Field & Stream

Look out girls, Humphrey the Ram is warming up!

by Tria Stebbing

The time is running away with us and the evenings are drawing in. Nature is providing us with an assortment of goodies over the field currently, although the weather has thrown us a wild card in what we are foraging.

In the last few years the sloes have been plentiful – this year, however, we are looking at a much-reduced crop. It was not worth risking them and waiting for the first frost, so they have been picked and popped in the freezer, ready to be added to gin for a Christmas tipple.

We have a bumper crop of Rosehip, more than we have ever seen, so I am currently experimenting with making syrup. Rosehip is known for its high vitamin C and antiinflammatory properties – easing the pain in a farmer’s stiff joints can only be a good thing.

The hedgerow is a vibrant shade of red, with a hint of blackberry, but the blackberries have gone over, leaving plenty for the birds to finish off. They were early and very sweet back in August – we have loads left on the bushes, but sadly they are bitter and dry.

The other surprise has been the crab apples, apples in general seem to have done very well – as you drive through Dorset you can’t help but notice the glut of apples in the trees and on the ground. The sheep love the windfalls and small amounts can be fed along with carrots to boost vitamins before the ram going in. Our girls have them as a treat, mixed in with their ewe nuts.

We topped both fields a few weeks ago, when the ground was like brown dry parched dust. It has paid off as we now

Rosehip is known for its high vitamin C and anti-inflammatory properties

have paddocks of lush green shoots. It is a good time to spray the thistles as we are grazing the flock on summer grazing currently away from the field. The thistles need to come out as they ruin a bale of hay and when in situ in the field, the sheep graze around them wasting a valuable patch of grass, leaving prickly tufts sticking up seeding themselves and making more.

The village has its Apple Day in the community orchard next week, a community coming together to celebrate a great year for the apple and a chance to press them and make delicious apple juice. Harvest festival is being celebrated in local churches and it is for us a moment to prepare for the next stage at the field – the introduction of the Ram. Look out girls Humphrey is warming up.

Wiltshire Wildlife Trust calls on public to defend nature

Wiltshire Wildlife Trust is asking its members, supporters and the wider public to defend nature by contacting MPs and local councillors to voice concerns over new government proposals.

The Trust, alongside other Wildlife Trusts and environmental charities such as the RSPB and National Trust, is extremely worried about recent government announcements that it says pose serious threats to nature, climate and food security, such as threatening to revoke hundreds of laws that currently protect wild places and ensure standards for water quality, pollution and the use of pesticides.

The government has also decided to ‘review’ the Environmental Land Management schemes; instead of rewarding farmers for restoring nature, preventing pollution from entering rivers and climate-proofing their businesses, the Wildlife Trusts are concerned that there could be a return to simply paying landowners based on the area of land they own.

The Trust, which looks after a number of local nature reserves, including The Devenish, Langford Lakes, Nadder Island, Blackmoor Copse, Cockey Down, Coombe Bissett Down and Middleton Down, is also concerned about the ban on fracking being lifted in England and the new planning and infrastructure bill, as well as investment zones as part of the growth plan, which they believe will weaken vital protections for habitats and wildlife.

Gary Mantle, CEO of Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, said: “Vital legal protections for wildlife are at risk, fossil fuel extraction is being favoured over renewables, and the government is going back on plans to reward farmers for managing land in a nature-friendly way.

“These proposals have sparked outrage by politicians of all political persuasion, farmers, campaigners, and members of the public – many of whom feel anxious that the government is not tackling the nature and climate crises with the urgency required. We are calling on the public to contact their MPs and share their concerns. These actions will affect us all – the communities where we live, our wild places, food security, and our futures. These crises pose monumental challenges, and recent proposals by this government will only make things worse.”

The government’s Food Security Report, published last year, identified climate change and biodiversity loss as the biggest threats to future food production. The Trust encourages farming in harmony with nature but fears the deregulation proposed by the government will lead to unhealthy river systems, less wildlife and land that’s unable to adapt to climate change.

Field & Stream

Close at hand, the basket stood with nuts from brown October’s wood

by A J Selby

Ask any group of people to name their favourite season and many will plump for spring or summer.

