Voices of the Countryside (Scribehound)

This July marks my ten-year anniversary working in the media and rather self-indulgently, I have been reflecting on the very exciting, albeit chaotic journey my life has taken and where it all began, at the BBC.

I’m aware that the BBC often gets a bad rep in farming circles, receiving criticism for not showing enough interest in rural issues or sensationalising headlines around agriculture’s impact on the environment.

I have at times been on the side criticising my former employees and have even sat down with the Head of BBC Scotland News, sharing my concerns about past documentaries which I felt unfairly represented agriculture.

However, I am unbelievably grateful to the BBC for putting me on the path I am on today, and I know without doubt, that my time spent as a researcher and producer during my four years at BBC Scotland, has contributed hugely to why I am pursuing my Nuffield Farming Scholarship today and the good I intend to deliver with it.

The Norwegian Government has shut down salmon fishing on some of the country’s most storied rivers. Should it serve as a warning to us all?

Tom’s grandfather had a fine death. He was discovered lying on a gravel bank of the river Orkla in Norway, his hat tilted to shield his face from the sun. His fishing rod rested neatly beside him, and next to that was a bright 42lb salmon.

The family theory is that after fighting such a fish, at such an age, he decided to take a nap and drifted peacefully from this life into the next. He was repatriated back to North Norfolk and cremated. Half his ashes were buried in the local churchyard, alongside the 42lber, and the other half were fired out of his punt gun over the marsh.

Tom’s grandfather was one of many British sportsmen who traveled to Norway to fish. From the 1830s until the outbreak of the Second World War, British grandees would set sail each June, making the fjords their home for a month or more. And boy, did they catch some salmon.

Victorian and Edwardian sporting literature is chock full of enormous silver fish battled under the midnight sun. These aristocratic tourists become known to the locals as the ‘salmon lords’. They bought farms, fishing beats and built lodges, many of which are still owned by their descendants. Most of these lodges remain fishing meccas today, attracting well heeled salmon anglers from around the world.

Come the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, I shall be in Team GB - so long as they change the events

What impressed you most at the Olympics opening ceremony this year? Axelle Saint-Cirel’s magnificent rendition of La Marseillaise, surely the world’s most stirring national anthem? The can-can dancers? Or perhaps Alexandre Kantorow tinkling away on his piano despite the deluge?

For me, I’m ashamed to say, it was my unfamiliarity with some of the countries represented. Yes, I have my Geography O-level and an old Times Atlas bought at the village church fete but Sao Tome and Principe, Burkina Faso and Eswatini required some red-faced Googling, for which I apologise to their citizens.

And not just for my ignorance.

Whenever I see a small, proud nation at the Olympic ceremony I have a secret desire to join its national team, partly because I’m good at waving to crowds (albeit they’re unaware) but mostly because I’m an absolute gold-medal hope at shindigs and nowhere, I bet, parties harder than the Olympic Village - a feeling confirmed by a mate who’d stayed there throughout the 2012 London bash.

Patrick Galbraith learns about offal and why chefs love cooking with it. First, he heads to Norfolk with his friend Sachin Kureishi to shoot some woodpigeons and some squirrels. Mission accomplished, he returns to London where the young butcher, chef, and offal devotee, Flossy Philips, comes over to his flat to cook some really impressive dishes, using squirrel and pigeon offal as well herbs foraged in the local park. 

Flossy, who runs an offal project called ‘Floffal’, believes that innards are the very essence of a creature and they should be treated with as much gastronomic respect as the most expensive cuts of meat. 

You can follow Flossy on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/floffal/

The wine they drink, which comes from Walsingham Vineyards, can be found here: https://walsingham.co/collections/wine

We’ve undoubtedly all seen wood pigeons but did you know they are one of Britain’s biggest agricultural pests? It’s estimated they cause over £75m-£100m worth of damage to farmers’ crops every year. They are also delicious and are highly prized, gastronomically, in pubs and restaurants. 

Patrick sets off for the Cotswolds to shoot some pigeons over a pea crop they’ve been feasting on. He spends an afternoon with Tom Payne who probably knows more about pigeons and pigeon shooting than anybody else in the countryside today. Tom tells him all about the history of pigeon shooting, why it’s necessary, and he also explains to Patrick why he finds woodpigeons so fascinating. 

Patrick then heads to P&S Butchers, in Holt, a small Norfolk market town. Simon Wade, who set the shop up, tells Patrick that game, such as pigeon, is a big part of what they do, and interestingly enough, the London crowd who often come down on holiday, are very keen on the game they sell.

I unearth some home truths about nature writing and try to explain why it matters

 

For the last three mornings, I’ve been up at 4.00 am murdering adverbs.

I have just finished my book on Britain’s coastline, and my agent thinks I need to reduce the word count by about 4,000, of which at least a quarter will come from adverbs. She is right. Adverbs are what I do when I want to use emphasis to camouflage uncertainty (‘absolutely’), indicate humility when I don’t necessarily feel it (‘possibly’) or can’t think of anything else (‘actually’ etc), and they are always first to go before the machine guns when the book goes over the top. I adore them, but it turns out I am in a minority. Next time I go on Mastermind - (oh, yes, I did; about 2007; specialist subject: Flanders and Swann. Long story)- adverbs will be what I take with me as my specialist subject.

If the editing process is a bit like kicking out children that you have spent a lifetime rearing, then the actual researching and writing is quite straightforward so long as you know what kind of book you want at the end of it. Many books start as one thing, and then gradually morph into another but, fundamentally, there are five categories of nature book...

Patrick Galbraith plunges into the fascinating world of English wine. He chats to Henry Jeffreys, the celebrated drinks journalist, about his highly-acclaimed new book Vines in a Cold Climate: the people behind the English wine revolution. Henry tells him that the world of English wine is still very much in its infancy – he also paints a picture of an industry full of extraordinary people who will stop at nothing to produce the best product they can. Henry tells Patrick about the history of wine in this country and how important it is that winemakers get their branding right.  

Patrick then, based on Henry’s recommendation, drives to Flint Vineyard, on the Norfolk / Suffolk border, where hares lollop among the vines and sheep eat the weeds. Flint is one of the most interesting English winemakers around. They do things their way and the results, Patrick learns when they get a few bottles out, are extraordinary. 

Henry Jeffrey’s book is available to order here.----more----

Beyond the Hedge is brought to you by Scribehound, a digital space where the most important conversations about the countryside can take place.

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Before I continue I'd like to just confirm I couldn't smell any patchouli (or BO) and there were no hairy armpits on show (to my knowledge). Back to this in a moment.

