Robo Flail

Robo flail 

Our farm sits within the Isles of Scilly National Landscape (formally called an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty - AONB) and a lot of our land borders land managed by the Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust - IoS WT. Since 2010 we have been working closely with the IoS WT to deliver conservation grazing. Our small herd of beef cattle, graze on the headlands of the island and on our farm bring different benefits to the different types of land.

Unfortunately due to constraints on IoS WT resources some of the land on St Martin's has become severely neglected, resulting in a dense carpet of gorse developing. This has also reduced the areas we can graze with our cows and consequently, the biodiversity of these areas has declined. Quite a bit of this land is steep and literally drops off a cliff, not the type of place it is safe for someone to drive a tractor. So when we discovered the remote-controlled Robocut T500 we got quite excited!  

It is of course in our direct interest that the land is cleared for our hungry herd of pedigree Red Devons to graze and it is in the interests of the IoS WT and humanity in general that biodiversity is improved but as a small farm we couldn't justify investing in such an exciting bit of kit by ourselves. Working with the IoS WT we  received grant funding from the National Landscape to make it possible.  

Learning to drive 

Obviously learning to control such a powerful piece of machinery by remote control has taken a little bit of practice. Hidden under the gorse are low outcrops of very hard granite!  After a few repairs in the workshop we soon learnt the benefit of 'double cutting', going once over with the flail head high to remove the densest gorse and hopefully reveal any granite to be avoided on the second closer cut.  

The flail is not only useful for clearing large areas. We have used it very successfully in less dense gorse to cut a fence line. We can then put electric fence around areas where the gorse forms more of a mosaic with small patches of grazable land in between. The cows seem to really enjoy this sort of grazing, foraging for a rich mixture of edible plants between the gorse and bracken. This way we can also fence off extensive areas so we don't have to move them so often. 
(For those who are wondering a love of Faulty Towers is behind the name - Prunella Flail)