November 2007 Archives

Kissing gates are a charming feature of the countryside. But they could be under threat, according to this article in today's Times.

… and when they’re not taking their clothes off or dressing up, they’re riding bizarre bicycles.

10 things I’ve learnt this week:

1. Northumberland is definitely one of my favourite counties.
2. I could eat cooked breakfasts every day.
3. 1000 miles is too far to drive in a week.
4. Some of Harry Potter was filmed at Alnwick Castle.
5. The Scarborough & Ryedale Mountain Rescue Team do a fantastic job (and some of its volunteers are farmers).

When they're not taking their clothes off, they're dressing up.

Essex Young Farmers are putting on a Christmas production of Cinderella at New Hall Preparatory School, Chelmsford, with three performances on December 20, 21 and 22.

If you enjoy photography and have any pictures of the countryside you're particularly proud of, then there's still just time to enter them for Farmers Weekly's 2007 photo competition. There are some cash prizes on offer...

Already had a few emails following yesterday's dilemma: how should you refer to a group of gamekeepers?

Your suggestions so far include: A covey, a peg, a moleskin, a wood and a hopper.

Keep 'em coming...

After my Gary Rhodes celebrity shocker (basically, I didn't know him!), I now have more celebrity chef news - this time involving the nation's darling, Jamie.

Just like the old days, this - being out of the road.

So far this week I've driven from Surrey to Northumberland and then to North Yorkshire. The hotel where I stayed in Alnwick on Monday night, the White Swan, has a curious claim to fame.

One of the topics of conversation at lunch with a big group of gamekeepers yesterday was what the collective noun for a group of keepers might be.

Spent a fantastic day yesterday in Alnwick and had a tour of the estate by its award-winning gamekeeper Kevan McCaig.

I learnt a lot about the castle - including that it was where some of Harry Potter and Robin Hood: Price of Thieves was filmed. It's a truly beautiful part of the world.

More evidence of turkeys behaving abominably.

This isn't a new picture so apologies if you've already seen it, but I reckon it's hilarious.

Seeing as they're now heavy drinkers and phone ringtone stars, I thought I ought to find out a bit more about turkeys.

I'm off to Alnwick later today to meet the Farmers Weekly/CLA Gamekeeper of the Year, Kevan McCaig, at a presentation tomorrow.

I love Northumberland, having lived for a while in Newcastle. Alnwick is a beautiful spot, although it'll take me the best part of a day to drive there from the south-east.

If you'd like to find out more about the town - this website has some fascinating information about the place.

Haven't been able to lay my hands on a copy of Debretts, so expect social blunders!

I've ranted before about rats - and the explosion in their population this year.

And as for squirrels, well, we've done them to death (literally) on Field Day. We've even recently touched on using ground-to-air missile-lookalike machines to scare pigeons.

This is the ninth of our Saturday recipes.

Mincemeat and Almond Delight

A gas pigeon scarer on the Over the Hedge blog? A ground-to-air missile launcher, more like!

First they're getting drunk on lager, now they're muscling their way into the ring-tone market.

Along with providing a load of useful info on different types of turkey, how to cook them and jokes for the kids, the NFU Cymru turkey website enables you to download two 'gobble gobble' ringtones.

Working in a rural-related business can be stressful. We all know that.

But how about this as a novel method to tackle stress – toe tickling.

My old school was pretty rubbish.

About its only claim to fame is that it was the school that recently hit the headlines when the teachers wrote spoof reports on the kids (one of them then proceeded to leave one on a bus!)

You might remember my post a while back about the bull semen hair product. Well I’ve found out some more details about this.

Available at a swanky London salon called Hari's, it uses pedigree Aberdeen Angus semen and Katera, a protein rich plant root grown in Iran.

It’s like “Viagra for hair”, they claim. They also point out it doesn't smell.

If you're a turkey being fattened for Christmas, you haven't got a lot to look forward to.