The first was a screening of Isabella Tree's Wilding. A documentary shot at the Knepp Estate in Horsham, West Sussex. The second, I was on a panel at a local agricultural college hosted by Royal Agricultural Society of England and Innovation for Agriculture, the title was Farm of the Future.

Next we went to a screening of Roots So Deep. An American 'documentary series all about inventive farmers and maverick scientists building a path to solving climate change with hooves, heart and soil.' And finally, the crescendo, Groundswell Festival aka farming Glastonbury. A two day festival in Hertfordshire, a stone's throw from London. 

The classic Macnab - salmon, stag and grouse - may be costly but try one of the variants and the experience will never be forgotten

What would be your choice for Desert Island Discs? I pondered on this while the Sealyhams worked a brash pile for a rat. Plastic Bertrand’s Ca Plane Pour Moi definitely, along with Noel Coward’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen if the BBC allowed it (unlikely). Then the sound of curlew in winter. And next, the scream of my old Sharpe's of Aberdeen trout reel.

The old girl was built almost 30 years ago and she was giving her banshee wail yesterday as the line ripped out attached to a very cross rainbow fooled by a home-tied Shuttlecock Emerger. In he came, the priest delivered the last rites and it was time for a cuppa, at which point one of my fellow Rods noticed the engraving on the reel’s side: Macnab Challenge 1998. 

“So, what did you start with?”, he asked. “The salmon, the stag or the grouse?”

“Actually, it was none of those,” I replied. “It was a goose.”

Looking ahead to the new grouse season, I think about my own birds in Galloway and the national picture at a time of great change and upheaval in Scotland.

 

The signs are set for a decline into autumn, and the moor grass has turned into straw. The start of the grouse season is upon us, and there’s a certain amount to look forward to in the hills of home. Despite some rough weather in the middle of June, the hatch in Galloway was fine and clear when it came in the last week of May. There were grouse chicks in the moss from the 27th, and some of these little birds were bold enough by the time the weather changed that it didn’t faze them.

Grouse which lost their eggs at the first attempt were still sitting when the cold rain came, so today there’s something of a split between well-grown, almost-adult birds which fly strongly when flushed and tiny little cheepers which buzz around in the moss like bees. The next problem is heather beetle damage which became obvious in early July on several of the estates where I work across the Southern Uplands. This can be a major issue in the short term as grouse abandon beetly areas, but the damage is rarely so bad as it seems at first and repair is usually straightforward.

When forecasts are posted about grouse prospects each summer, they often refer to the most productive areas of moorland in northern England and north east Scotland. From the highest point of my hill, I can look forty miles east towards the big North Pennine moors. Grouse moor management has become ever more localised over the past few years, particularly since large areas of the west have been marginalised and abandoned for sporting interests. Not many grouse will be shot in Galloway this season, and the sport itself now has most of its grouse eggs in a few little baskets. It makes sense that when cold rain blows across the North Pennines at the wrong moment, an entire season can be wiped out in a day or two.

It’s hard to believe but during the Second World War it was only legal to make one type of regulation Cheddar in Britain – making any other sort of cheese was banned. Sixty years on, however, the British cheese industry is flying. There are over 750 different types, some of them ancient and others very new, and prizes for cheesemaking are hotly contested. 

Patrick sets off for Norfolk to visit Mrs Temple, an environmentally-conscious dairy farmer and renowned cheesemaker. She shows him around the dairy and then takes him to see her Brown Swiss cattle that graze in the water meadow on their farm. 

Amazingly, the Temples use waste whey from the cheesemaking process to fuel their biodigestor, which provides power for four hundred houses. 

After visiting Mrs Temple, Patrick pops by the Walsingham Farm Shop to pick up some of Mrs Temple’s famous Binham Blue, which their best selling cheese by some way. Then he drives back to London and rings up Angus Birditt, the author of A Portrait of British Cheese: A celebration of artistry, regionality, and recipes. Angus has travelled the country talking to cheesemakers and he believes that to understand cheese is to understand rural Britain. 

You can order Angus’ book here: https://www.londoncheesemongers.co.uk/products/a-portrait-of-british-cheese

You can buy Mrs Temple’s cheese here: https://walsingham.co/products/mrs-temples-binham-blue-cheese

I got bored of waiting and got lucky with hope and practical activism

 

Don’t laugh, but I once nearly went into mainstream politics.

Never mind when and for whom, but let me reassure you that the dream was a short one. I came to the early conclusion that there was a limited amount that a thin-skinned Etonian of no settled world view and the attention span of a mayfly had to offer people fighting real battles in their everyday lives, let alone deal with volcanically unpredictable leaders elsewhere in the world.

Besides, there was always that comment in one of my earliest army reports in the back of my mind: ‘I fear that this man will go through life pushing doors marked ‘pull’. Precisely. As I said, don’t laugh.

I lost interest in politics and instead rediscovered the natural world. I spent the next two decades coming to understand that other than climate change, most of the environmental challenges that beset us are much easier, quicker, cheaper and less controversial to fix than we imagine.

When I walked through Britain in the spring of 2022, I saw evidence of this over and over again- re-wetted peat on Kinder Scout, a re-meandered tributary of the Tweed above Peebles, a regenerating ‘ancient’ forest in Glen Affric- and I have been seeing it ever since.

Over the last year and a half, I have walked another 2000 miles or so round the coast, and seen it again in the offshore no-take zones, the eagles on Mull, the transformation of Holkham in Norfolk and many other things besides. Nature is resilient. So long as you haven’t killed it off, as we did with the Great Auk, you can probably bring it back.

Decades of mismanagement and poor policy has left our rare and precious chalkstream environments in a perilous state

Two rare environments are close to my heart – Heather Moorland and Chalkstreams. Both are almost unique on a global scale and thus massively important.

You might think these are two very different environments; well, yes, they are – but there are many similarities. They are also supremely delicate; lack of management or the wrong sort can lead to damage taking a decade or more to repair.

I’ve been involved with grouse moors all my life – and have managed a famous stretch of the Middle Test for more than 40 years; this makes me a very old fart who’s experienced perhaps the most fundamental decades for both.

 

In today's increasingly urbanised and digital society, young people are more disconnected from nature and the countryside than ever before. But in the absence of any kind of national plan to re-engage them with wildlife and ecosystems, how can parents and caregivers encourage kids to take an interest in the natural world, and what are the pitfalls to watch out for? 

George Browne and Marcus Janssen discuss how they have shared their love of fieldsports with their children, and how this has fostered a love of nature in them. They swap theories about the right approaches - especially with very young kids - as well as their respective successes and the times when things have not gone according to plan. Links Subscribe to Scribehound

Marcus Janssen - The Joy and the Drama... but Mostly the Drama

Richard Negus - Crafting a Future: the Need for Rural Apprenticeships

Roger Morgan-Grenville - Less Serengeti, more Sheffield: combating nature illiteracy

 

Rewilding is swiftly becoming a religion - a belief system with little evidence to support its claims - but is this a sane way to manage our landscapes?

