Former resident of Gillingham sadly passed away on 16 November 2022. A former member of Town Twinning group, local crib league (Buffalo team), British Legion and member of Dorset masons died aged 95 after a short illness in Norwich where he had moved in 2021. Missed by many including his family and friends
Hedgerows have inexplicably been left out of the climate change action plan, says Rupert Hardy, chairman of North Dorset CPRE
Last year we wrote about the importance of hedgerows in offsetting climate change (The BV, Aug 21). We welcomed the government’s 2019 Committee on Climate Change report, which called for a 40 per cent extension of the UK’s hedgerows. Sadly the government did little to implement this in its 2021 action plan, which aimed to restore and enhance trees and woodland, but inexplicably left hedgerows out. CPRE therefore set out to promote this instead, proposing a target of 40 per cent by 2050, with the campaign called #40by50.
We commissioned the Organic Research Centre to provide an overview of the impact on nature, climate and the economy – and they suggested that for every £1 spent on hedgerows, a return of up to £4 can be expected from ecosystem and economic activities such as biodiversity enhancement, carbon sequestration and woodchip production for biofuel. Planting hedgerows on arable land can boost yield by ten per cent and reduce artificial pest control by 30 per cent. This is all rather ironic when you consider how many hundreds of miles of hedgerows were grubbed up in the post-war period to supposedly to improve agricultural efficiency! Healthy hedgerows teem with life and more then ten per cent of the UK’s priority species are associated with hedgerows, including dormice and hedgehogs. There is huge potential to increase the carbon sequestration of hedgerows, if they are allowed to become wider and taller. They also improve air quality and can reduce soil erosion and flooding.
Hedgerow Heroes
The CPRE has worked with Farmers Weekly to engage with farmers who want to be involved in our hedgerow management survey and has received no less than 1,100 responses, which we are analysing now. There will be a parliamentary reception in December to launch the results of our farmers’ survey. Dorset CPRE has also been involved in a project to plant or restore more than 15 kilometres of hedge across the county, including the planting of over 50,000 trees.
On the Hinton Admiral Estate straddling the Dorset/ Hampshire border, this has involved the planting of 1.7 kilometres of new hedgerow and improving a further 1.3 kilometres of existing hedgerow to create a better habitat for wildlife.
We are asking parliamentarians to sign up to become Hedgerow Heroes and to call on the Secretary of State to make a firm commitment to our 40 per cent target. Fifty five have signed up to our campaign – but sadly they do not yet include any Dorset MPs. Our fellow campaigners, Dorset Climate Action Network, want to facilitate hedgerow restoration through their Great Big Dorset Hedge (GBDH) Survey project. Dorset CPRE members are helping with this too.
John Calder, who has a farm in Charmouth, is helping to start that journey by designing the hedgerow surveys on the major trails that traverse our county – the Jubilee Trail, Stour Valley Way and Brit Valley Way among others. Hopefully this will start a conversation in every parish they visit. The aim is to bring together volunteers and/or contractors with landowners who want to have their hedgerows assessed, then restored or extended.
Hedgerows in Toller Porcorum
In September various volunteers, including those from Dorset Wildlife Trust (DWT) and Dorset CPRE, made their observations on nearly a mile of the Jubilee Trail to the west of the DWT’s Kingcombe Centre in West Dorset. They looked at what species are in a hedge, found one English Elm tree, and used the Adams Condition Code infographics sheet to determine the distinct stages of the life cycle of a hedgerow. Almost every hedge surveyed had an interesting story to tell but they found a particularly wonderful old pathway in Mount Pleasant Lane. It was far too important historically and complex structurally to fit tidily into the streamlined hedgerow assessment process that has been developed for the GBDH project. It is worth so much more than that, so they added a sheet especially on it.
Hopefully data collected will be added later to a Quantum GIS database so everything can be recorded in one place and then used in mapping software such as Dorset Explorer. This will help to identify the hedges that have already been surveyed and sections that may need additional planting. If you would like to join John and other volunteers on future surveys, or find out more about the GBDH project, please visit www.dorsetcan.org/hedge.html.
Hedgerows in North Dorset
In 2000, our future CPRE president, Bill Bryson, wrote: ‘For well over a thousand years hedgerows have been a defining attribute of rural England, the stitching that holds the fabric of the countryside together. From a distance they give the landscape form and distinction. Up close they give it life, filling fields and byways with birdsong and darting insects and the furtive rustles of rodents … Hedgerows don’t merely enhance the countryside. They make it.’
