True stories: Steve Page: Sheep farmer from Malvern

Periodically the UK lies in the path of ferocious storms that can result in floods across the country. When this happens many farmers in the UK have to struggle to keep their farms operating and their animals safe. Here are some real life stories that inspired the current Archers storyline behind these extraordinary weather events.

“We lamb from about the 20th December to end of April. In the last big flood we started flooding in the November of 2013, but the worst flooding was in February and March 2014. Fortunately I was running my Uncle’s farm as well as my own at the time and this meant I had somewhere to move the sheep to, this really was our saviour. We lost a few sheep this time but not due to flooding. They suffered from the wet and got pneumonia.

Sheep don’t like getting wet. When a flood threatens we have to move the stock off the flood plain, and then we have about a thousand ewes in the buildings to feed.

In the past I’ve spent twelve hours in water rescuing sheep by driving the tractor through the flood water and loading them in to the trailer. As I said, we were lucky last year, if I hadn’t had my uncle’s farm to take some to I would have had to sell a few hundred either privately or at market. As it was, I got extra staff in and we managed. I reckon when we had all the sheep in it was costing an extra £400 a week in food and extra labour for about eight weeks.

I’ve got two stock trailers which will take about 140 sheep but I’ve got some good neighbours who will turn up with a lorry and help me move stock. One year a man from the Rural Payments Agency gave me a hand moving the sheep out of the water. He just happened to be out walking his dog and alerted me to the problem. He got stripped off and gave me a hand.

The biggest problem for us is the cleaning up operation. You can’t believe what comes down in the flood, scrap cars, motorbikes, push bikes and general rubbish. We have no help with the cleaning up. We brought it all back to the farm in trailers to burn it as where it all gathered last time was too near the road so too dangerous to burn on site. It was labour intensive and took weeks.

The grass has suffered. The flood water killed all the best grass as it was under water for about two months. There is lot of weed grass coming back, buttercups and wild parsley. It’s pretty to look at but it’s no good for the sheep or intensive farming.

The flooding for us has got worse since they put up the flood barriers in Upton on Severn. We used to have a window of twenty four hours to move the sheep. We now know that once the barriers go up we have to get them moved off the flood plain within twelve hours. The water has to go somewhere and the barriers force it out on the fields. The houses may be safe but they don’t realise what damage it’s causing here. But I suppose if it’s saving lives it puts it in perspective in a way.