These birds in America, though, are obviously enjoying the farmer's ruse to make them put on more weight - he's feeding them beer. The birds are, claims the farmer, "a little fatter and a happier as a result". I know the feeling.

Watch a video of the turkeys getting tucked into their Coors here (apologies for the short advert at the start of the clip - this is American tv, remember!)

Return to Field Day home page.

Speaking of sheep, a group of Poll Dorsets from Devon are set to become flock stars.

Their singing features on a new music cd called Blackdown Voices. Other unlikely vocalists on this cd - which you can listen to some great clips from here - come from blues-singing wood pigeons, angry wasps, harmonising hover flies and even the torrential rains of earlier this year.

Field Day reader John Snuggs has got in touch to tell me about a Frank Zappa song.

Why, you're probably wondering. I certainly did initially, too.

After my foray into the world of art criticism (don't give up your day job, friends told me!) this caught my eye.

'A Prize Ewe' by the Victorian animal painter Richard Whitford (1854-1887) is for sale at the Hanover Square Gallery.

It's an oil on canvas (do I sound as if I know what I'm talking about here?), measures 14ins by 18ins and is of a Suffolk sheep. It's signed and dated 1878.

Whitford's paintings included the Great Northamptonshire Shorthorn, Quicksilver - a prize winning horse - and A Prize Cow.

I hope I'm not contravening my cute animal picture moratorium by publishing this picture - but I reckon I'm safe.

You know when you hear something and think: That's such a good idea, why hasn't anyone thought of it before? Well that's just happened to me.

One of my problems is that I find it hard to say No - especially when a good cause is involved.

So, despite having said I wouldn't publish any more naked charity calendars for a while, I've changed my mind. A call from Lesley Mansfield of Nantwich Young Farmers in Cheshire did it.

Guest blogger: Mopsa

When I was a child growing up in the London suburbs, I thought a farmer, man or woman, was someone who spent all day either in a tractor or milking cows.

If prodded, my childhood imagination might stretch to some manual collecting of eggs and bottle-feeding of lambs. All this set in some pastoral scene, picturesque, warm, dry, green and pleasant.

And then in my twenties I landed on a farm in Warwickshire. To say it was a revelation would be an understatement. In a few months I had done and seen things I had never thought of as being part of the farmer’s world. And I had never encountered so much mud.

My post about the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra prompted a guy to get in touch to tell me about a vegetable playing group in Australia called Flutenveg.

Here's something I thought I'd never say - Matthew Naylor's blog has just made me laugh out loud.

He's made me, with a help of a few of his potato friends, a rather special present, after beating me in the Battle of the Blogs.

I'm touched.

This is the eighth of our Saturday recipes.

Braised Pigeon with Whisky and Raisins.

I’m a bad loser.

I’d like to claim it’s nothing, it doesn’t matter, it was only a bit of harmless fun, after all, but I can’t!

What I’m getting round to saying is that Matthew Naylor has beaten me in the battle of the blogs.

Music made from vegetables? The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra? Believe it or not, this is for real. You can even listen to clips of the music...

I've often used the expression 'use it or lose it' in connection with village services.

Whether it's the shop, the post office or - and this is one I feel the adage particularly applies to - the village pub. So it's great to hear a positive story about a rural boozer.

Don't worry, I'm not going to turn this blog into USA Today (any more than I'm going to turn it into a celebrity fest), but I did find this article interesting.

It's a piece from America about how one woman, despite thinking hunting was an exclusive male preserve, became a convert.

For a long time, she was convinced it was just an excuse for guys to get together and drink beer. Can't imagine why!

Now I wouldn't say I'm a pessimist, but the results of the Battle of the Blogs are due out tomorrow.

Just been sent another picture by the artist Jason Gathorne-Hardy who I wrote about earlier this week.

Pleased to see he's getting the hang of drawing the back end of the animals!

Seriously, though, I think this is fab.

What do you reckon, should I go to this?

