Until 2023, when we were evicted, our microdairy had been functioning almost uninterrupted since Monkton Wyld School was established in the 1940s. We still have the movement books dating back to the moment when a Dexter Cow and Calf were brought onto the holding in June 1940. Until its demise, the microdairy at Monkton Wyld was very likely the oldest of its size remaining in the country.  

In any case the farmyard at Monkton Wyld, which predates the tithe maps of the 1840s, undoubtedly hosted dairy cows in the century before the school was established. The farmyard which I took over in 2010 after a lapse of two years, had been established, expanded and improved over at least 170 years, with the main object being the management of dairy cows, since these are by a long chalk the most productive use of west country pasture.   

The legacy of stone buildings, stalls, milking stations, fencing and so on meant that that it was  a relatively simple matter to re-establish a working and profitable microdairy. Our contribution to the progressive improvement of the property included a new timber-framed hay barn, a roofed manger, a dry stone walled extension to the yard to accommodate manureheaps, and loft areas in the milking parlour, all built at my expense.

All of this has been reduced to a state of dereliction by the trustees, not it seems in pursuit of any grand purpose, but out of sheer idiocy (half of them have since resigned along with their lackey Steve Williams). The farmyard is empty, weeds are smothering the midden and growing up through the concrete, while the ungrazed land turns rank.  

When I was a youngster there were thousands of small dairy steadings like Monkton Wyld’s throughout the countryside, whether on smallholdings milking four or five cows, or proving sustenance for aristocratic estates. Almost all of these have gone, left to rot, or more often converted into holiday cottages or similar. You can count the number left on the fingers of two hands. It was my pride and joy, and the culmination of my life’s work to keep one of these functioning, and what’s more  profitable.

To be evicted by these idiots, with the result that I and my colleagues and our cows are now struggling to survive in the mud, wind and rain of a bareland holding in Dartmoor, is devastating. In the absence of any support from the Charity Commission  —  the only body to whom the trustees are accountable — we have been powerless to resist.  

There are a few weapons available to the powerless as a last resort, and one of them is to utter a curse. I have never done this before, but I feel impelled to do so now. This is my curse:   

I have attached a video of me pronouncing this curse.

Simon Fairlie