grassland is clear this summer, with deep-rooted herbs/weeds/wildflowers - whatever you wish to call them - improving soil structure and porosity, making the land more tolerant of extremes, be it drought or high rainfall, which can leach nitrogen in traditional pasture.

That’s not to say that there’s no work involved, as Klay explains. “I think soil testing is very important for stud farms, or any farms,” she begins.

“I don’t use synthetic fertiliser. I use lime, I used to use calcified seaweed, which is now impossible to get, and I use a product called Sobac, which is a soil enhancer; it feeds the microbes and it changes the root structure, so that they grow deeper.

“We aerate a lot. Horses cause compaction, and I intergraze a lot with cattle, which also cause compaction.”

Those used to conventional farming, striving for lush, green paddocks, may not be impressed by Swordlestown Little’s colourful, diverse pasture, but the horses enjoy it and thrive on it.

Introducing different species doesn’t require seeding, simply allow nature to work its magic, Klay explains. “There are about seven, eight different grasses. There’s red and white clover, self heal, plantain - horses love plantain in hay.

“I’ve such a low-stocking density that I always have too much grass, so I never really do need push it, except if I want a nice crop of hay.”

There are advantages to the different grass varieties here; briza media, timothy (persistent, disease-free and palatable), bent, meadow foxtail (good for making hay) and meadow fescue (high palatability).

Wild plants were used in traditional medicines and animals can often be observed self-medicating. I remember being surprised that my family’s Shetland pony was more interested in eating hawthorn leaves than the grass, until I learned that hawthorn leaves are a powerful tonic for blood and heart.

Deep-rooting plants can access more minerals, which are then available to livestock. Plantain is known for its copper, calcium and selenium content, yarrow is a rich source of Vitamin A and clovers are rich in protein, as well as fixing nitrogen into the soil.

On the less desirable plants, Klay comments: “Docks are very difficult to control and they spread very efficiently. I only have singular ones, but I use a tool which removes the long root. I hate slurry, because it brings docks and stuff.”

On buttercups, she adds: “They don’t eat them; they hate them and they’re bitter in the hay. They are toxic in huge quantities, more for cattle, but buttercup comes with horses. I think it likes the nitrogen of the droppings, so picking up the droppings reduces them a bit.

“Also, they love poached ground and wet, and earlier this year, we had more rain than normal. They’re not a huge problem here, I just top them once a year.”

Sustainability

A good alternative to slurry and synthetic fertiliser is compost, which Klay hopes to secure from a fellow breeder for one of her paddocks.

“What I would love is to make my own compost, like Kildangan and Coolmore,” she says. “I’m on the farm efficiency and sustainability committee of the ITBA - Pippa Hackett is on it, and the chairman is the farm manager of Coolmore. It’s very new.

“The idea is that if one could get a central composting area where small stock farms and racing stables could deposit their manure. Because that’s a resource; it’s not a waste material.”

I’m sure it would be popular with many, given that most currently pay mushroom farmers to empty their muck heaps and get nothing in return. Perhaps HRI could get involved, as part of their sustainability efforts within the industry.

Klay’s background as a vet - she initiated the foal neonatal intensive care unit at Troytown Equine Hospital and has conducted vast research on Rhodococcus equi - is apparent when we speak about another important element of land management.

“Every field gets a rest; you cannot use a field for the whole year, you really can’t,” she states.

“As a Farming For Nature ambassador, I’ve taken part in a mentorship programme, where I’ve seen a lot of horse-sick pasture. Not giving land a rest is the problem - then you have the worm issue, you have Rhodococcus, you have all kinds of problems. Stocking density is another thing.

“We pick up the droppings in the field. It is a lot of work, but you can reduce worming, and you can reduce your incidents of Rhodococcus, but you are also depriving the ground of nutrients. Of course, we still have the cattle.”

Rare blooms

As part of her role with Farming For Nature, Klay conducts farm walks at Swordlestown Little and one of the features she is most excited to show visitors, including me, are the grassy areas outside the paddocks.

Along the paths, some grass is mowed short, as is standard, but a common practice not undertaken here is spraying directly underneath the fences with glyphosate (a weed killer classified by the World Health Organisation as a probably human carcinogen).

While there is less evidence on its effect on livestock, it’s enough to make Klay wary - “I’m sure glyphosate is not great for the horses and the other thing is, the EU will stop glyphosate, so we might as well just get used to that fact. In Switzerland (where she is from), we haven’t had glyphosate for years.”

Instead, Klay strims under the fences once a year, and she has been rewarded with an assortment of wildflowers, including meadow sweet pea, meadowsweet, bird’s foot trefoil, agrimony (“that is a real healing plant”), knapweed, lady’s bedstraw, yarrow, vetch, sorrel and white starwort.

Common spotted orchids - poorly named, given their general rarity now - are dotted throughout, but on the other side of the path, along the hedgerow, where Klay decided to forego cutting the vegetation back this year, lie the largest number of orchids I have ever seen.

On another part of the farm, I’m treated to my first sighting of a bee orchid, now so rare that they are protected in Northern Ireland under the Wildlife Order 1985, though they are unfortunately without protection here.

If only Klay could get paid for her fine crop of orchids, I joke, to which she replies: “We should get paid - for diversity, for carbon storage. Multi-species grassland stores a lot more carbon than your monoculture ryegrass. We should get paid for all this.”

Orchids of all types cannot grow without its fungus, which makes them vulnerable to chemicals. The absence of chemicals is clear in the neighbouring paddock, which is filled with cowslips in spring and waxcap mushrooms in autumn.

