The recent decision by Dorset Council to approve the development of a solar farm, close to where I live in the Blackmore Vale, prompted an exchange of views on social media after someone posted an article from the Daily Mail which was headlined ‘Fury as huge solar farm given the go-ahead in Hardy Country’. Not so long ago all the comments would have been strongly against the development, but this time there were a number of comments in favour. A reflection perhaps of an increasing awareness of the urgency of the situation? It’s certainly getting harder to deny that the climate is changing, as evidenced by extreme weather-related events this year, including here in the UK and in Europe. Weather has always fluctuated of course, but the increasing trend to severe events is obvious. Some commentators were also clearly aware of the way the government has failed us so badly in the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels. The failure to develop the necessary infrastructure in renewable energy was also considered to be reflected in the ever-growing problems with health, education, sewerage and water etc. To those who call for development to be placed anywhere but in our own back yard, I would point out that we are all in the same boat. We all have to play our part if we are to avoid sinking together. I doubt anyone thinks solar farms are visually attractive – or wind turbines for that matter. I certainly don’t. I would much rather we didn’t have to have them. But the fact of the matter is that humanity has boxed itself into a corner. Or rather, we’ve been boxed into a corner by corporations greedily pursuing profit before people and planet, and by governments failing to regulate those corporations to prevent the damage they cause. We now have to throw everything we can at the problem of global warming, in order to have any chance of stopping it getting out of hand. Co-operation needs to extend internationally of course; thankfully there are signs that’s happening as catastrophe knocks on everyone’s doors. Ken Huggins North Dorset Green Party
August has served up a strong reminder of the size and diversity of the North Dorset constituency – even after the Boundary Commission has wrought its most recent changes (the latest proposals are on their website now). I say this because August has seen the Liberal Democrat team mount a presence at both the Gillingham and Shaftesbury Show and the Verwood Rustic Fayre. The two events are a long way apart in geographical terms and they also feel quite different: one is deeply rural and agricultural while the other has an air of New Forest edge-of-metropolis.
What is interesting is that with exactly the same stand and precisely the same approach – asking some pertinent questions and listening hard – we had a very similar response. There is that age-old issue that when you have lost your car keys at night you only look for them under the lamppost where there is light. We did not do that. We talked to people long and hard right across the spectrum of age, gender and the rest of the demographic niceties. We stood our ground against the diehards, meeting them with a rueful grin or two but mostly we had good amicable and engaged discussions. Over two days at the G & S and through the day in Verwood, we had something approaching 200 conversations – about one every five minutes. There were some big ticket issues from these conversations: Why doesn’t anything work properly; the self-seeking nature of politics; how out of touch our politicians are; why can’t we find a decent solution to the asylum seeker crisis; how could we have let Brexit end up like this; why can’t we come together as a nation to stop us going downhill; why do governments do things mostly for the minority that put them there; there must be a better way of doing all this. You get the picture? Quite a lot of despair and even more disdain for the political classes. Lessons for all. I am delighted, therefore, to watch Sarah Dyke, our new local MP for Somerton & Frome embark on a constituency wide tour as the first thing she does. To see, hear and seek to understand about all of her constituency. My goodness me, she is a force. Still, on the lighter side, we asked attendees at both shows whether the current lot deserve another five years. The best answer we got was from the Daleks. I leave you to imagine the one-word answer… Mike Chapman Blackmore Vale LibDem
These are such a decadent treat – even better because they are made with a handful of simple ingredients. I love my stand mixer as much as any other baker does, but these really work well with a simple wooden spoon and some elbow grease. Be prepared to beat the mixture really well – if your arm isn’t aching by the end, then you haven’t beaten it well enough! This recipe is for the traditional cream and chocolate version but you can fill eclairs with any combination of ingredients – toffee sauce, Nutella, fruit, coffee cream … the list goes on and on! Just try and keep the centre to some kind of soft cream and the top to something more set in nature, otherwise they become very tricky to eat! Heather
Ingredients (makes 10 to 12)
70g plain flour
55g butter
2 eggs (beaten)
120ml water
pinch of salt
300ml whipping cream
200g chocolate
Method
Preheat the oven to gas 6/200ºC. Grease and line a baking tray.
Sift the flour into a bowl and leave to one side.
Melt the water, butter and salt together in a large saucepan until the butter has completely melted; then bring the mixture to a boil.
Once boiling, take the pan off the heat and add the flour. Beat this mixture hard with a wooden spoon until it is well combined (1 to 2 minutes).
Return to the heat and continue beating for another minute.
Tip the mixture into a bowl so that it cools slightly. Slowly add the eggs a bit at a time, beating really well between each addition until the mixture is shiny and paste-like. Eventually it should drop nicely off the end of the spoon.