Nowhere is this more true than in the pastoral landscape of North Dorset, with the added realisation of the key role hedgerows can play in halting biodiversity decline and tackling climate change. Thomas Hardy’s “Vale of the Little Dairies”, the Blackmore Vale, is characterised by its irregular patchwork of small fields divided by ancient hedgerows. Some are Bronze Age or Neolithic in origin. They may have been boundaries then, but now we need them for other reasons.
Please consider planting a new hedgerow as well as more trees. They are vital for our own survival.
We’re looking for an enthusiastic and ambitious person to join our Development Team, ideally with previous web agency and/or software developer experience, to work on new and exciting digital projects and mobile apps.
12-months ago we launched a new app product – called Holidaymaker – to the tourism and hospitality sector, which is seeing fantastic growth. So, this is the perfect opportunity for an ambitious and hardworking individual to put their coding skills to use, and to make their mark on a great new product and within a growing digital agency.
You have:
What makes you special?
What we can offer you:
Hours:
Full-time (37.5 hours per week), Monday-Friday
Salary:
£25K-£32K – dependent on skills and experience
Permanent role with an initial 6-month probationary period
Location:
Poundbury, Dorchester, Dorset
Required experience:
Web or software developer experience: 2 years (professional)
How to apply:
Please send your CV, covering email, including GitHub page (or similar) with links to any apps you’ve worked on. If you are selected for interview, we will want to have a friendly, detailed conversation about your work, including looking at and discussing code on your projects.
Preference will be given to candidates who can provide examples of relevant work or projects. We’d love to see apps or digital projects you’ve developed that can be used by us to review your application and discussed as part of the interview process.
We will consider recent graduates if you can demonstrate projects.
Email – [email protected]
Key Digital is looking for a Digital Marketing Executive with a flair for paid ads to join our team. You will have experience in paid search as well as experience with SEO and social media marketing. Copy writing and creative are also great skills to have for this varied role.
You will work with the team to plan and deliver strategic digital campaigns to meet our clients’ objectives. Your ability to interpret data and provide insights will play a key role in delivering results for our clients.
In addition to being a supportive team player you will be capable of managing accounts and working autonomously to deliver projects where required.
This role requires you to be customer-focused, proactive, and positive with a passion for paid digital marketing that combines creative thinking with your analytical mind.
We work with clients big and small across a variety of industries and are passionate about unlocking their online potential and driving growth. We have a strong focus on the tourism and hospitality sector, so experience in these fields would be an advantage.
Day to day
Skills & experience
Why choose Key Digital?
Salary
£24K to £28K D.O.E
Location
Poundbury, Dorchester, Dorset
Required experience:
Digital marketing experience: 3+ years minimum
How to apply
If you like the idea of working as part of our fun, hard-working team, then please get in touch by emailing a copy of your CV and a covering letter telling us how you fit the bill.
Email – [email protected]
Closing date: Sunday 4th December 2022
Interviews: w/c 12th December 2022
NO AGENCIES PLEASE
Key Digital are looking for a Digital Marketing Executive with great writing skills to join our team and work on different client campaigns. You will be responsible for driving audience engagement and customer sales.
You will work closely with clients to understand the needs of their business. You will develop and deploy digital marketing campaigns, with innovative content, social media and e-shot elements.
Apart from your great content skills, you should have experience using SEO techniques to improve search rankings and visibility.
We work with clients big and small across a variety of industries, with a strong focus on the hospitality and tourism sector. We help clients unlock their online potential and always go that extra mile to help them succeed.
Day to day
Skills & experience
Why choose Key Digital?
Become part of a talented and super friendly team
Flexible working available – 3 days per week in the office
Opportunity to work with a range of great clients across different sectors
Training and development opportunities
Pension Scheme
Generous holiday allowance
Salary
£23K to £26K D.O.E
Location
Poundbury, Dorchester, Dorset
Required experience:
Digital marketing experience: 3 years minimum
How to Apply
If you like the idea of working as part of our fun, hard-working team, then please get in touch by emailing a copy of your CV and a covering letter telling us how you fit the bill. We are a busy agency and looking for someone with the skills to hit the ground running and enhance our existing digital marketing team.