Just been invited to a book talk next Tuesday with the author Chips Hardy at a book festival in Richmond.

He'll be talking about his book Each Day a Small Victory - the tale of Max the stoat and his fraught and bloody encounters, as both the hunter and the hunted.

Three young farmers from Hertfordshire and Dorset have set themselves the challenge of a lifetime – to drive to Cape Town in a colossal truck that they have spent the past year restoring to raise money for the charity Send a Cow.

Remember Wedginald, the international star of Cheddarvision TV?

Well he (or is a cheese a she?) has almost come of age and is now for sale.

You know I wrote about tar barrel rolling recently.

Well there's a nice account of this taking place at Hatherleigh recently over on the lovely Locks Park Farm blog.

Hello! magazine isn't on my regular reading list, but I've just been shown a copy of the current issue.

The recent Farmers Weekly Awards, which I've referred to before, gets a mention because the Countess of Wessex was there in her capacity as president of the Royal Agricultural Society of England.

You might remember the animal shapes on the London underground map.

Well what about this - a cloud in the shape of a pig.

I was lucky enough to be involved in the Gamekeeper of the Year competition earlier this year - it's run by Farmers Weekly and the CLA.

You know I said potatoes shouldn't be dubbed 'humble'. Well blackcurrants certainly shouldn't, following work by the Scottish Crop Research Institute.

The latest research by boffins shows it's the ultimate "superfruit" which can help fight cancer, heart disease and even Alzheimer's.

This one isn't strictly rural - but seeing as we've talked about amusing signs and we've talked about cats that look like Hitler (you can't say it's not varied here!) I figured you might be interested in this quirky story about an amusing pub sign and Hitler.

Field Day regulars will know I like cheese. Not sure whether I like the sound of a Stilton smoothie, though.

But that's exactly what Brighton-based milkshake specialists, Moo Juce, have developed.

You learn something every day.

I've often wondered what precise military function The Household Cavalry's lay-down horses served.

I've got a soft spot for Aldeburgh, so when I heard about an exhibition by an artist working in that area I was immediately interested.

Wonder what Jordan or horse lovers in the New Forest would make of this: a rather grizzly story about a wild horse cull in Australia.

Politicians all too often overlook the countryside.

I get the impression they're (slowly) waking up to the importance of this section of the electorate, however.

It seems as if it'll be high on the agenda in the forthcoming American election - certainly if these comments by presidential hopeful Barack Obama are anything to go by.

Don't worry, I'm not going to try to turn this blog into Heat.

But seeing as we've been on the subject of celebrities and their countryside connections, I thought I'd mention a bit more such news. This time, it's Jordan and horses.

This is the seventh of our Saturday recipes.

Winter Bacon Warmer

Beavers are a bit like Agas.

Not so much physically, obviously, because one is a small water-loving mammal while the other is a large item used for domestic cooking and heating purposes - but because people are rarely indifferent to them: they seem to either love 'em or loathe 'em.

Mice might not be as much of a problem on farms as rats, but a new strain of fearless ones could well prove to be...

My friend, Nick, tells me he had a good day's shooting yesterday (he won't tell me how many birds he bagged, so I'm assuming his shooting hasn't improved all that much!) but sadly didn't get to see Madonna.

Is it a bird, is it a plane.... no, it's something altogether more agricultural in this story from America.

An argument is rumbling in the New Forest over the autumn round-ups of ponies - knows as 'drifts'.

Think of the word 'butcher' and what springs to mind? A large red-faced guy, probably called Stan or Eric. One who's got the gift of the gab and is built like a Hereford bull.

This isn't necessarily the case, though. More and more women are choosing this as a career - and one who's achieving great things is 20-year-old Rhian Wynn Owen.

It's curtains for Montgomeryshire Young Farmers Clubs.

Curtains up, that is, as they're celebrating their 70th anniversary with a special show at Theatr Hafren in Newtown on November 22, 23 and 24th.