 

Re-wilding is a very clever idea. It is very difficult to be against re-wilding. It would be a bit like being against nostalgia. It has a vague warmth about it.  It has no downside because whatever happens, it will be what nature intended. 

It has another trick. It is whatever you want it to be. Anything from the local council stopping cutting the kerbside grass, through bison in pens, to planting vast forests on land that has been naturally treeless for millennia can be called re-wilding. There is a definition, but it is rambling, vague and that dreadful thing, 'a journey', and no one is really interested enough to check, so it's Liberty Hall.

In old-fashioned conservation, you try to conserve a habitat, a species, an ecosystem, or a natural or cultural landscape.  To do this you did things. It required continuous, regular or occasional action, and that needed management and the continuing commitment of resources. It also had the further handicap that because you had an objective your success in attaining that objective could be assessed and sometimes people might see that you had failed.

Happily with re-wilding all that failure nonsense is completely avoided. If the curlew go because the heather is waist deep, the redshank chicks are all predated, or the peat is dried out by invading birch and leaks CO2 like a tap, it is not your fault. You bear no responsibility. It is what nature intended.

Patrick Galbraith meets Marcus Armytage, Grand National-winning jockey and Scribehounder, at his home in Berkshire to find out what   it takes to win the most famous horse race in the world. Patrick learns about Marcus’ route into racing and why he never made the step from amateur to professional, despite still holding the record for the National.

Next Patrick visits legendary National Hunt trainer Oliver Sherwood, who trained two Hennesey Gold Cup winning horses, Arctic Call and Many Clouds. Oliver explains what it takes to become a successful National Hunt trainer and why dealing with owners is such a challenge. If you're curious about the countryside, subscribe to Scribehound to get daily reads from leading rural writers.

Patrick Galbraith goes out in search of the mysterious woodcock, a beloved bird of hunters, chefs and nature lovers the world over.

Patrick's journey begins in Suffolk with farmer, conservationist and writer Sam Carlisle, and Sam's Hungarian Vizsla, Merlin. The trio head into the woods in an attempt to bag a couple of birds for their lunch.

Later, Tim Maddams, the former River Cottage chef, offers his woodcock-cooking tips, and Sam shows Patrick his favourite way of preparing these remarkable and delicious birds.  

Finally, Patrick catches up with Owen Williams, a painter and woodcock conservationist. Owen discusses the complexities of woodcock management and helps Patrick to understand why the question of whether shooting woodcock is sustainable is more complicated than it might appear. Subscribe to Scribehound

How Olympic history should never forget it's rural roots, integrity, or the source of so many of our medallists

 

24 years ago, I experienced a wonderful example of good manners - and all about a sporting event taking place the other side of the world.

As Chairman of the Campaign for Shooting, I had been approached by Ian Coley, the Alex Ferguson of the British Olympic Clay Team, for sponsorship to rent the team an Australian base where they could quietly prepare for the Sydney Olympics, without any outside brouhaha. 

The young star of the team was Richard Faulds, who, to our great delight, went on to clinch gold. I had been watching on TV, very pleased at our investment of a few (very few) thousand pounds. Before Desmond Lynam (or whoever - that was probably a wee bit early in the morning for Des’s carefully manicured coiffure) announced the medal ceremony, my mobile rang. Bloody hell, I thought, I hope they’re not going to take long else I’ll miss the national anthem. Turns out it was Richard ringing to thank me. Wow! Now that sort of thoughtfulness was extraordinary then and maybe even rarer now. I do hope not.

Anyhow, moving forward 24 years to another Brit, Nathan Hales, winning Trap gold and I am tempted to reflect on the connections between the British countryside (and, frankly country sports of all sorts) and Olympic success. 

My faithful farm truck sits in the yard, not exactly sure how it is supposed to spend its days - or justify its hefty running costs. What's the future for such a loyal beast?

Join me, if you will, in some automotive anthropomorphism, and spare a thought for Tigger the Terracan, who sits in the farmyard, having a bit of an existential crisis.

Tigger, you see, is my farm 4x4, and, since our semi-retirement, it hasn’t had much in the way of work. When we were full-on farming, it was out and about most days: hauling, carrying, towing and giving lifts and shuttling me back and forth from my tractor and combine. And in all those tasks, it was pretty well unbeatable. But now its days are quieter. Almost too quiet.  

Let’s go back a couple of decades, though, to when Hyundai was a bit of an unknown quantity in the British motoring world.  In 2003, I was invited (as an F-list motoring journalist) to the launch of the Terracan in the North Yorkshire Moors. And as my test car made its way along a deep riverbed (not sure you’d be allowed to do that now) I was impressed. Here, I thought is an old school 4x4 of immense capability.

We all know commercial shooting is often one of the Achilles heels of the shooting debate but why do they need to survive, who do they help, what benefit do they bring and how do they need to adjust?

Commercial shooting seems to be a close second when it comes to criticism of the shooting community by the shooting community, as well as from outside it. Number One being raptor persecution. I do not shoot, and I could easily be swayed to be as negative about commercial shoots as I am about raptor persecution if I did not take the time to look harder at the situation.

As a member of the Why Moorland Matter volunteer team, there is no doubt raptor crime is the shooting industry’s Achilles heel and as a recent guest described “it is like a game of snakes and ladders, every time there is a raptor crime reported, our community slides to the bottom again.” However, there is no doubt that I have witnessed all the good shooting does, for people, communities, habitat and wildlife in general, if done right.

A day out with the Eastern Counties Mink Hunt is never dull nor dry. I ventured out with this wonderful group of eccentrics to recapture my lost youth and pass on the mink hunting baton to my son

 

I learned many life lessons on river banks in my early teens. I gleaned the art of stealth and concealment when watching wild trout and chub take naps, the only indication their piscine hearts still pumped was an occasional wave of a pectoral fin as they lay in their riffle beds.

I discovered if I shut up and stayed still, wildlife swiftly forgets your presence. Dippers would dip, kingfishers fish and otters would gambol, either dealing death to other river dwellers or playing energetic solo sports with stones, shells and twigs.

In those aquatic margins I also picked up a taste for botany, becoming well versed in the old country names for the wildflowers that delight in the lush edges. I’d challenge myself to mutter the names of tree species, plucking at the leaves of the branches that bowed to wetly kiss the bubbling surface of the running water below.