Put the mixture in a piping bag and pipe onto the tray into strips about 10cm long.
Sprinkle tray with some water and pop in the oven for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to
gas 3/170ºC and cook for a further 10 minutes.
The shells are done when they have browned and are crispy to the touch – they should have risen nicely too.
Remove from the oven and pierce the shells with a skewer to make a small hole, so that the steam can escape when cooling. This should help them not to collapse as they cool.
Once the shells are cold, they can be stored in an airtight box and will keep for a couple of days in a cool, dry place.
To finish the eclairs, whip the cream until it is stiff and melt the chocolate. If you are using dark chocolate, you can add some cream to the melted chocolate to make a softer ganache which won’t set as hard as melted chocolate might.
You can either slice the eclairs and pipe in the cream (as you would a bread roll to make a sandwich), or pipe the cream into a hole at one end (as you would when filling a doughnut).
Liberally drizzle the chocolate onto the eclairs.
Eclairs are best eaten the day the cream and chocolate are added as the moisture quickly softens the crisp shells.
Heather Brown is a food writer, photographer and stylist. A committee member of The Guild of Food Writers, Heather runs Dorset Foodie Feed, as well as working one-to-one with clients.
Team TB is prepping for the autumn season with some rigorous training (both equine and human!) – and a new home’s needed for Cherry and Sebastian
Toots Bartlett and Cor y Taran competing in July. Image: Luke Perrett Photography
It’s been a quiet month for team TB – lots of training, with fine tuning of each phase as we look forward and plan for the autumn event season. Wellington was our only event in the August diary – sadly a bad case of human tonsillitis for me means we are unable to attend. Instead we have turned our attention to Cornbury House for the International and Young Horse Championship, from 6th to 10th September. We have had to say a sad goodbye to head girl Eve Mitchell this month as she moves back up north with her family. She left a hole in our team, but thankfully it was swiftly filled by Rodger, a Sicilian who has been working for Paul Nicholls in his racing yard for the last seven years. We are already benefitting from his experience and knowledge – he is an incredibly hard worker and brings lots of enthusiasm and motivation to the yard!
Time off With such a quiet month in terms of competing it’s been vital to maintain the horses’ fitness ahead of their autumn schedule. They follow a strict fitness program, galloping for three lots of intervals every four days, as well as some serious hill road inclines once a week, which we do at a slow trot. This helps to strengthen the back end of the horses, making them really engage their muscles and building their top line as well as improving their cardiovascular fitness. We also managed to have our first family holiday for many years, which was so relaxing. Mallorca was warm and filled with lovely food and wine. However, this has meant I have had to increase my own fitness regime ahead of our next Internationals! I’m working out at least six days a week after work, splitting between long slow runs, short and fast 5km runs and sessions in the gym working on core, glutes and upper body strength. In eventing, the rider’s fitness is just as important as the horse’s – it’s not just them strengthening the back end! Hopefully all the training will pay off at Cornbury House – both Freestyle R and Cor Y Taran take on the CCI3*s.
Can you give Cherry and Sebastian a home?
Cherry and Sebastian We also have two gorgeous miniature Shetland Ponies back to re-home. Three years ago we rescued 11 of them, finding wonderful homes for nine and keeping Jack Jack and Bilbo as turn-out companions for the eventers. We find them hugely beneficial on the yard – and how could you not love them?! Cherry and Sebastian, through absolutely no fault of their own, are now looking for a new knowledgeable home. If you think you have the time and the experience, please do get in touch 07478 339300. I have been sponsored by professional photographer – Luke Perrett – I look forward to sharing his photography across the season, and we hope to join up with Blackfort Equestrian, my clothing sponsor, too. Exciting times! tootsbartletteventing.com
Sow hardy annuals like cornflowers and calendula now for robust, early blooms, says farmer Charlotte Tombs – but protect them from winter frost
Amazing Grey poppy All images: Charlotte Tombs
If you sow hardy annuals such as cornflowers (centaurea), Bishop’s flower (Queen Anne’s lace or ammi majus) or pot marigold (calendula) from mid August to early September the plants will be big enough to plant out in mid to late October. The soil will still be warm enough then for the roots to establish themselves – be warned the plants will sit and sulk over the winter months and you will no doubt think ‘what was Charlotte on about’!