Golly, this is exciting. A friend of mine has just told me he's popping round to Madonna's place tomorrow.

You might think I'm a bit of a cynic when it comes to politicians after my sideswipe at them the other day, but credit where credit's due - the Department for Transport has been doing some important work recently highlighting how dangerous rural roads are.

This is something I feel strongly about. It's easy to assume that because there isn't as much traffic on country lanes that they're not as dangerous as urban ones. This simply isn't the case.

Another country calendar - I know I've done a few of these, but they're in a good cause.

This one is produced by the semen company Dairy Daughters. And that's not something you find yourself writing every day!

Photos of silly signs are still being sent to me. This one arrived this morning. Charming!

Don't know what type of dog it is - but it reminds me of Scooby Doo...

After the Essex oyster feast, here's another curious custom: Tar Barrel Racing.

The custom, which takes place each year on Bonfire Night, is thought to have started in the 17th century when it was done in a bid to ward off evil spirits.

Surprised the Health and Safety bods haven't put a stop to this.

Have you got one of these in your garden? If not, you might well soon, it seems.

Water butts must become standard features of gardens within a few years, so Environment Minister Phil Woolas has said.

Increased development and climate change means rainwater needs to be stored and utilised more effectively, he recently told a meeting of drainage industry representatives (a right barrel of laughs that gig sounds!)

“I want to see a safe water butt in every garden by 2010," he said.

Talking of calendars, for those of you who are interested in calendars and peat, or calendars and Lewis, or indeed calendars and semi-naked men, you might be interested in this one.

This picture made me laugh. There's something Monty Python-like about it.

My month-long battle with fellow blogger Matthew Naylor is over.

We marked the end of hostilities by shaking hands over a beer at the Farmers Weekly Awards (it was a half pint, because the Grosvenor House wasn't exactly cheap!)

News of another rural-related calendar featuring partially-clad people reaches me.

This time it's the Polo Club at the University of Nottingham, some of the members of which are from farming backgrounds.

I think if I was a potato I'd have an inferiority complex.

Why do we always prefix the word potato with 'the humble'?

I happen to think spuds are great and not humble at all. Anyway, the British Potato Council has revamped its website - and there are some yummy recipe ideas on it.

I must confess to not keeping abreast of developments in the Lib Dem leadership contest (frankly, I’d rather watch paint dry – or, for that matter, cheese ripen!)

It caught my attention earlier, however, when I heard about a plan by leadership contender Nick Clegg to tackle the affordable housing crisis in rural areas.

How's this for a coincidence?

I went walking at the weekend in the Peak District. Drove to stay with some friends in Sheffield on Friday night and they'd planned the walk for Saturday. So, come Saturday morning, we drove out into the Peaks, pulled into a village where they'd decided to start the walk from - and, guess what, I saw a bridge that looked familiar.

This is the sixth of our Saturday recipes.

Mushroom Pudding

Here it is then, the video from the FW Awards in London on Wednesday night. It's a chance to see what happens when 1000 farmers come to London. And to see me well and truly out of my depth in the role of presenter!

There is, believe it or not, such a thing as The Annual Ceremony of the Christmas Cheeses.

I know because I've just been invited to it!

This festive occasion, heaped in tradition and pageantry, dates back to 1692. The event sees some of the best British cheeses donated by cheese makers to Chelsea pensioners. Sounds like fun.

We chatted to some of the actors - including Trevor Harrison who plays Eddie Grundy - from The Archers at the FW Awards last night. If you're a fan, I reckon you'll love this.

Listen to what they had to say here or subscribe to the FWi podcast in iTunes.

Here's the first of the three video and audio clips which I'll hopefully have for you by the end of today from the FW Awards last night. This is an exclusive interview a farmer friend of mine, Hugh Broom, got with impressionist Jon Culshaw.

Fans of tv and radio will recognise Jon from Dead Ringers. Hope you find what he's got to say about farming as funny as I did!

Now these two events weren't connected, you understand.