September 2007 Archives

Here are the first Saturday recipes.

Sorry I couldn’t show you any photos but the recipe book they came from doesn't contain a single photo, just a few black-and-white sketches. Seems unimaginable these days, doesn't it. The edition they came from was published in 1978.

Don't forget, tomorrow will be the first of the Saturday recipes on Field Day, taken from the Farmhouse Fare books.

Remember the webcam that showed cheese ripening? The hencam?

Well now it’s cows that are online stars – they’re appearing on a new website, Big Udder, inspired by the hit tv show Big Brother.

I love this photo.

It’s of equine psychologist Emma Massingale and Kariba the horse.

The 16-year-old thoroughbred is so football mad he has mastered side passing, shots at goal, long-distance kicks, dribbling and even pushing the ball with his nose in a horsey-style header.

Emma rehabilitates dangerous steeds at her training school, Natural Equine, in Devon and discovered he has a passion for the beautiful game.

I reckon Mane Rooney would be a more appropriate name for the horse.

Talking of post offices, you might well see Joan Collins and the lads from Westlife popping into one soon.

They’ll be among the famous faces appearing on a new tv advertising campaign by the Post Office.

As I mentioned when I was talking about my friend, the best-selling author, world-famous chef and international tv star Clarissa Dickson Wright, I’m not one to name drop.

I was thinking this again recently when asked to join the billionaire’s son and future PM (that’s what some people reckon) Zac Goldsmith, and the associate editor of the Daily Telegraph, Simon Heffer, on the judging panel of Britain’s Best Rural Retailer 2007 competition.

Old cookery books are a joy.

I’m lucky enough to have ended up with a few editions of a book called Farmhouse Fare, which was first published in 1940 and reprinted many times over the decades that followed.

If you've been following our breaking squirrel story, you might be interested to see the comments New Scientist readers have come up with on one of their blogs about it.

Someone's just given me a copy of yesterday Daily Mail because there's an explanation in it as to why birds don't get electric shocks from standing on high-voltage wires.

It doesn't expressly mention squirrels, but bearing in mind the great squirrel debate we've been having here, it seems relevant.

It's an interesting article, providing answers to other great imponderables such as: If you cut a worm in half will both halves live? And: Why are bananas curved?

The Mail isn't a paper I usually read, but I couldn't help but think of possible headlines it might have come up with for the squirrel story. What about this one:
Squirrel death horror threatens pensions, house prices and NHS

I realise I'm in danger of developing a squirrel obsession here.

Last thing I want to do, after all, is risk boring you (I did that enough over my cats Nutmeg and Parsley!)

But I can't resist sharing this: one peer of the realm's innovative approach to controlling the grey squirrel population.

After the big-bra farming lady, now it’s big-footed farming women.

There’s a farmer’s wife in Norfolk who runs a business called Thox, selling stylish socks for the lady with larger feet.

Duncan Speakman is gearing up to undertake a four-day walk across Somerset farmland recording the sounds he encounters en route in a bid to compile an ‘audio map’ of his travels.

He’s hoping that the sounds he captures will create an ‘aural snapshot’ of rural life – not just the sounds of nature but those representing the lives of the people who work there.

Farming families are an inventive lot and you hear of them starting some imaginative new businesses.

The most enigmatically named one of them all, though, has got to be Ample Bosom.

One of the best things about travelling around the countryside is the range of regional dialects you come across.

Well done, then, to villagers in Appledore in Devon who are taking positive steps to prevent their unique dialogue dying out.

They reckon it's sufficiently localised that even residents in nearby Bideford (a whole three miles away) can't understand some of their words.

That sounds like, as they might say in Norfolk where I spent a year working on a farm, a rum old do!

I told you they were evil.

More evidence comes to light of bad behaviour by these creatures. One that went on a rampage attacking three people. Another that took out an electricity sub-station.

Debate still rages, meanwhile, on the 'cause of death' of Robert's squirrel.

Just when farmers thought the news couldn't get any worse - the UK's first ever case of the disease Bluetongue has been discovered.

All the latest news on this is available on Farmers Weekly's news pages.

Debate continues to rage about the exact cause of death of the aforementioned squirrel.

While I'm waiting for a conclusive answer from someone who understands how electricity works, here are the only other theories I can come up with:

1. The squirrel committed suicide. It's not impossible. Bad outlook for nuts this winter? The continued bad press? Inferiority complex compared with its red cousins? Perhaps the poor little thing simply decided to end it all.

2. It died of old age while just happening to be on the cables. Again, it's possible. We've no reason to believe it was a young squirrel.

3. It had an identity crisis and mistakenly thought itself to be a lemming.

Grey squirrels. Love 'em or loathe 'em, you can't help feeling sorry for this little fella - even though he spent the past few months raiding the so-called squirrel-proof bird feeders in a friend of mine's garden.

As for what caused his premature demise, well, these power lines feed directly into Robert's house, so presumably are 240 volts - enough to kill a full-grown man, let alone a small grey squirrel.