Much of this sodden education was in truth a by-product of the primary reason for my being on the water, that purpose being my pursuit of mink. During my senior school years, mink hunting was for me what fox hunting was to John Jorrocks, what football was to John Motson, what shagging and drinking was to Ollie Reed.

I loved it, it dogged my every waking moment and crept its way into my dreams, I wrote about it, painted its image, noted notable hunts and praiseworthy hounds. I took water temperatures and measured wind direction. I turned this humble form of venery, a form of hunting that the snootier foxhunters of the time derided as little better than rat catching, into an amalgam of science, high art and ecological survey.

Fieldsports, along with Israel and private schools, are red meat for the rabble of Labour backbenchers. As a public-school-educated trophy-hunter with a Jewish surname, I'm off to an internment camp.

Good intentions are wonderful things. In June 2024, they paved the way for 60,000 people to march in London alongside Chris Packham, Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil and the National Trust. They enjoyed a minestrone of competing ambitions and differing ideas on how to achieve them. Prior to the march, both the RSPB and National Trust defended their decisions to share a platform with organisations such as Extinction Rebellion, which is listed on the counter-terrorism police ‘Prevent’ programme of extremist ideologies.

 

Working summer jobs on farms did me a world of good. Could a programme to put 18 year olds to work on farms make the country a better place and help to fix our food systems?

 

I’m sorry to bring up the election again - it has been a fortnight so I’m sure you’ve been happily getting on with your life not thinking about politics, but something that was in the headlines in the early stages of the campaign has been gnawing away at me over the last few weeks.

You may recall that one of Rishi’s flagship proposals was to reintroduce national service for teenagers. It was widely panned as a somewhat desperate idea, and prompted a well-publicised tweet from the de facto spokesman for the Countryside, Jeremy Clarkson, suggesting that it would be a better option to get kids out working on farms.

As is often the case with Jezza’s outpourings, the response was somewhat mixed, with some ridiculing the idea, and others highlighting the difficulty in finding agricultural workers in a post-Brexit landscape. While Rishi’s plan will now never come to fruition, I think Clarkson might be onto something.

We pay a high price for the privilege of getting lost in the back country - but is it worth it?

 

I was not new to it - it was my third day hunting quail in Arizona so I knew what I should expect, but the frigid air that hit me was a surprise. I had never had to travel in the small hours before. It was necessary to get where we were going and leave enough of the early morning for hunting.

Joe appeared out of the night. His Ford F150 truck, fully tricked, crept into the parking lot off the interstate. Nothing that big should move that quietly in the dark. 

Joe’s wife had been up early, and she had been busy. “That’s bacon, eggs and French toast”. He handed over breakfast. There was a confident air about Joe that made him almost certain of finding his quarry and getting home, no matter what happened; no matter how deep in the back country he went.   His mountaineering days were numbered when his boy was born, and when his little girl came along, they were finished. Hunting and guiding had taken over.

When he bow hunts in these hills for Mule deer he wears a .45 on his hip – “you never know who you'll meet out here” he explained  – but that extra precaution isn’t necessary when quail hunting with a shotgun. He had what the grey, middle-level management of the mundane, bill-paying desk job he’d left behind would have described as ‘transferable skills’. No manager was needed for Joe; he was his own performance review and he had the only key indicators that mattered in the dog box of the truck.

Patrick Galbraith explores how writers depict the countryside.  Who are the very best writers on the countryside today and what’s the difference between “rural writing”, “nature writing” and “sporting writing”? Why do so many so-called “nature writers” dislike the term? 

To help him to understand the subject, Patrick enlists the help of some old-hands. First he heads to Hampshire to speak to Jonathan Young, who edited both Shooting Times and The Field, Britain’s oldest sporting titles. Jonathan shares his thoughts on how sporting magazines have changed over the years and he reveals the three essential pieces of equipment that the Editor of Shooting Times, in its golden period, used to give to every new member of staff and he also shares his thoughts on what sort of day in the field makes for a great magazine feature. 

Patrick then meets up with John Mitchinson, the founder of the publishing house, Unbound. John, who is himself a pig-keeper, has an encyclopaedic knowledge of great books on rural Britain. He also has a very clear sense of what the difference is between ‘countryside writing’ and ‘nature writing’. Do people, Patrick asks John, actually want to read about the countryside as it really is?

Finally, Guy Adams, a features writer at the Daily Mail, explains how the internet has impacted economics of newspaper and magazine publishing and he reflects on the effect that this has had on countryside writing. They also discuss the importance of proper writing on the countryside and how new forms of publishing could revitalise the scene by offering writers the chance to be paid properly again for their work.

Subscribe to Scribehound here

You can order Patrick’s book on rural Britain and how it’s changing here. John Lewis-Stempel called it ‘the best book on the countryside in years’:

Creating a wildflower meadow will put you in touch with nature and feed the soul. Here's how any old fool can do it...

 

At the bottom of my garden there’s a long wooden fence that, in my mind’s eye, performs a vaguely-similar function to the Berlin Wall of the late 1970s.

On one side, you find a small paddock grazed by half a dozen Jacob sheep. They belong to my parents, who live next door, and this particular area is the German Democratic Republic of our situation: it’s a world of order and conformity, where grass is the only plant tolerated, and any rogue wildflower that happens to pop up gets immediately chomped to pieces by our ruminant Stasi.

On the opposite side of the fence is a quarter of an acre of what used to also be part of this paddock, adjacent to the patio. Last summer, Mrs Adams and I asked a local garden designer, Kylie (hat-tip here), how we might make our outdoor space more presentable. She suggested fencing out the sheep from this parcel of land in an effort to create a “wildflower meadow.” And here we are.

In my increasingly-laboured Cold War simile, this little corner of my Welsh homestead is now the equivalent of Western Europe: a place where freedom, liberty and occasional decadence has become the order of the day.

When June weedcut is done and peace returns to the chalkstreams the trout become fickle and the fishing is engrossing

The time of the Mayfly hatch on the chalkstreams has long been one of the highlights of our fishing calendar. Normally through May and early June this wonderful insect that even us uneducated entomologists can identify have fishermen headed to the banks for their nearest river to participate in “duffer’s fortnight”.

For some it is the period after June weedcut and Mayfly is done that we look forward to most. Once again the river seems to find peace after the frantic activity of both fishermen and their quarry. I think of Mayfly as being the trout equivalent to a large juicy steak. By this stage in the year most trout have had enough steak and are really thinking of a nice salad. This can make them difficult to tempt into playing our game, but it is this challenge of catching the “educated trout” that I find most rewarding.

Patrick Galbraith shoots a Chinese water deer and learns about Britain’s growing deer problem. There are more deer in this country than there’ve almost ever been and they are causing all sorts of problems. In Scotland they are destroying pine forests and in England they are browsing out scrub and bramble where nightingales used to sing.