Calendula with a small guest
Stick with me – as soon as the temperatures start to improve those sulky little plants will rocket into life and you will have bigger, stronger, earlier-flowering plants. Be aware that if we have some of those hideous cold snaps like we did in December last year, these babies will need a little bit of frost protection. I lost a few shrubs myself last winter as we’d had such a mild autumn then bang; they got frost burned and never came back. Actually I’ve yet to meet a gardener who didn’t lose something over last winter, climate change is visibly happening around us. For this reason I will be growing more perennials from seed this year – they seem to be able to cope better with our changing climate.
Bishop’s flower – also known as Ammi majus or Queen Anne’s lace
Then when October comes you can sow your autumn sweet peas. Don’t be tempted now – it’s still too warm and they will get over-excited and try and flower and set seedOther annuals you may want to try are honeywort (cerinthe) and love-in-a-mist (nigella). Poppies (papaver) are also wonderful – look out for one called Amazing Grey, it’s incredible, it looks like crushed silk to tissue paper and as the name hints it comes in an array of grey (not quite 50 shades though!!). Others to try are florist’s dill (anethum graveolens) and if you’re keen on wild carrot (daucus), look out for Purple Kisses. You can see it far more clearly on the white variety but the red spot in the middle of the flower is allegedly the blood from where Queen Anne pricked her finger while making lace.
Charlotte’s cornflowers in some rare 2023 sunshine
Also don’t dismiss the lovely little snapdragons (antirrhinum) and give them a go. I do a second sowing of these in February. Not all of these can be planted out in the autumn unless you are in a very sheltered spot, but all of them can be overwintered in a cold green house. If you are interested in getting ahead with your annual flowers, I found the book Cool Flowers by Lisa Mason Ziegler invaluable. As always, please do feel free to ask me any questions and I will try my best to help!
First he introduced the Wool Village, and now Matt Cradock, chairman of the Sheep Section, has launched the first G&S Sheep Shearing competition
Matt Cradock is passionate about educating show visitors about sheep, shearing and wool
This is Matt’s seventh year in charge of the sheep section at the G&S and changes keep coming. After two successful years of shearing demonstrations, he had a new idea – a shearing competition. It has never been done before at the G&S Show, and Matt’s keen to share how exciting it will be to watch. There will be seven contest categories in all. On the Wednesday, it will be the junior, blade and veterans (over 50s). And on Thursday, the intermediate, senior, open – and a fancy dress category too! There could be entrants on the day, so it’s hard to gauge how many will take part. ‘I reckon 40 shearers across all classes would be optimum,’ Matt says. ‘We’re also trying to keep the education going with a lot of demonstrations.’ The desire to educate is what inspires Matt. ‘It is important for the public to see – it’s the audience I want because it’s a big part of the education side of it. People understand that sheep get sheared, but they don’t really know what’s involved. They have to see it for themselves. There are always masses of questions and I love that!’ The Wool Village, which made a successful debut last year, is also returning for 2023, and in a bigger space. The Village aims to tell the background story of sheep, with spinners explaining how the wool is turned into yarn, as well as talks and exhibits. There are fleece classes, where those exhibiting their stock bring along fleeces for quality judging. And of course there is also the showing of sheep, with competition classes and prizes for all the pedigree breeds. Having a rosette on your animal is very good for business. Rumour has it that a jumper was recently made for Matt from his own sheep’s wool – it may make an appearance at the Show !
Matt with Brock – so called because he looked like a badger as a puppy!
From two to 3,000 The weather has apparently been kind to shepherds this year. ‘Six weeks of hot, dry weather means you don’t have to shear wet sheep!’ Matt began shearing in late March, then moved straight into lambing from early April through to mid-May, with shearing ending by the end of July. Matt has 1,500 of his own sheep – a mix of breeds including Charollais, Border Leicester and Poll Dorsets. They are spread over 300 acres of rented land across North Dorset. He will shear 3,000 sheep this year, including his own, working with all sizes from a two-sheep ‘flock’ to one in the Sparkford area with 1,100 sheep. Poll Dorsets are notoriously tricky to shear. ‘One gave me a black eye this summer with a swift kick. I didn’t think it was that bad but when I wiped my face, there was blood. My shearing customer was laughing but hadn’t told me about the blood because it was the first one of the day and she thought I might have just left!’ Matt is well qualified to chair the Sheep Section at the show and is clearly highly regarded in the area. The Sparkford landowner had just lost their shepherd when they called Matt in to shear. They offered him a full-time job – and the gap in pay expectation was small enough to make him seriously consider selling his own flock of 1,500. But he remains, for now, his own boss.
