December 2011 Archives

Reindeer - they're not just for eating and for pulling Santa's sleigh. They're possible to have a little wager on, too, as this short clip from a recent race meeting at Kempton Park demonstrates.

Not sure they've quite as focused on winning as horses...

And in other reindeer news (that's not something you hear said every day, is it) a decision by the retailer Harvey Nichols to sell reindeer meat has sparked controversy.

If you don't like bugs and creepy crawlies, don't look at this photo of the world's heaviest insect.

At least there are no critters like this in the British countryside. Or so we hope...

A sheep in North Wales has been rescued after falling 150ft, reports the Daily Post in North Wales.

Want a ringtone with a difference? Well two farmers have made some downloadable 'musical mootunes'.

Thanks to Sharon McClements from Newtownards in Northern Ireland who sent us this great picture.

It's her husband who she reckons is such a FW fan that he he even took a copy on a recent trip 250km inside the Arctic Circle.

He's pictured here after having been on a husky sleigh in Lapland where he was driving the dogs.

Know what this is? It's a Shess set.

That's a sheep chess set, featuring grey Herdwicks versus white Downlands and it was made by Helen Galland.

Helen's worked for the past nine years on a city farm in central London and has an interest in rare breeds. After helping a friend shear her rare breed sheep last year, she started making sheep characters from the wool. The needle felted characters are called Woolly Wally.
You can find out more about the board and other designs on her website.

They are the vegetable everyone claims to hate, but could 2011 be the year sprouts are finally welcomed onto the Christmas dinner plate?

The farmers who harvested this new crop of purple sprouts in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, will be hoping so.

More modern varieties like this one mean sprouts are not as bitter as they used to be, and it seems to be striking a chord with consumers...

Sales of sprouts have increased by more than 12% this year, with shoppers buying a massive 40 tonnes of the vegetable - almost the weight of the Titanic.

And in cash terms, Brits have already spent a whopping £60 million on sprouts this year.


Of course it also helps that sprouts have been given the celebrity chef treatment - Jamie Oliver opts to cook them with bacon and sage, Gordon Ramsay adds pancetta and chestnuts, while Heston Blumenthal throws in bacon rashers and butter.

Picture credit: Geoffrey Robinson/Rex Features)

Here's a picture that made me smile. It's a variation on the photo that is the subject of Farmers Weekly's December caption competition. So if you can come up with a witty line relating to it, here's where you can enter the comp (there's £25 to be won!)

Winter - and a lot of us start thinking about eating game.

Here's a lovely idea from the Game-to-Eat website for Grilled Venison and Green Sauce Sandwiches. It serves four.

Remember the Cambridgeshire crocodile farm we featured on Farmers Weekly earlier this year?

It's had one of its crocodiles stolen (a sculpture, not one of the real ones).

Have you ever written to the NFU? A lot of farmers have. Not sure any of those letters would be worth as much as this one, though - a war-time note to the organisation from Winston Churchill.

With the countdown on to the unveiling of the winners in this year's Farmers Weekly Photography Competition, here's a little taster for you.

These are a selection of just some of the many hundreds of shots we've enjoyed looking at - some of these have gone on to take some of the category top spots in the competition, others haven't but just happen to catch the judge's eye.

Yuo'll can find out which photos ultimately won each of the seven categories - plus a selection of the commended pictures - later in the month but, until then, enjoy this taster of the types of picture we were wowed by.

This animal isn't so much a Longhorn, it's more a lopsided horn.

Gabriella, a cow at Staunton Country Park, Havant, Hampshire, has one horn that curves down and one that points up.

Park Manager Gordon Gardner says: "Most of the time the horns are even and point downwards but Gabriella's are all over the place."

Early this summer the cow swelled the 20-strong herd at the park when she gave birth. Staff are waiting to see if the youngster's horns grow like her mum's.

Picture: Mike Walker/Rex Features

Students from the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE) this year have raised £1,000 for Children in Need.

They organised a bed push with a difference - Food Design and Nutrition student Nicola Gillespie (pictured with Stephen Trainor) found herself sitting in a kiddies play pool, on a bed, surrounded by baked beans in tomato sauce.

The 'bean bed' push was completed from Loughry Campus to Cookstown Centre. Pudsey accompanied by Mini Mouse, Postman Pat and others braved the elements to collect the cash from members of the public, local businesses, staff and fellow students.

I'm looking forward to this Saturday's X Factor final, because the version of the Yeo Valley 'Churned' advert featuring the 'singalong on Facebook' competition winner will air in one of the ad breaks.

A couple of colleagues of mine at FW went to interview two members of the Mead family (the family who founded and run the Yeo Valley business) this week. I'll post a link to the full interview in due course but, meanwhile, here's a short video of Mary Mead talking about her herd of British Friesians.

Here's a bit of fun for you. A while back we asked FW readers to send us photos of themselves or friends reading the mag in bizarre or unusual places and we received more than 100.

We've come up with a shortlist of seven and are handing it over to our Facebook friends to pick the winner. Basically the photo that gets the most "likes" before Friday December 9 will be named the winner, earning the snapper £50 and a specially designed and framed mock-up of a FW front cover with their winning picture on it.

You can see the top seven pictures here and (if you're logged onto Facebook) vote by "liking" your favourite...

Meanwhile, in Frome, a cow that got wedged in a gap between walls gets winched to safety.

I particularly like the way about 3 minutes 16 seconds into the video, someone starts handing the sandwiches around... 

We had the duck-shaped potato, and the tortoise-shaped potato, now this - a hand-shaped radish grown in China.

Picture: Quirky China News/Rex Features