It’s very easy to say that we simply need to start eating more venison. After all, deer are a very sustainable and environmentally-friendly source of protein but through chatting to Paul Childerley, a deer manager in Bedfordshire, and Jack Smallman, a venison wholesaler from the South Downs, Patrick discovers that it’s not easy. Not least because supermarkets often insist on selling farmed venison that’s shipped here from halfway across the world rather than selling venison from the British countryside. 

But things are changing, A growing number of  people are keen to get into deer management and it increasingly feels like veganism and vegetarianism are out and sustainable diets, which include meat, are in. Could it be venison’s moment? Patrick, after cooking up some Chinese Water Deer burgers, thinks that if people got a chance to try it, they’d certainly be back for more.

Living and working in the countryside often requires a creative approach to problem-solving, best demonstrated by the improvised solutions we come up with. They may not be pretty, or even terribly safe, but they get the job done

You will, I am sure, be familiar with the concept of a ‘life hack’. Social media and the press are awash with  videos and listicles called things like ‘The 93 life hacks that will change your life’. Many of these hacks use standard household items for a purpose different to the one for which they were originally designed. Using a loo-roll tube to subdue the vipers’ nest of cables behind your telly or desk, for example. 

I’ve never seen a ‘hack’ that made me think that using it would ‘change my life’. Indeed, a great many of them seem not only too trivial to be truly life changing, but also, frankly unhinged, such as the one that I saw suggesting that you employ a power drill to make peeling apples quicker.

However, being a country lad, brought up on a farm, I am no stranger to an improvised solution or two. This is not lifehacking, though; this is the oft underappreciated art of The Bodge. For many, the term might be considered a bit pejorative, indicative of a slapdash approach, but to me the ability to bodge shows creativity, a can-do attitude and problem solving skills, as well as frugality. 

Some love it; some hate it; but is the ‘back gun’ a symptom of a wider problem in game shooting?

I have a confession: walking gun is one of my favourite places to be on a game shoot. I say that even as a member of the gun trade who, when asked to ‘go with the beaters’ invariably ends up with a performance review committee of customers past and present scrutinising one's every miss. It is at times like these that the ability to turn electric ear defenders off and mute the inevitable abuse is a godsend.

Yet still walking gun remains an opportunity to remember the early days of my game shooting. My father would be asked by some kindly host to 'bring along the boy if he’s free, he can walk all day'.

But it's not just the memories of my youth. Walking gun heightens the awareness of your surroundings. You are not relying simply on a steady stream of pheasants driven from one covert to the next. You must listen as well and think. All of it is bound up in the anticipation of one of two clever cock birds knowing the danger and making a bid for safety curling back over the wood.

This is particularly the case in January when their seasoned wits are put to full use until they run out of running room and break out the side or come back over the beaters. These are the birds I treasure and as a young man bringing one crashing through the canopy to the acclaim of the beaters (before I started taking their money and filling in their licences) was a special triumph.

It is time that the building industry embraced change. Good for the planet and good for their profits. And good for government building targets.

Currently we are building about 150,000 houses a year. The new Government plan to raise that to 300,000 houses a year to help house the 3 million odd immigrants let into the country over the last few years by the previous government. Not to mention of course all the future ones they are planning to let in.

Incidentally that equates, at an average housing density of ten an acre, to 30,000 acres of mostly agricultural land going under tarmac and concrete every year.  So, if Labour did meet its house building targets some 150,000 acres of land will be built on over the next five years.  An area slightly larger than the New Forest National Park which is 140,000 acres.   

It is though easy to ‘talk the talk’ but can the government ‘walk the walk.’

The life of a huntsman can sound idyllic – but life in kennels is tougher than it might look

 

For many a young thruster, or a hound-loving puppy walker, being a huntsman is the ultimate dream job. 

To have your very own pack of hounds who look to you for instruction; to lead the pack in your scarlet coat, and uncover the mystery of the ‘golden thread’ – the so-called invisible connection between a huntsman and his hounds. Surely that doesn't sound like a chore?

The pomp and the ceremony are all very well, and watching the hounds parade with the huntsman blowing them on is a spectacle which the public love to see. But what is the reality of a huntsman’s job and lifestyle? Behind the gleaming brass buttons and the polished boots, what does the day-to-day look like?

With hunting traditionally sticking to set ‘seasons’, the job varies depending on where we are in the hunting calendar. Perhaps one of the first things to learn is that the hunting year starts on the 1 May. 

Damage a tree and its reaction is to try to heal itself. A lot of this action happens below ground in increased root growth. This leads to 'Carbon Capture.' So next time you see a tree, bash it and help save the planet. So goes the new theory...

Coming soon to a cinema near you, Wilding.  According to The Guardian, this is “The film about the farming couple who struck gold through rewilding.”  Not, real gold you understand, but lots of lovely lolly from me and you. The taxpayer,

It is the story of the Knepp Castle estate in Sussex. A story familiar to most as Charles Burrell and his wife are masters of publicity.  It tells the story of how Charles, after labouring for seventeen years trying to make a decent living farming 3,500 acres of Wealden clay, and failing, had a damascene moment.  “Why am I working so hard for so little?”  he thought. Then in a blinding flash he heard a voice say: “Why not do nothing instead- and get paid for it.”

What if our uplands are already producing good biodiversity and tree planting will damage this and their potential to capture carbon? Is there time to rethink, or has the expensive rewilding express train already left the station?

 

Whilst few could argue that our country needs more woodland, the difficulty is agreeing on where we plant all those trees. We frequently hear politicians uttering the well-worn cliché “the right tree in the right place” in the hope that they won’t be pressed to expand upon that platitude. Politicians face difficult choices and whilst some progress is being made to get farmers to give up land for trees, it shouldn’t be surprising that our uplands are being targeted for tree planting. 

However, having read a lot of science on peat uplands and talked to several of the leading experts in this field I am led to believe that planting trees in these complex and finely balanced ecosystems may not be the climate change and nature crisis silver bullet we are being told it is. And yet governments, terrified of Thunbergian anger over apparent inaction, are pressing ahead and welcoming anyone with a spade and a sack full of seedlings to head up the hills and get on with the job. After all who doesn't like woodland? so "blessed are the tree-planters."

If you sup with the devil, use a long spoon. The RSPB has an odd approach to polluters. If you are big enough and rich enough it may not be a deal breaker to pour untreated sewage into rivers and lakes.

United Utilities obviously has a very poor relationship with many of the people it is supposed to serve. This is not just because of how it treats longstanding shooting tenants, who have run their affairs exactly in line with UU's instructions, and delivered excellent outcomes for water quality, biodiversity and species abundance. It is a far bigger issue than that, important though that is.