Email – [email protected]
Closing date: Sunday 4th December 2022
Interviews: w/c 12th December 2022
NO AGENCIES PLEASE
Full-time, all year round
Clayesmore School is located in the village of Iwerne Minster in the shadow of the Iron Age Fort of Hambledon Hill. The breath-taking scenery isn’t really what makes working at Clayesmore a joy. What really makes the school standout is the warmth of the people and the culture and kindness that underpins everything we do.
We have an exciting opportunity for an Assistant Chef to join our team of talented and experienced staff. Clayesmore prides itself in providing a comprehensive, in-house fresh food service to its pupils and staff.
The ideal candidate will be experienced and confident in high volume catering and be flexible, and able to work as part of a team.
This is a great opportunity to work in catering with primarily daytime shifts. Benefits include a non-contributory pension scheme, Death in Service benefits, a free meal each day and free membership of the Clayesmore Sports Facilities. 6 weeks holiday per year plus bank holidays.
Accommodation may be available for the successful candidate.
Please feel free to ring the HR department on 01747 813213 if you would like to discuss this role. Further information can be found on our website: https://clayesmore.com/work-for-us/
Closing date: 8:00am on Monday 12 December 2022
Clayesmore is committed to the safeguarding and promotion of children’s and young people’s welfare and expects all staff and volunteers to share in this commitment.
Rewilding Wild Woodbury – Dorset Wildlife Trust’s project records more than 1,100 species in its first year
A year into the Wild Woodbury rewilding project at Bere Regis and surveys have already recorded an uplift in the biodiversity and abundance of species moving onto the site. Over the last year, the land has been allowed to regenerate naturally, which has increased the biodiversity and abundance of wildlife. Staff and volunteers have recorded more than 1,100 species in this summer’s surveys, and eight Red List birds (of conservation concern) have been confirmed to be breeding at Wild Woodbury.
Skylarks have increased from just two singing males last year to 18 counted this summer. No tree pipits or woodlark were recorded in 2021 but a breeding pair of each has been sighted raising juveniles this year. Though there’s no previous data for them, 28 yellowhammers have been counted this year.
A rising number of juvenile birds have been spotted across the site too, including cuckoo, whinchat and nightjar.
Lesser quaking grass
A dry spring and the mass of emerging pollinators in the former arable fields helped to increase the invertebrate population. Butterfly transects tracked more than 200 meadow brown butterflies as well as silver-washed fritillary and painted lady on the wing. The hot summer weather increased moth activity, attracting rarer species such as dingy mocha.
Invertebrate specialists amassed more than 200 species of beetles, bugs and spiders, some of which have only a handful of records in Dorset.
Large clumps of the nationally-scarce lesser quaking grass appeared, offering an excellent food source for many finches including goldfinch and linnet, and for yellowhammers.. Narrow-leaved lungwort, red hemp nettle and three species of orchid – including southern marsh orchid – are present on the site, as are small populations of cobalt crust fungi.
The restoration of natural processes on the site should provide the right conditions for many species to return in greater numbers next year.
Nature’s regeneration
With an ambitious aim of building an exemplar for sustainable land use to tackle the climate and ecological crises, the early years of the project were always going to be about letting nature take the lead, allowing the land to gently regenerate and giving nature more space. But of course, that doesn’t mean simply abandoning the land! The Wild Woodbury team, partners and volunteers have spent much of the year conducting surveys and collecting data on ecology, soil, hydrology, species and water quality to provide baselines for monitoring and future analysis.
Restoring a landscape and making space for nature on this scale takes time, but it is extraordinary to see all that has been achieved in just one year and to witness the abundance of wildlife species already calling Wild Woodbury home.
Discover more about Wild Woodbury at: dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk/wildwoodbury
Join the RSPB at Arne nature reserve this December for one of the biggest conservation events in the country. Invasive pine trees from forestry plantations have taken over the heathland.
Your help is needed to remove them – restoring the heath, saving the rare animals that call it home, and maybe bagging yourself a sustainable Christmas to take home too!
Over the Pull a Pine weekend, visitors can explore the Dorset heath at RSPB Arne while helping pull up the invasive pine saplings, giving the reserve’s special wildlife a home. Then cut your own larger pine tree to take home for festive decorations or a sustainable Christmas tree!
Throughout this special weekend visitors can enjoy the festive village with live music, an outdoor kitchen serving winter warmers, stalls selling local and festive wares, FREE festive crafting for children, and partner stalls including Wareham Fire Brigade, and Urban Heaths. Get your wellies on, dig out your hats and scarves, and join in for a wonderful festive day in nature.