For some, however, the autumn holds a special place in their hearts – this season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. No other time of year demonstrates the irresistible urge in our DNA to see us through the winter to come. Blackberries and cobnuts, damsons and chestnuts, all picked to preserve and keep for the coming cold weather – in the garden produce is frozen or stored, in the kitchen jams and chutneys are bottled.

Our distant ancestors dried the meat of wild animals and made warm clothing from their fur. Our more recent ones lived or died by the bounty of the harvest and how many fat cattle and sheep they had to survive the winter. As Shakespeare writes in The Tempest: “Earth’s increase, foison plenty, barns and garners never empty.” Foison means a rich harvest. We are lucky to have no such worries but the primeval urge is still ingrained in us to stock up and eat comfort food to ready our bodies for the winter and leaner times.

We can now enjoy autumn for the spectacular colours across our landscape and we are fortunate to have several places in the area to see this rich tapestry – Stourhead, Longleat, Duncliffe, to name but three. The colour formation in leaves is a complex process involving photosynthesis, the reduction of water in the leaves through a process whereby the leaf veins close off, and the pigmentation process of carotenoids – orange and yellows – and anthocyanins – reds and purples. In autumn the shortening days causes the slowing down of chlorophyll production. This fades the green colour while at the same time

Autumn holds a special place in many hearts PHOTO: Joe/Pixabay

the yellow and orange carotenes that are masked by the green in summer become visible, and the sugars trapped in the leaves as they die back are converted to anthocyanins bringing out the red hues.

Most English woodlands are shaded yellow through orange to brown, with mostly the maples, viburnums and dogwoods offering reds. But what shades they are? The pattern of the different species, especially when viewed from afar, creates a stunning effect that only nature can offer us. On a clear and crisp morning as the mist rises from the valley and is burnt off by the rising sun, the vista of mature deciduous woodland is a thing of inherent beauty.

Venture into those woods and take in its calmness as the bird song, so intense in the spring, is muted to almost complete silence. As you feel the crunch of the leaves beneath your feet be careful not to tread on emerging fungi. After a warm summer, the autumn rains and the residual heat in the ground are a perfect combination for the fruiting spores of a myriad of different fungi, from tiny, nay almost invisible species, to the larger and more familiar ‘toadstools’. They will grow where there is any decaying matter, from leaf mould to rotting timber to open grassland.

Many of our popular mushrooms are both poisonous and wonderfully named. The red toadstool with white spots of Disney fame is the fly agaric – poisonous and enchanting. Then there is the panther cap – a beautiful brown cap dotted by numerous white-ridged spots, the funeral cap, Satan’s boletus and the destroying angel – was there ever a better named fungi? It is ghostly white and not that common. The best known and the biggest killer is the death cap. The medical summary for the symptoms, both for the death cap and the destroying angel is: effects will start several hours after eating. It begins with severe vomiting, diarrhoea and stomach pains. Then follows what appears to be a full recovery. A few days later you’ll die of kidney or liver failure! There is no known antidote and 90 per cent of people who ingest it will not survive. This mushroom has caused the most recorded fatalities in the UK. They have a pale olive-green cap, white gills and a bulbous base with a white collar. Be careful. Be very careful.

However, if you know what you are doing there are many delights to forage for. Giant puffballs are unmistakeable and are found in pasture, and can be sliced steak-sized, given a minute each side in a dry pan, then dipped in beaten egg and breadcrumbs and re-fried. The scarlet elf cups are found on decaying wood and are stemless and look just like the ears of an elf. Blewits grow in rings in pasture and are easily identified by their beautiful thick violet stems and are used in casseroles and stews. Big fat ceps are a culinary delight and sold in markets on the continent, as are golden chanterelles and parasol mushrooms.

My favourite is the shaggy ink cap – found in grassland, it is a small cone-shaped fungi that matures from the ends of the hood, turning ink-black and melting upwards until just the stem remains. And finally, the field mushroom – not as common now as in the past but a real bounty when it shows itself. Due to the poisonous nature of some fungi, always be sure of your identification before eating or ask an expert. There are some amazing flavours and textures to be enjoyed but, and I can’t emphasise this enough, safety first.