The fundamental problem is pollution. It is beyond ironic that, in its statement announcing the end of shooting on its estate, UU majored on its commitment to water quality. Is it not incredible that the water company with the worst pollution record in the country has the cheek to even mention water quality?

People who fish, or swim in the northwest, or who just walk along river banks, or are interested in the wildlife of rivers, lakes and the seashore, are all, one way or another, the direct recipients of UU's mixture of incompetence and greed.

With demands on the public purse being extremely high, should politicians be doing more to fund and facilitate bottom-up land management solutions such as Farmer Clusters which are proven to deliver more bang for the conservation buck?

My solitary four-hour drive home from Oxford to Aberystwyth marked the end of a week engaged in conversation about future land management in the UK. This started at the Royal Welsh Show and ended at the Game Fair at Blenheim Palace. In a reflective mood, I recalled a time, not long ago, when both these major countryside shows were untroubled by today’s undercurrent of anxiety about imposed policy change which is bound to have a profound impact on the livelihoods, culture, and heritage within our rural communities. As I left the dual carriageway at Abergavenny heading for the narrower winding roads of Mid Wales, it struck me that our rural communities are also facing some hard miles ahead. 

The most striking element of both shows was the impressive practitioner knowledge and expertise held by the farmers, keepers, and land managers within our rural communities. Sadly, this valuable resource, built on an intimate understanding of the land they manage, is frequently overlooked in a world of top-down policy making. Whilst it can be argued that Brexit brought considerable economic risks to UK agricultural, few would disagree that it also offered us a chance to reset funding models specifically tailored to farming in the UK, rather than the “one size fits all” excessively bureaucratic approach of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. 

Farming in the UK is unusually diverse due to our varied geography. With delivery of rural policy being ceded to the devolved governments of Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, the opportunity exists for further refining of agri-funding models on a regional basis to accommodate these differences. This is a good thing, but are there even better ways of getting more bang for the conservation buck?       

 

Patrick Galbraith delves into the world of sustainable farming and its impact on Britain's rural landscape. With the help of a farmer, an upland conservationist, a restaurateur and a butcher, he explores the environmental benefits and gastronomic delights of native cattle.

Patrick begins his journey by meeting up with fellow Scribehounder and best-selling author Patrick Laurie, who has a herd of Riggit Galloway cattle. Patrick Laurie shares his love of these  hardy beasts and explains their cultural significance in South West Scotland. He also reveals some of the wonders of organic cowpats and some of the hard financial reality of small-scale farming. 

Next up is conservationist, Phil Warren, a research scientist specialising in the plight of black grouse. Phil digs down into claims that livestock farming is bad for the environment and shares the findings of some of his work on native cattle and nature restoration. 

From the wilds, Patrick heads to London to visit Sophie's Steakhouse, a Soho institution which specialises in serving native breed beef. He learns why these beasts produce, according to Sophie, the best steak around.

Finally Patrick catches up with specialist butcher Ian Warren to get a butcher's perspective on beef. Veganism, Ian tells him, has been a brilliant thing for those in the trade who are selling a good product.

The latest plan to help Scotland get back in touch with its true wild self is to reintroduce lynx, a big cat and apex predator, to control deer numbers. But can Scotland follow Switzerland's lead? Or is this all just land reform by stealth?

Tales of the riverbank with a difference - the story of the beaver, the big cat and the eagle.

Sounds like the kind of story that would be written by Kenneth Grahame, with illustrations to match by Ernest H.Shepherd. To add to the romance of it, I’ve just been chatting online to a Scottish farmer who is about to start putting out carrots to feed the beaver on his land. All is furry and very lovely. 

The flip side is perhaps less rosy. Official reports from NatureScot reveal that a total of 63 nuisance beavers were killed under licence in 2022. That’s down from the 87 killed in 2021. One sympathises with the beaver, who must have thought life was on the up when he and a few relatives were introduced to the Knapdale Forest in 2009. It’s all in the name of re-wilding Scotland.

Let me explain what this is all about. It seems this process is happening against a rather confusing backdrop. 

First came the white-tailed sea eagle - now regarded as Britain’s largest and most magnificent bird of prey. That happened in 1975 - and today there are estimated to be 152 mating pairs of them in the skies. Doubtless those positively invested regularly ‘high five’.

Then the beaver. Extinct in Scotland 400 years ago, they were re-introduced to help manage wetlands and provide what many describe as a ‘golden opportunity for tourism’. From a handful of these tree-munching, dam building engineers first released into the wild, it’s estimated there were a thousand of them by 2021 - and there will be 10,000 by 2030. That is a lot of beaver - and they’ll need an awful lot of carrots. (Official figures from https://www.nature.scot/plants-animals-and-fungi/mammals/land-mammals/eurasian-beaver)

But there are clues that all is not well in beaver world…..

   

With record numbers of A level students shunning University courses, can Modern Apprenticeships be the means of filling the gaps in our 'lost rural skills'.

  For over one million young Brits, the next few days will be a time of heightened nervous excitement and anticipation. They wait on tenterhooks for the 15th August, when the results of their A level, T level, and AS levels are released. The sounds of rip and tear as they open envelopes, the whoops of self congratulation or gasps of disappointment are the soundtrack to an end of childhood. Alice Cooper pumps out from Alexa, ‘School’s Out for Ever’, and the fresh dawn of adulthood appears to them with a golden light.  

Attending university has been seen as the next step after school for the majority of British young people. In 1999 Tony Blair, then into his second year as Prime Minister announced his demand that 50% of all school leavers should go into Higher Education, in order he claimed, so that Britain would succeed in the ‘knowledge economy’. Twenty years later, Blair’s dream was realised, yet this was deemed insufficient by the man. In 2021, the ex PM demanded that seven in ten teenagers should attend Uni. This refrain was echoed by Lord Johnson, brother of another former Prime Minister, who claimed, despite 53% of the UK’s school leavers already attending University that “We still don’t have enough highly skilled individuals to fill many vacancies today.” This PR campaign by political figures, was unsurprisingly endorsed by a swathe of academics attached to the 160 or so UK Universities.

However, this norm for youthful society appears to be coming to an end. School leavers are now turning their backs on degrees and choosing to leave the dreaming spires to their slumber. Analysis this week by The Times reveals that 18 of the 24 Russell Group Universities still have vacancies in more than 4,000 of their degree courses.

As a fishing agent, I'm often asked what the difference is between a ghillie and a fishing guide. While the two roles are similar, there are important differences.