Saturday 3rd and Sunday 4th December, 10am to 3pm (last entry 2pm). Advance booking is essential – tickets NOT available on the weekend. Book tickets here for £15.50 (under 18’s FREE, ticket still required)
Pies, pasties and sausages are on the menu at Yeovil-based Wild and Game as they promote the use of wild British game into our diets. Rachael Rowe reports
It’s that season when thoughts turn to pheasant and venison dishes, but one local company is making British game a year-round food dish. Steve Frampton, the managing director of Yeovil-based Wild and Game, explained how it all began in 2017:
‘We really wanted to sell more British game – most of the game from British estates is sold to European markets. We want to change that and encourage more people to buy our own. Game is a great commodity in this country.
‘People think that game meat is an expensive meat. The Victorians started that by making it an exclusive food. But it is actually in abundance, especially venison and partridge. There’s also lots of people who don’t know how to cook it, or don’t have a taste for it.
‘All our meat is wild game. We source it from British game dealers and British estates (including in Dorset and the West Country). Game dealers will buy from British shoots and estates, and farms for meat like venison. The meat is processed quickly, so we have breast meat, whole birds, and also pies and pates.’
What about the shooting season which will affect pheasant, for example?
‘Our meat is processed very quickly and then frozen, so it’s available throughout the year. It’s not seasonal and there’s no reason why British game can’t be available all year round. We extend the season beyond the season.
‘And wild game has a lower carbon footprint. It’s also lower in cholesterol than other red meats. Some people are concerned about the carbon footprint with traditional farming right now and looking at vegetarian lifestyles; game meat is a good halfway house as the meat is all wild.’
Tell us about the team?
‘We have three people at the distribution warehouse and three working on the business side. We also have an extended network of game dealers, obviously.”
The most popular products?
‘Sausages, all year round! Especially the venison and pheasant sausage. We’re also bringing back our grouse sausages and we have a pheasant and caramelised onion variety too. Other meats like pigeon and rabbit are also popular – I can’t get enough rabbits to sell.’
Are you just mail order?
‘We are. But we do supply a few shops, too. COVID was the main reason for developing the mail order side as the market virtually collapsed during the pandemic. But there’s a massive demand for game meat.
‘Everything is delivered frozen. People don’t eat game every day so they can put what they don’t want to use immediately in the freezer. Once it is cooked, most can be refrozen.’
If you haven’t visited the Wild and Game website, take a look even if just for the recipes (though do look at the meat of course!). If you’re in the “I don’t know what to do with it” camp there are many interesting and creative ideas on how to cook game, with lots of inspiration for meals. So who is responsible for them?
‘Jenny Price, our PR consultant, and Mark Robbins, our operations director, design the recipes. We developed a range of them purely because some people are frightened of cooking game. When they look at our site, they can always find one that fits. We also do subscription boxes of game and a recipe booklet is included, so it gets people thinking. People are always looking for more ideas and recipes.’
Your biggest challenge?
‘Getting people to eat game! People have this idea that game is expensive and that it needs to be hung for a long time which results in the strong “gamey” taste – that’s not always a taste for modern people. Our animals are processed very quickly so that strong game flavour isn’t there.’
What are you most proud of?
‘Really, simply getting to where we are today. We now have a customer base of 32,000 but it has been hard work.’
So what’s next?
‘We’re focused on getting game into the British diet. We’re about to launch a range of six ready meals. A lot of work has gone into the technical side and sampling – it’s a long process. We also have a luxury pies range. We’re always looking to try something interesting with game meat for the longer term prospects of the business.’
The review
Growing up I used to eat a lot of pheasant as Dad belonged to a local farming shoot. Like Wild and Game we didn’t hang game birds for a long time as we weren’t keen on the stronger gamey taste. Having had to clean a few pheasants in my time, it was a pleasant change to receive a sample pack where all that processing had been done for me! Everything was well insulated so it could be simply popped in the freezer until ready to use and the delivery time from the courier was accurate. The recipe booklet really got me thinking about how to cook something different, in ways I would never have thought about (Chinese -style orange pheasant anyone?). The meat was very high quality and tasted delicious. I’m now a big fan of the venison and pheasant sausages and I’m looking forward to creating a Moroccan-style chilli with some venison mince.
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