Weeks of hot, dry weather means vines are “flourishing”, setting winemakers up for a bumper yield of grapes this year .. The drought has helped to keep mildew and pests at bay, while the hot weather has helped grapes to ripen, said Ivan Weightman, co-owner of Wolstonbury vineyard in West Sussex. “So far, so good with the heat,” he said. “The vines are certainly loving it, the bunches are swelling, and yeah, it looks great.” [Click here for the full MSN report.]
VISIT A FARM AND DISCOVER THE WORLD OF FARMING
Come and join us at
Perching Manor Farm,
Edburton Road, Fulking, BN5 9LR
Sunday 12th June 11am to 3pm
Tractor and trailer rides.
Farm machinery display.
Sheepdog display.
Learn about beekeeping and wild birds on the farm.
BBQ and refreshments, bring a picnic rug and enjoy the lovely scenery.
Forest school activities for the children and much more…
Free entry but please register at www.trybooking.co.uk/BOUZ
Email Angela, hello@footofthedowns.co.uk
LEAF Open Farm Sunday is managed by LEAF (Linking Enviroment And Farming). Charity no 1045781
Henfield Birdwatch are organizing a talk on Friday 25th February at 7.30pm in the Garden Room of Henfield Hall. The event is free for members and £3.00 for non-members. Refreshments will be available.
The farm hosts eight-week programmes in partnership with local charity Grow to give support and respite to people of all ages who are dealing with depression, anxiety and stress .. for the past 10 years, it has become a source of respite for hundreds of people from the city.
“Wolstonbury, a 90-acre farm at the foot of Wolstonbury Hill, planted its first vineyard in 2015 and now has nine acres of chalk vineyard growing Bacchus, Reichensteiner, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier grapes.” [Click here for full the Yahoo report.]
David, the farmer at Perching Manor Farm, would like to politely ask you that if you are walking with your dog in a field in which there are sheep then your dog should be on a lead. This is especially important at this time of year as there will be lambing and lambs. Notices have been posted on the field gates.
Brighton & Hove News reports:
Nine lambs and two ewes from Saddlescombe Farm next to Devil’s Dyke died after a dog chased them on Friday. Although the dog didn’t attack the sheep, the heavily pregnant ewes were so distressed the lambs aborted and two ewes also died.
An interesting (but somewhat technical) report in Farmers Weekly about how David Ellin and colleagues are using a liquid urea polymer on wheat to reduce the amount of ammonium nitrate that leaches out of the Paythorne/Perching fields into the Brighton & Hove water supply.
This website frequently makes use of clips from the Edburton Tithe Map of 1842 to illustrate posts. Not a lot has changed hereabouts in the last 180 years so the map is still both useful and attractive. If you have ever wondered how such a map came to be, then the West Sussex County Record Office has an interesting recent post by Abigail Hartley, their Searchroom Archivist. She uses Edburton as an example of a tithe map that is still in superb condition. The map shows the ecclesiastical parish of Edburton, the area served by St. Andrew’s, and thus shows all of Fulking, together with Edburton proper.
The map is still available from the Record Office (details via the link above). Local walkers are probably best advised to order the JPEG version and copy it to a tablet or mobile phone for consultation in situ. Unlike a large scale OS map, the tithe map does not mark the status of routes as ‘bridleways’, ‘public footpaths’, etc. If you are relatively new to the area, and plan to use the map for walking, then you may want to use an image editor like Photoshop to copy those indications over from OS Explorer 122.
A tithe map, like the Domesday Book, is ultimately about taxation. To that end the Edburton map uses colour to distinguish between the buildings then used for human habitation (red) and all the others (grey), typically agricultural buildings for animal accommodation or feed storage. That distinction alone tells us quite a lot about mid-C19 activity in the central section of The Street (between the pub and the building now known as Yew Tree Cottage).
Another feature of the tithe map, not shared with any of the various iterations of OS maps, is that it records the names of (all!) the fields. These names are often full of information, thus ‘Fulking Mills’ is located just where two of the local spring streams merge, an ideal location for fulling mills; ‘Coneybeare’ and ‘Upper Coney Burrow’ were probably both once sources of rabbit meat, the latter conveniently placed for the Perching Manor dinner table; ‘The Rookery’ and ‘Hog Pasture’ need no translation; and nor does ‘Boggy Lagg’ if you make the mistake of traversing it in mid-February with the wrong shoes on.
The SDNPA has discovered that celebrities can be used to plant trees. They have managed to plant one tree so far but, if another 7,999 celebrities step forward, they will be able to meet their quota for this winter. At least 8,500 celebrities will also be needed next year. No word on any fees payable. Chief Executive Trevor Beattie reports that the government has committed £257m for cycling and walking in 2021-22, perhaps because government policy has ensured that, for most of the population, cycling and walking will be the only transport options they can afford in that year. You can also read about the Community Infrastructure Levy, a fund set up by the SDNPA to accept and administer bungs paid by developers. The Park’s Volunteer Development Officer reports that voluntary activity has largely ceased due to the immense health risks that the Park poses to volunteers. However, despite the danger, one such volunteer did manage to write an informative little column on ivy. There’s also a page on nitrates in the aquifers that features quotes from David Ellin (Paythorne, Perching) and Roly Puzey (Saddlescombe). No mention of glyphosate, however. Despite the government’s ongoing armageddon against small business, the Park has split £40,000 between 27 petitioners “following a rigorous and impartial selection process”. The accompanying photo shows two ladies in a food shop, neither of whom is wearing a mask. Perhaps their Maundy money needs to be retracted. There’s an interesting column on Tide Mills, home to the Black Kite, the European Bee-Eater and the Short Eared Owl. And there is a page of poems by some of those temporarily released from detention. Finally, two pages of suggested walks that you can only do if you happen to live near the route (the SDNPA frowns on the use of the automobile).