AC_Arabians@AC_arabs

SE Arabian horse breeder of rare lines. Love nature,grow your own veg,english pointers, butterflies,flowers & the sea

[AC_Arabians@AC_arabs @AC_Arabians]

@rivelin_valley I think this is Little Parkside Farm I kept my ponies here in 1970’s think the family were called Roddis. Nice folk.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Chris Packham went on Gogglebox last week, watched the cartoon at the start of Clarkson's Farm, and announced that most farms are horrible monocultures sprayed with deadly chemicals, the ground pumped full of fertiliser, the animals indoors in crates being crushed and kept in the dark.

A cartoon. Not a farm, not a documentary. The little illustrated title sequence.

Clarkson replied in his Sun column and it is the best two hundred words he has written in years. He called Packham endlessly angry. He noted that the man had erupted in blind fury at the Winnie the Pooh-ish opening credits of a television programme. He pointed out, patiently, that it was a drawing.

Then he dropped the actual grenade.

Packham has been to Diddly Squat. In 2012. He drove there, on purpose, to look at the birds and do a bit of foraging.

Sit with that one.

The naturalist who tells a primetime audience that British farms are lifeless, poisoned industrial monocultures once picked a British farm as the place to go and enjoy the wildlife. And to gather food off the ground. Voluntarily. For pleasure.

If the fields are sprayed dead, what were the birds doing there.

And if the animals were indoors in crates in the dark, you would think he might have raised it at the time, rather than waiting fourteen years and bringing it up on a sofa while looking at a cartoon.

He has doubled down on Instagram since, with a graphic about glyphosate and pig housing, asking whether it is really all happy smiley down on the farm. Which is a fair question to put to a farm. It is a strange question to put to an illustration.

Here is the part that should genuinely annoy people.

Clarkson's Farm has explained British agriculture to the British public better than every campaign, report and documentary of the last twenty years put together. Subsidies, weather, supermarket margins, the lot.

Packham had the platform to join that conversation.

He used it to lose an argument with the title sequence.

[LearnHowToGarden @10MinGardener]

‘Be as diverse as possible!’: a gardening pioneer’s guide to growing on a warming planet https://t.co/bTazeou3QQ

[Richard Bowler @RichardBowler1]

Strange how living with foxes for 15 years and before that, many years in the field photographing them, makes my views invalid. However a farmer with his livelihood invested in the discussion is the only valid opinion. Double standards don't you think. #FoxOfTheDay

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

The goats are gone.

Not all of them. There's about 95,000 left in the UK. Mostly hobbyists. A few smallholders. The odd appearance on a children's TV show.

But once upon a time, this island was crawling with them.

Wales had them. Scotland had them. Ireland by the boatload. The medieval peasant kept one in the back garden the way people now keep a Roomba: because it did a job, it cost nothing to run, and it tidied up the inputs.

Goat milk. Goat cheese. Goat hair for rope. Goat skin for parchment, on which most of British law was written. Goat tallow for candles, by which most of British law was read.

You could keep one on a quarter-acre. You could tie one to a fence. You could feed it the brambles and the nettles and the bits of hedge nobody else wanted, and it would give you food and clothing and light in return.

Goats kept the poor alive for a thousand years.

Then the enclosures took away the land you could keep one on. The factories took away the people who would have kept one. The supermarket took away the local economy that would have bought the cheese. The subsidies got written for cattle and sheep, and the goat got demoted to a punchline and a face on a tea towel.

Meanwhile, our hillsides are quietly being swallowed by bramble, gorse, blackthorn, and rhododendron. Invasive scrub that nothing else will eat.

The kind of scrub a goat would clear in a fortnight.

Without being asked.

Without being paid.

Without a planning application.

You don't have a brush management problem.

You have a missing goat problem.

And nobody can quite remember when we stopped having them.

[rivelinvalley @rivelin_valley]

Spring photos in the Rivelin valley. Thanks to Tracey Keen for taking them. https://t.co/z6COcfb1sc

[rivelinvalley @rivelin_valley]

A lovely shot of a dipper in the Rivelin valley just like in the RVCG logo. Photo courtesy of Tracey Keen.

[rivelinvalley @rivelin_valley]

Is spring starting? Snow drops on the road verge by Carver Fields. Photo by Sue Shaw

[Birdwatch @BirdwatchExtra]

Great Bustard nests have been discovered at Cranborne Chase for the first time, providing further evidence of the species' gradual recovery and expansion in southern England: https://t.co/8Cibi5zU1S

[Mike Smith @MikeCSmiffy]

Redwing feeding on Holly berries in our Essex village last weekend

#bird #birds #birdphotography #ukwildlife #wildlife #wildlifephotography #nature #NaturePhotography
@Natures_Voice @EssexWildlife @EssexBirdNews @NatureUK @Britnatureguide @BBCSpringwatch

[matt prior @mattthesparrow]

Whilst surveying a farm last night we came across this Woodlark, a first for us at night. Here is a nice comparison of it with a Skylark. The rest of the farm was great with 70 Skylarks and 20 Woodcock seen.

[Susan George MBE @TheSusanGeorge]

Saturday morning time ✨
https://t.co/K596Mthfpw

[AC_Arabians@AC_arabs @AC_Arabians]

Merry Christmas from Violette and Ellie

[Into The Forest Dark @ElliottBlackwe3]

Taia Morley

[Liberta Cherguia 🇪🇺 @MbarkCherguia]

Ravens are monogamous and mate for life, strengthening their bond through "serenades" and joy flights. Look at these two! 👀 Their synchronized, dancing pirouettes are pure relationship goals. 🖤🖤

[Robert E Fuller @RobertEFuller]

Happy Halloween 🦉🎃
🖌️For today, a painting of tawny owl posed against a darkening sky - of course

[Hugh Harrop Wildlife @HughHarrop]

Male Northern Bullfinch illuminating Lerwick, Shetland yesterday. Lovely views of at least six of these gorgeous Scandinavian migrants.

[Tim Farron @timfarron]

By 2028, the average hill farm income will only be 55% of the national minimum wage.

And now the Government is forcing those farmers to pay a huge inheritance tax bill.

This is a disaster for our environment and our nation's food security.

I'll keep fighting for our farmers.

[Hannah Bourne-Taylor @WriterHannahBT]

Why has Steve Reed u-turned on swift bricks? what is a 50 million year old species worth to us? Swifts won’t have any nesting opportunity without swift bricks. Neither will any birds reliant on buildings to breed. Our easiest access to nature will go. https://t.co/hYDTQX3dRi

[Susie Taylor 🍃💚🍃 @SusieTa32510601]

Developers encroach on 2,000-year-old Devon wetland citing ‘blockages’ to Labour’s housing plans

⁦I could weep. Why destroy this ancient, vital & precious habitat for housing ⁦@UKLabour⁩?

⁦@CHinchliffMP⁩ ⁦@ChrisGPackham⁩ https://t.co/EhDZRXwVuu