He appears to have been in the process of moving down the wires, and bridged the gap between them. Presumably this meant he became a conduit for the full 240 volts - certainly it "froze" him to the wires, as he's been up there a week already.

Writing about roadsigns has got me thinking.

I've come across some peculiar animal-related signs over the years. Here are just a few.

I’m torn when it comes to the CPRE (Campaign to Protect Rural England).

I’m a big fan of its president, the American writer Bill Bryson (even if the colour of his beard does make him look as if he smokes 80 Woodbines a day!) and admire much of the work they've done over the years in our rural areas. Their survey into how our night-time skies are changing, for example, was fascinating.

I can’t shake this niggling doubt, though, that they sometimes think the countryside is a static object, one to be preserved in aspic, when actually it’s a continuously changing evolving place, where people have to live and work and make a living and bring up families. “A load of men with beards, objecting to everything,” is how one my farmer friends rather uncharitably describes them.

I reckon they’ve hit the nail on the head with this one though – they’re campaigning against the proliferation of road signs.

It still shocks me to look at this picture of a dead golden eagle.

Sadly, it's not an isolated incident either, it seems, with new research from the RSPB showing 2006 to be the worst year for a quarter of a century for bird of prey poisonings. Disgusting - that's all I can say.

A shepherd has become one of only 1000 people ever to have swam the Channel.

Father-of-five Gary Wilson completed the charity swim in 15 hours and 23 minutes.

"It would have been 22 miles if I’d been able to go in a straight line, but because of the currents I ended up swimming more than 30 miles," he told me. “If you stop swimming for 10 seconds, you can lose as much as 400m.”

Aside from the stamina required, the Kent-based man contended with the severe cold and jellyfish bites as he completed his mammoth feat.

I've just had a phone call from a parapsychologist.

Yes, that was exactly my reaction. What the hell's one of them then?

Anyway, this guy had heard about our haunted farmhouse investigation and wanted to get in touch with the people who lived there.

If you're interested in things that go bump in the night, you can read the article below I wrote after spending a night in 'Britain's Most Haunted Farmhouse, or watch the video footage we shot.

After my post about the beavers brought to this country and various other rants about non-native species being introduced, here's a scenario I haven't touched on: escapees.

Turns out there's been a mass escape of farmed salmon off the west coast of Scotland, prompting predictions of a genetic disaster.

It appears a seal caused the outbreak. I was wondering - I mean, fish aren't exactly the cleverest of things, so it's not as if they would have planned it. "Here, you flick the latch while he's not looking and I'll lead the break out." Can't really see it, can you?

Since my complete drubbing in the cats vs dogs debate, I hardly dare mention my cats.

Better, I decided, to lay low for a while and lick my wounds (which is better, I have to say, than what dogs often lick!)

I have had a trawl of the web, though, and found a story about cats being taken for a walk, an alternative Crufts contest, a cat flushing the toilet video, a clip of a skateboarding bulldog and, my favourite of all, a website devoted to cats that look like Hitler.

You might remember Farmer Frank.

He's Farmers Weekly's fictional agony uncle and he's ruffled a few feathers since he began dispensing advice. After all, he's not qualified, not experienced and, according to some, not all there.

If you missed it, he held a 'live surgery' on the FWiSpace forums recently, answering problems in real-time. Oh dear. I fear he may have made things worse for a lot of people.

Nick Basden has contacted Field Day asking for help.

We all know it's a big challenge to get kids to eat more healthy food.

Sources tell me the fast-food chain Burger King is developing 'BK Fresh Apple Fries' - red apples shaped like fries and served in the same containers, but not fried and served skinless and cold.

This news cheers me and makes me depressed. It’s great that the multinational is thinking about healthy eating. Depressing, though, that the only way it seems we can get some kids to eat fruit is by tricking them into thinking it’s chips!

I'm not one to name drop.

I was only thinking this the other day, in fact, when I was chatting to my friend, the world-famous chef, tv star and countryside campaigner Clarissa Dickson Wright.

Just been battling through the weekend papers.

Always a hard one, isn't it: deciding which papers to read. There's not time to read what's in the one you do opt for, so choosing which one to buy in the first place becomes even more of a conundrum.

Sundays are a no-brainer for me: it's The Observer. Saturdays, however, present me with more of a dilemma. I quite like The Guardian, although having been brought up a nice lower middle class boy, I can't help but worry if reading it makes me "a leftie".

Never mind our ancestors' peculiar eating habits, this guy could have taught them a thing or two - the roadkill chef.

He's not even averse to munching on a slug or two - which is one way of dealing with these little swines we haven't yet discussed, I suppose!

Hedgehogs seem to provoke different responses in different people.

There's the "aarrgh, they're so cute" brigade and there's the "they're flea-ridden vermin" camp.

Not many of us see these prickly creatures and think: "Yum, looks tasty."

This wasn't always the case though. Roasted hedgehogs - along with a host of other odd selections - featured on stone-age menus, according to new reseach.

