Rural News

One of the Aire Valley’s last surviving family-run farms risks being “lost forever” under plans to replace it with an innovation centre, descendants of Saltaire’s founders and patrons claimed.

Winter and the festive season provide a host of quirky events. There are Boxing Day dips in the North Sea, an annual village cricket match between Malham and Appletreewick often played in snow and then there’s a ‘thrash’ of a different kind in Welwick near Patrington in the East Riding on December 27.

Much emphasis and pressure is put on obtaining qualifications but it appears there is still no substitute for enthusiasm, vigour and a will to win. Paul Kitchen left school at 15 with nothing, but he hadn’t been twiddling his thumbs.

“I’ll just pop over to the teashop and pick up your phone,” I said, “I’ll be back in a minute”. As it happens, I was back in less than a minute, because what welcomed me as I walked through the teashop kitchen door needed a swift team effort.

British pig production costs may have risen again in the third quarter of 2016 but a faster rise in pig prices means many producer’s are enjoying margins that put them back in black for the first time in two years.

On Sunday I took myself off to a craft fair at the local hall and found some lovely items I simply couldn’t live without. I ordered a key ring - of sheep, of course - which I shall pick up soon.

At the end of a winter afternoon, starlings are coming in to roost, one of the most spectacular sights in birdwatching and known as a murmuration.

It proved a prize-winning appearance for members of Yorkshire’s agricultural community at an event billed as the UK’s premier winter stock and meat trade show.

The viability of some of Yorkshire’s most vulnerable farm businesses is at risk because many are still waiting to receive the rest of their European support payments, the National Farmer’s Union has warned.

The Chancellor’s measures to stimulate the economy have been met with mixed reactions from countryside groups.

Thursday nights in Skeffling, deep in the heart of South Holderness, see live music performed to its 150 residents. That’s when arable farmer, land agent director and livestock auctioneer Charlie Hill of Laurel Farm swaps his tractor for his bass guitar and rehearses with The Pub Lads, a band that raises thousands of pounds for charity.

Farmers provided a real farmyard experience to pupils in Selby and Hull as part of a series of school visits across Yorkshire and the North East to explain how the food on their dinner plates is made.

Rural payments chief Mark Grimshaw has publicly insisted he is the right man to deliver a vastly improved support payments service to farmers ahead of the new payment window which opens on December 1.

Wagons stacked high with bales heading from east to west have been a familiar sight on motorways in autumn and winter for decades. It is the cereal crop growing areas of Yorkshire meeting the straw needs of Cumbria, southwest Scotland, Lancashire and Wales, but for those involved in the sector the business has changed hugely in recent years.

When Peter Easterby built his first trailer in 1974 he knew nothing of the market he was going to sell into, all he knew was that he had completed his apprenticeship as a welder and fabricator and wanted to make things in addition to the farm gates he had started off with at his father Geoff’s Ewecote Farm in Farndale.

I don’t know about you but for many years in the breakfast cereal stakes, I have to say I have been a Cornflakes man. I have in the past, on and off, dabbled with Weetabix but over recent years I have been banned from going near those golden bricks of breakfast, for various reasons.

Not long ago public opposition to a proposed sell-off of forests forced the Government to withdraw its proposals. Three years later and political plans for our woodlands are currying greater favour.

One of the joys of going to speak to groups is that I get to see parts of our wonderful countryside that I wouldn’t otherwise have no cause to visit. I learn a great deal and find some lovely places and bits of Yorkshire in particular - and occasionally a bit further afield - to admire. I meet some wonderful people and for this I am very grateful. This week has been one such period.

After autumn gales an odd little bird, the grey phalarope, turns up in Britain – one was present on D reservoir at the Tophill Low reserve in East Yorkshire.