I’m not the only one enamoured by the wildflowers, Klay reports: “I have very, very, very expensive mares here, mostly from Germany. The owners come and see them once during the season, and some of the farms do this now because of what they’ve seen here.”

We move on to a large pond, dug in a corner previously filled with brambles. Like elsewhere, Klay has not introduced anything to the pond, but it’s now inhabited by newts and frogs, decorated with water lillies and bordered by plants including sweet valerian, water mint, bladderwort and water forget-me-not, attracting various butterflies, damselfies and pollinators.

Surrounding the pond and further along, Klay has planted native trees, where nature has ‘planted’ ragged robin, ox-eye daisies, hemp agrimony (a favourite of butterflies’), flax and St John’s Wort, to name just a few. Conservation grazing with three Kerry bog ponies has increased diversity, too.

“This is what Farming For Nature calls a hare’s corner space - a corner of a field, and every farm has that, so there is no reason not to do it,” Klay notes.

“Every farm has space to do something where you just leave it for nature and for the next generations. The trees provide shade, which will be important for years to come. When you walk here, it immediately feels cooler.”

The hedges are another bonus for horses and wildlife alike, with rotational hedge cutting facilitating blossom and berries, as well as tremendous shelter.

“That’s why the animals thrive,” Klay says. “The farmer loves sending me horrible-looking cattle, that he buys somewhere in the west, and they generally do really well here.”

Nightmare

The pond, the orchids, the wildflowers are all distractions for Klay from the long-running legal battle against neighbouring solar farms.

“They’ll be everywhere behind that hedge line,” she says sadly. “Three sides and I’m currently writing submission for one in planning there (the fourth side), so this will be an island, and it’ll be just me, Swordlestown Little and Swordlestown Stud, that are non-solar in the whole of Swordlestown townland.”

This area isn’t the only affected by the rise of solar farming and I’m amazed by Klay’s next comment on what is known as the thoroughbred county.

“There are over 4,000 acres gone through planning in Kildare, all around here. You will not know this place in, say, 15 years when they’re all built.”

Why Kildare, if the land is so good, I ask. “There are deliberately, I’d say, by the Irish government, no regulations where they can go or not go, and we have a very important power station here called Dunstown.

“All of these developers, mainly foreign, have realised it’s a honeypot. They all flock towards Kildare and Meath. It’s unregulated and the Irish government gives them a price guarantee for the electricity they produce.

“They don’t buy the land; they only lease the land; 35-year leases. That’s why a lot of farmers are interested because they say, ‘we still own the land, we get guaranteed income’.”

The obvious glare and unsightly nature are the most obvious negatives to solar farms, but the consequences are far more serious for Swordlestown Little, Klay explains.

“Particularly for us, the road infrastructure would be grossly inadequate to have industrial construction going on for 18 months. The road width is 2.8 metres, and this is a cul-de-sac on top of it, so if I have a colic or if I have any kind of emergency, and there is a gridlock on the road, I can’t get out.

“So basically, my business model of having very high-class boarders is out the door, because potentially you couldn’t even insure those mares here. You couldn’t from an animal welfare stance.”

Klay’s fight made it to the High Court, but to no avail. “It’s too complicated to go into details, but we were just very unfortunate and, in the end, it was a question of money.

“They have all their experts, who all come to the same conclusion: no impact, no impact, no impact. Basically, you would have to have experts in every field paid by yourself, and you’re always under incredible time constraint. They get years to plan this. We get four weeks to put together an objection.”

It’s obvious that the fight has put a huge strain on Klay and it’s apparent when we discuss the farm’s own mares.

“I was so depressed two years ago, I didn’t cover anything at all,” she laments. “I thought I was finished - this has been going on six years. I really thought by now I would have sold, but it’s just it’s not easy to sell, with what’s going on and I just do not want to sell to the developer.”

Despite a run of bad luck, there is plenty of promise in the paddocks - there’s Nisriyna, the dam of Arrest, Detain and Dinozzo. The €2,000 bargain buy is currently in foal to Delacroix and has a Charyn colt at foot.

“She’s just amazing,” her proud owner says. “She has saved us. We have two mares that kept us going and saved us again and again, because I never had more than four or five foals.”

Special species

If there is a slight positive from the legal battles, it’s that the research required opened Klay’s eyes to the breadth of diversity on the farm. Badgers, dormice, deer, foxes and pine marten exist alongside approximately 38 species of bird, including yellowhammer and long-eared owls, with Birdwatch Ireland surveying the farm twice a year.

“We have a stream here, which has white-clawed crayfish and otter,” she informs me. “The otters travel up and down to Swordlestown Stud, where we have a video station and last August they had pups.

“In the current planning system, they still say there is no stream, even though we’ve documented it rises in the Sillagh Bog and it ends in the Hospital Lake, it joins Broadfield River. But the developer for the solar farm down there still says it’s a field drain, because it’s not on a CLMPR map.”

Again, I’m struck by the lack of logic to the solar farms’ progression, as white-clawed crayfish are protected in Ireland under the Wildlife Acts. According to the National Parks and Wildlife Service, Ireland has international responsibility for the white-clawed crayfish, as it remains the only country in the EU with no introduced species of crayfish.

While said fight may have left Klay feeling like she’s been banging her head against a brick wall, Swordlestown Little has offered refuge and respite through it all.

“Without the land, the farm, I honestly would have lost my mind over the judicial review proceedings and all of that over the past six years. I probably spend more time admiring the farm than the horses.

“We are so well connected, down to Sillagh Bog, further to the Wicklow Mountains. It’s all a corridor, and it kills me to be an island. I don’t like to be an island, but I will be literally an island in glass, because wherever you turn, there will be glass.”

For further information on Farming For Nature, visit farmingfornature.ie