Matt will be shearing 3,000 sheep this year
More work than ever Matt lives in Stour Row and had 30 customers for shearing this year, from the Dorset coast to the Somerset borders. He also does lot of shepherding. ‘I’m getting more work because there are not enough people doing it – there aren’t enough people going into farming itself. A couple of local shepherds have given up their round. People are pulling out of farming so plots of land do come up now. Farming never gets easier and there is a shortage of farm workers too.’ His dad does all the machinery maintenance ‘for little reward,’ jokes Matt. His dad also drives and delivers dairy products for Crook & Churn. The Dorset Dairy Co has recently announced that it will sell its dairy herd and milk refill business and concentrate on dairy products such as yoghurts, kefir, cream and butter. Matt Cradock says: ‘It tells you the way it’s going. In the last 18 months the shortages and losses you make if you sell at the wrong time of the week can mean you don’t have a gross margin left.’ Last year he sold 40 tonnes of wool to the Wool Board at 35p a kilo – netting around £1,500. ‘The wool is just a bit of a bonus, so when I come to shear my own sheep, it’s all paid for.’
The shearing competitions begin at 10am and run throughout both days in the Wool Village.
Driving community connections: how Paul Futcher’s fish and chip van has become a weekly staple in local villages. Rachael Rowe reports
Paul Futcher (left) has run the Pilgrim Fryer for 15 years
Around 5.30pm on a certain night, the unmistakable aroma of fish and chips fills the air in villages north of Blandford Forum, enticing people out for their weekly treat. The man responsible is Paul Futcher, owner of the Pilgrim Fryer fish and chip van. ‘It all started about 15 years ago. I was working for Scottish and Southern Electric, driving trucks – and never a thought for working in the fish and chip industry! The previous owner of the fish and chip van found God and decided to train to be a vicar. I got home from work one day and my (now ex) wife said: “Do you want to buy a fish and chip van?” It went from there – needless to say I ended up buying the van! ‘We’ve always worked north of Blandford Forum and the Stour Valley. There were four original stops: Child Okeford, Shillingstone, Iwerne Minster and Stourpaine. We’ve recently added Okeford Fitzpaine. ‘With a shop, you are stuck in one place. The beauty of a van is that it fits with our ethos of being able to provide something to communities that are not big enough to have a fish and chip shop of their own. There has been a fish and chip van outside the Bakers Arms in Child Okeford every Thursday since 1998. The whole village knows that Thursdays is fish and chips night! We visit each village and it fills a lovely gap in the market. Some older people don’t have transport to get to a fish and chips shop.’ You can’t help but hear that the staff on the Pilgrim Fryer call some older residents by name. ‘We know a lot of the regular customers, especially the elderly.
We know their orders and what time they are coming to collect them. When people place an order they have around 20 minutes to wait – it’s a nice opportunity to catch up with others who are waiting, usually from their own community. A lot of the elderly don’t see many other people. We chat to them and I know it means a lot that they have this in the village. We become part of the community.’ What is the most popular choice? ‘Cod and chips. It is what we focus on and without a shadow of a doubt it’s what people order most of. It’s very traditional. There is a tendency for people down south to go for cod while haddock is more popular up north. You can spot a northerner who’s moved south, they still prefer haddock,’ says Paul.
Shop local ‘We use local suppliers where we can. There are actually only two main fish and chip suppliers in this country – all the local shops use the same supplier. We use Fryers Pride, as it has a depot in Poole. The industry is really mechanised with fish caught in the Arctic on huge trawler boats. We used to get fish from the North Sea but it has moved because of the fishing quotas. Once the fish is caught, it is blast-frozen really fast and we get the fish in packs which we portion. Because the fish has been frozen so quickly, the quality is really good, it is actually better than fresh, even though it has been stored on a trawler for three days. We get our potatoes from Alan Frout at Verwood.’ The idyllic roaming chip van life isn’t without its struggles, however. ‘It’s a challenge to get to each site and provide a consistent product day in and day out. With a van, things do go wrong – I always have a toolbox with me. Once we turned up in Child Okeford in six inches of snow! But we felt a responsibility to be there for our customers. Another issue is working on propane; it’s not like a physical shop with mains gas and electric. It’s more challenging to produce consistency. And then there are the problems with no phone signal for taking payments, of course … ‘But I’m proud of our connection with the local people. I never thought I would run a fish and chip van, but to be able to make a difference in people’s lives is very rewarding. We’ve become a real part of the community.’