When out fishing it is often common to have a ghillie or a guide available to aid you in your adventure. The differences between the terms “ghillie” and a “guide” can sometimes cause confusion, and even become a bone of contention. It is a question I get asked a lot, so at the risk of putting my head above the parapet I am going to attempt to define each role as I believe they are very different. The terms "fishing ghillie" and "fishing guide" are often used interchangeably, but they denote different roles depending on the geographical and cultural context.

We’ve probably all heard the term ‘regenerative farming’ but what does it actually mean, how do you farm regeneratively, and what does it achieve?

Patrick heads to North Norfolk to meet Jimmy Goodley, a farmer in the Stiffkey Valley who is trying to create a financially viable and sustainable farming business for his young children to one day take on. Patrick and Jimmy discuss wheat, why Jimmy has no interest in farming ‘organically’, and whether it's possible to grow enough food for the nation while farming in an environmentally friendly way.

Patrick then heads to the Holkham Estate to meet Jake Fiennes, the Estate's Director of Conservation. They talk about butterflies, worms and soil health. Patrick puts it to Jake that all these terms, like 'rewilding' and ‘regen’, seem to divide people, rather than bringing people together. Are they, Patrick wonders, often just sticks that we beat each other with?

Beyond the Hedge is a Scribehound production About Scribehound Passionate about the countryside? Feed your passion with a Scribehound subscription to get daily reads from 30 of the best countryside writers, including Patrick Galbraith. Click here to find out more About the music in this episode

Nelson's Shantymen was established in Burnham Thorpe, birth place of England’s greatest seaman, Lord Horatio Nelson. Now based in Brancaster Staithe at The Jolly Sailors. They are a diverse group of enthusiasts, driven in equal measure by a love of singing and a desire to keep the tradition of the authentic sea-shanty alive. 

Nelson’s Shantymen is a non-profit-making group which aims to raise money for charitable causes. To date they have raised over £28,000 for a range of charities including RNLI, Help for Heroes, Children in Need, Comic Relief, Wells Community Hospital, Tapping House, Campaign Care 94, Nelson’s Journey, Scotty’s Little Soldiers, the Jubilee Sailing Trust, The Bridge for Heroes, Hillside Animal Sanctuary, Kings Lynn Hospital’s League of Friends, East Anglian Children's Hospice and The Big C. Listen to their 2023 album Norfolk Tides here.

A few months ago, I wrote a column on Scribehound called Ancient Hunting Stories: The Origins of Human Culture?. In it I explored the idea that aside from opposable thumbs, the thing that really sets humanity apart from other animals is our love of stories. 

 

Stories follow (or subvert) patterns, and our brains are essentially pattern recognition engines, so we see narratives everywhere we look. What’s more, we are suckers for a good story, and we instinctively find an argument made through the medium of storytelling more compelling than one that is laid out in a carefully constructed essay.

 

To explore this theme a little further, at the Game Fair I spoke with two Scribehounders, watercolourist, woodcock enthusiast and Chairman of the GWCT in Wales, Owen Williams, and Roger Morgan-Grenville, author of several books on conservation and a champion for a wide variety of endangered bird species. Links Subscribe to Scribehound Ancient Hunting Stories: The Origins of Human Culture? - by George Browne

From Doom to Dreams: The Five Types of Nature Writing - by Roger Morgan-Grenville

 

Roger's latest book: The Return of the Grey Partridge

Owen's art: Portfolio 

 

 

Patrick Galbraith learns about hedges and what they actually mean. With the help of Dr Leonard Baker, who is an expert on enclosure and those who rose up against it, and Richard Negus, a Suffolk-based conservationist, Patrick discovers that the history of the hedge is thorny and very political.

In the nineteenth century hedges were seen as symbols of oppression and across the country they were torn down and were even paraded through the streets while ‘rough music’ was played. 

But the countryside is always changing and in the years that followed the War, just a couple of centuries after farmers had hedges planted in the name of agricultural improvement, they were grubbed out for the very same purpose. Bigger fields were thought to be better.

Nothing stays the same though and currently, hedgelayers like Richard – who has just finished writing his first book – are out there in the fields with their billhooks and chainsaws, restoring old hedges and planting new ones. If we want nature to recover, Richard believes that good hedges are vital.

For more great rural stories in the form of engaging daily reads from some of the best countryside writers around, subscribe to Scribehound Richard Negus' debut book is available to pre-order here

Inspired by the chance discovery of an egg vending machine deep in rural Norfolk, Patrick Galbraith reflects upon the changes to village life that have occurred over the last hundred years or so. 

Patrick goes in search of the farmer who owns the pickled egg dispenser - David - and discovers that his family has farmed the land around Great Snoring (yes, really) for the last 150 years, and that David remembers a time when the village had a pub and when he knew who lived in every house. Today the pub is gone, the houses are occupied by 'incomers' and the only retail outlet left in the village is David's vending machine. Later Patrick catches up with fellow Scribehounder Anna Jones, whose work as a rural affairs journalist has led her to make a study of the changes that are affecting rural communities and the impact that these have on their culture. Her book, Divide: The relationship crisis between town and country explores the reasons behind the growing lack of understanding between urbanites and rural dwellers, and suggests that to protect livlihoods and the environment we must all work together to narrow that gap. How does the changing face of Britain's villages fit into this picture when locals can no longer afford to live in them, and those who can don't understand their culture?

What does a country boy and angler do on holiday when he’s left his rods at home and is reading a book by Hunter S.Thompson? The answer is to reflect on really unimportant things in life, like why are cricket and fishing actually the same.

Shit it’s hot. It’s 35 degrees out there, the sand burns the skin off the bottom of my feet, and I could do with a large rum in a glass full of ice.

I want to write about stuff I like - and I want to do it in the style of Hunter S. Thompson. I’ll fail to do that well, but I’m going to try anyway.

OK, so this is self indulgent, but I’ve decided I don’t care.

At last I’ve got time to disengage my brain and quieten the voices. I need to think about things that really don't matter while I lie on a Portuguese beach, roasting my feet as they poke out from under a sunshade into the glare of a cloudless sky. 

There’s the noise of waves breaking, the chatter of other holidaymakers gibbering at each other. The weirdness of a large Portuguese man, who for some strange reason is dressed as a ship’s captain, cap at a jaunty angle, dinging a tiny bell and then loudly trying to sell people doughnuts for six Euros from his cooler. 

Each wave first gathers up, then releases the troubles of our world as it crashes. 

“What shall we talk about?” my wife, who is bronzing nicely, says from the next lounger along. 

Finding a copy of Trout & Salmon from 1994 shows that we’re still talking about the same environmental, and geopolitical, issues three decades on.