‘Curly-coated’ pigs have been generating a lot of interest since Johann blogged on them last week while I was in Somerset.

One of the most fascinating stories I’ve heard about the breed is how the hair from behind the pigs’ ears was used for making fishing flies.

As a late(ish) 30-something, I'm relatively new to Facebook.

Frankly, if you'd asked me a year ago even what it was, I wouldn't have had a clue.

This article is interesting, though - it's all about the 'groups' on Facebook relevant to agriculture and the countryside.

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Getting town kids to understand more about farming is something a lot of people in the countryside are working hard at.

It’s a long term goal - but one that’s worth investing time and energy in, with new research by an eminent psychologist showing that a generation of “concrete children” is cut off from the countryside.

Two things that have been occupying Field Day readers’ minds recently are the more peculiar uses of natural products (bull semen as a hair treatment, for example) and the merits of introducing non-native species - or reintroducing once-native critters - to Britain.

I’ve discovered an animal that combines the two. Beavers.

DEFRA have confirmed in the past hour that there has been another foot-and-mouth outbreak.

For farmers everywhere, this is the news they didn't want to hear. Once again, rural communities find themselves waiting nervously to see what happens next.

It's dangerous to walk barefoot, I was always told as a kid.

Hidden dangers were around every corner: broken glass on sandy beaches, sharp pieces of flint in hay meadows, blunt objects big enough to break toes.

No one ever expressedly warned me about slugs. I'm squeamish as far as slugs are concerned, so imagine my horror - my revulsion - when I went into the garden last night and felt something squash beneath my foot, something slimy, something alive.

Should be grateful for small mercies, I guess: at least it wasn't dog mess!

Seeing as the agony uncle Farmer Frank was addressing the subject of wasp phobias in one of his recent 'surgeries', I thought I'd just make us all that little bit more paranoid with this photo of a giant hornet.

It's the Asian Giant Hornet and its body can be over two inches long. Scary.

The public has spoken.

We made the cats vs dogs debate the subject of our 'Question of the Week' on Farmers Weekly and the result was unequivocal.

More than 1000 people voted and 86% said they preferred dogs!

Said I wasn’t going to bore you with tales of my holiday in Somerset – but I just want to mention this picture.

I was sat having a pint one night in The Carew Arms in Crowcombe (it's thirsty work, walking) and saw it on the wall above me. Very striking, wouldn’t you say.

Wasps, guinea pigs, punctures and sex before marriage - just four of the topics that have been occupying the countryside's favourite agony uncle, Farmer Frank, this month.

Not to be outdone by Kent Young Farmers and their tractor-at-a-wedding stunt, the Leicestershire guys and girls have been at it, too.

The best man at Rob Weaver and Jo Hefford's wedding arranged for a tractor to be on hand for the groom to drive his new wife to the reception.

The pair - both members of Rearsby and District YFC - got married at Gaddesby church in Leicestershire.

With the autumn cultivation season at its peak, guests expected there to be some rolling done that night!

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Back from a week's walking in Somerset holiday. Boo-hoo.

Holiday stories are boring, so I won’t subject you to mine. Here, though, are 10 things I learnt last week

1. I don’t go brown. I go pink then red then white again.

2. I’m not as fit as I thought I was (or rather, I’m more unfit!)

3. Not many places genuinely qualify to be called ‘picture postcard’ – but Bossington definitely does.

4. Opium addiction isn’t very nice. I didn’t discover this, I should point out, first hand. We were staying in a house that Samuel Taylor Coleridge visited when he was suffering some particularly unpleasant side-effects of addiction and withdrawal.

5. I wrote the last chapter of my new novel. Yippee. That’s the first draft done. Still loads of work to do, but at least now there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

I forget how many times I've seen surveys about children not knowing where there food comes from.

One in three young children think oranges grow in Britain, according to one NFU survey published a few years ago.

Another survey showed that many people thought margarine comes from cows.

Now another survey delves deeper into children's farm yard fantasies.

Forget visiting art galleries in London: thousands of people will descend on rural Devon over the next few days to see works of art exhibited in fields, farms, village halls and even garden sheds.

More than 35,000 art lovers are expected to visit artists all over the county who will be exhibiting their work in unusual places - including remote parts of Dartmoor.

Every so often, when I've nothing better to do, I search for videos featuring our village on YouTube.

The village in question is Tiptree - an Essex village, the residents of which are very fond of the strawberry jam made in the local factory owned by farmers Wilkin & Sons and sold the world over.

Here's an idea that should be implemented in this country:

The mayor of a Russian city has banned civil servants from making lame excuses rather than helping people out.

The list of forbidden phrases includes "there's no money", "somebody else has the documents" and "I think I was off sick at the time".

The photograph of the curly coated Mangalitza pigs posted on this blog last week was taken in the Lincolnshire village of Fulletby.

The animals belong to Brian and Syliva Codling, of the Rectory Reserve.

They are believed to be the first curly coated pigs in the county for almost 40 years - the first, in fact, since the much-loved Lincolnshire Curly Coat died out in the early 1970s.