Shouldn’t we be welcoming weeds into our gardens to grow alongside their cultivated cousins, asks resident wildlife columnist Jane Adams
Ivy mining bee in Jane’s garden – the species only arrived in Dorset in 2001. Images: Jane Adams
Earlier this year, TV gardener and Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) vice-president Alan Titchmarsh caused quite a stir when he urged the RHS to stop ‘pandering to current trends’ that seem to welcome weeds into gardens. But what exactly is a weed? The Cambridge Dictionary defines them as ‘any wild plant that grows in an unwanted place.’ I assume Mr T was making a stand for cultivated plants, and isn’t against wild plants per se. In spite of that, does it really need to be an all-or-nothing debate? With 53 per cent of our native plants in decline, surely there’s room for both wild and cultivated plants in our gardens. Take my garden. It’s a mishmash of garden-centre-bought plants and long and short grass with quite a few wild flowering plants (cough weeds) in between. I love my garden – and so, it seems, does the wildlife; more than 300 species call it home. Most of us will never have (or even aspire to) a ‘perfect’ garden, with neatly tended flowerbeds, zero weeds, neatly trimmed lawns and perfectly clipped hedges. Personally, I think that’s okay. Take ivy. A weed, yes? I’ve had a love-hate relationship with it for years. It creeps through the garden and, if I don’t watch it like a hawk, it makes a dash up the walls of the house. But at the bottom of the garden where it has climbed a long-dead apple tree, it explodes each autumn with a firework display of blooms that fizz with pollinators (more than 100 species of insect feed on ivy). At this time of year, my ivy is a veritable smorgasbord for them; from honeybees to angle shade moths and ivy mining bees to holly blue butterflies, they can’t get enough of it. Not to mention the blackbirds that eat its berries, and birds and insects that nest and hibernate in its dense foliage. Not bad for a weed.
Hornet on an ivy flower
What might help? We won’t fix the massive declines in flying insect populations (a shocking 60 per cent in the last 20 years) by allowing a few dandelions, ivy plants and nettles to grow in our gardens, or by letting the grass grow taller in places. But neither are these things ‘a trend’ or wrong. They’re just the evolution of everyday gardening. Shouldn’t we instead be more worried about the garden centres and DIY stores still promoting the sale of weedkiller and insecticide? Shouldn’t we educate ourselves on how to use natural pest deterrents in our gardens? Everyone’s outdoor spaces can be beneficial to disappearing wildlife and wildflowers, as well as attractive and useful places for their people.
Further reading: There are 23 million gardens in the UK, covering 433,000 hectares (an area a third the size of Wales) according to estimates. A total of 87 per cent of UK households have a garden. In England alone, gardens cover an area four and a half times larger than National Nature Reserves For advice on gardening for wildlife, visit the Wildlife Gardening Forum wlgf.org The ivy mining bee arrived in Dorset in 2001, more at bumblebeeconservation.org
Recently I was lucky enough to swim with blue sharks in the south west. While standing on the boat looking into the sea, the biggest thing that hit me when I saw the graceful outline of a shark below me was how incredibly BLUE it was! While the blue back of the animal was so noticeable, the sides, fins and snout were all picked out in pure silver. As a ray of sun peeped between blankets of grey cloud, the shark appeared lit from within as its colours burst through the choppy sea’s surface. Then it was gone. Blue sharks are a highly migratory, open-ocean species that follow the Gulf Stream to visit UK seas, including Lyme Bay, in the summer months. They are here from June to October and usually travelling in all-female groups. What a privilege to swim with these masters of the high seas, so effortlessly graceful in their element, so powerful and in control and yet at the same time so vulnerable and threatened by our careless attitude and ignorance. So timid and sensitive – how did they ever acquire such an erroneous and unjust reputation?
Scary as a cushion The blue shark has to be the most beautiful of all sharks. With its stunning blue colour, its graceful shape and big puppy-dog eyes, how could you not fall in love with it? As for being scary … this shark was as as scary as a fluffy cushion. Rather, it was to be admired, treasured and appreciated as a thing of wonder, of evolutionary perfection. It is the apex of an entire food web, a precious and yet fragile being. Unfortunately, open-ocean sharks have declined by an estimated 71 per cent in the last 50 years and overfishing is the biggest threat to sharks globally. Blue sharks are being decimated right here in our North Atlantic. In fact, blues are the most heavily fished species of shark, with most countries having no restriction on the number that can be taken. They are disappearing, almost unnoticed, right in front of us. It is heartbreaking to think that this wonder of nature may, in a few more decades, no longer be a summer visitor in our waters.
The blue shark visits UK seas in the summer months. In the Atlantic, they appear to take a clockwise route, following the Gulf Stream from the Caribbean. They return on the Atlantic North Equatorial Current.
What can we do to help them? Seafood-eaters can choose sustainably-caught, local species and avoid any type of shark meat. Sharks produce few offspring, mature late and may not reproduce every year. Blue sharks are mostly caught on long lines with a devastating by-catch of seabirds and turtles. And if you are in two minds about sharks in Dorset, remember, you are more likely to die from falling out of bed than from a shark attack!