A wormy start

“Look what I’ve found Papa!”  I held up an oozing earthworm, my hands blackened by Hebridrean peat.  The year was 1994, I was five years old, and we were on a family holiday to the Isle of Lewis.  My enthusiasm for a day spent trout fishing was waning.  We’d seen and caught nothing and I couldn’t really get this casting lark.  My father took the worm from me, squished it onto the hook of our Teal, Blue & Silver fly, glanced around to make sure his friend and host hadn’t seen him, and said, “try this.”

I lobbed it into the black waters of the burn.   The next moment a trout was writhing on the other end, and with all the awkwardness of a child who’d never done this before, I lifted the poor thing onto the bank.  It probably weighed a quarter of a pound.  Thirty years on I can still recall my uncontainable excitement.  My first fish, and the moment that ignited a lifelong interest in angling.

Sharing some of my personal experiences and stories from the moors of ground nesting birds, their parenting skills and what I have learnt along the way!

One of the Scribehound team once told me that one has 3 seconds to capture to someone's attention on social media otherwise they move on. A rather sad but true indictment of our society today. The irony is not lost on me when comparing the hours I spend with moorland birds.

My favourite and best technique is to try and spend time with them with the car switched off, allowing them to settle down and resume their normal behaviour as a pair of birds or a young family. I can sometimes spend an hour or more with a particular species and this is when the best photographs are often achieved which may or may not grab someone's attention in those few seconds.

Whether that or those images grab anyone's attention or not, for me a benefit of time on the fell with these birds is getting to observe and learn about each species particular behaviour and that of their young.

As someone who spends a lot of their time with birds, I certainly have my favourites and have witnessed lots of behaviours in different species. For example, the oystercatcher is by far one of the best parents on the moor, whereas the lapwing is probably one of the worst! These are some of my personal experiences when out on the moors with some of our incredible UK wildlife. 

It's often said that, within 25 years, the turtledove will be gone from England's hedgerows. When they go, if they go, we will lose something that is a huge part of British culture – they are present in our folk songs and our poetry and for centuries the sound they make, a sort of sweet purring, has been synonymous with springtime. But in Suffolk, on the old road to Norwich, Graham Denny, a small-scale farmer is fighting to save them.    A love of turtledoves, he explains to Patrick, is something that he has shared with grandfather and his father and now he shares that love with his son. Graham has worked extraordinarily hard to turn his farm into a place where turtledoves thrive. His model is based largely on predator control, habitat creation, and providing food for the turtledoves to eat.    In this episode, Patrick sets off at dawn to visit Graham and to try to hear his doves purring. 

One of my favourite sayings is, “Live as if you will die tomorrow; farm as if you will live forever.” And I have tried to follow that policy as far as my finances have allowed.

There is always a temptation to think short-term and scrimp, or take a shortcut. To avoid thinning a young plantation or re-establishing a grass ley, or carry out building repairs with cheap materials that won’t last, or use manky bits of wavy pipe without much gravel for drainage jobs rather than twin-wall pipes with gravel to the top of the trench.  But something always tells me that my grandchildren will be grateful one day, if I do the right thing and look after the soil and the trees and the infrastructure of the estate, even though I don’t yet have any, grandchildren that is, not trees.

It is the idea referenced by the great farming scribe of the last century, AG Street (who would certainly have been a Scribehounder had it been around then) in the title of one of his books: ‘The Endless Furrow’. Although ploughing has rather gone out of fashion, so we don’t talk so much about furrows these days. And, if you read the book, it turns out not to be as endless as all that.

The thought that my son, who is getting married next year and is coming into the farming partnership with me, will carry on my work here and that of those who have gone before us, is a big part of what gets me out of bed in the morning. But...

Wood pigeons are rightly regarded as a top-tier sporting bird, but what with wasps, nettles, the need for truckloads of clobber and the quarry's uncooperative nature, decoying them can be a pain in the proverbial

Anybody will tell you that there is no better sport to be had than decoying pigeons. In fact, everybody will tell you that there is no better sport to be had than decoying pigeons. I've said it myself. And I'll stand by it: there is no better sport to be had than decoying pigeons.

If you leave aside shooting driven grouse, obviously. Your grouse – going downwind at a zillion miles an hour - across acres of glorious purple heather is a thing of rare excitement, right enough, but it also costs a zillion ducats a day to ambush it from a butt, so when we are declaiming about the best sport to be had, we tend – out of a perfectly reasonable urge to recognise that not everyone may be able to shoot driven grouse for several weeks each season – to temper our excitement and point instead towards shooting pigeons over decoys.

 

You may have seen the story: the 2010 Equality Act could protect people who hunt. Here’s how it could play.

 

An interview at the Carter Jonas Game Fair Theatre has led to column inches and TV debates. Ed Swales of Hunting Kind, a group dedicated to ‘natural hunting’ with hound, ferret and hawk, obtained legal opinion which says that people who hunt could have “protected characteristics” under the 2010 Equality Act and that they must establish cases of discrimination against them. He announced his findings at the Game Fair.

Thanks to the publicity, the UK’s media has enthusiastically taken up the idea of protecting people who hunt or shoot in the same way that the law protects Roma or LGBTQ communities. There was an article in the Daily Telegraph, then the Guardian, then the Daily Mail, and hot on their heels came the TV interviews, on Good Morning Britain and even I got the call-up from GBNews.

There are few solid arguments against it, except for the emotional. Ed had one interviewer pointing out that Ed chooses to hunt, that he could choose not to hunt. The answer to that is that we choose to do everything – shop in supermarkets, go on country walks – that's culture. The culture Ed is defending is a different culture to the interviewer's and Ed is trying to protect it.

Around half of Britain’s farmers rent some or all of the land they work, but in Britain's changing agricultural landscape, where significant profits can be made through rewilding, tree planting and renting out rural properties to city-dwellers, it is becoming harder and harder for aspiring farmers to find any ground. They were once a cornerstone of rural society but tenant farmers are becoming a rare breed. 

Patrick Galbraith meets two tenant farmers in Hampshire at different ends of their careers. First he speaks to Charlie Flindt, a recently retired tenant on the Hinton Ampner Estate, which is owned by the National Trust. Charlie tells him  about the changes he’s seen over the past few decades and he also tells Patrick about where he thinks it’s all going - his outlook is bleak. 

Next Patrick meets Flavian Obiero,  one of a new generation of farmers who are making a go of it. Originally from Kenya, Flavian now farms 61 acres in Hampshire, where he raises pigs and goats, as well as running a butchery business and making charcuterie. Flavian tells Patrick about how farming in Britains compares to farming in Kenya. Small-scale holdings, he reckons, can work; farmers just need to think outside the box.

Passionate about the countryside? Feed your passion with a Scribehound subscription to get daily reads from 30 of the best countryside writers, including Patrick Galbraith. Click here to find out more