Speaker 1: Ah, sweet Jesus and all the baby orphans, can we
Speaker 1: please have some fucking rain, rain, rain, rain.
Speaker 2: It's not going to happen.
Speaker 1: It's rain. Everything's yellow out there. Basically everything is that.
Speaker 1: It's dead, dead bits with the soil underneath, and that's it.
Speaker 1: All the trees are dying.
Speaker 2: It's something that even let's think that reform HQ, they're
Speaker 2: all going mist The climate's changed a bit. Who said that?
Speaker 2: Who said the climates changing? Well, I did this. It's
Speaker 2: like it's hotter than it used to be, right, send
Speaker 2: him out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like we should have discussed this at
Speaker 1: some point in the last maybe twenty five years or so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's be perfectly honest. The writing has been on
Speaker 2: the wall that this is happening. I mean, we don't
Speaker 2: need to Let's be perfectly honest. Hang every minor as
Speaker 2: in oh not er no er r from ages that
Speaker 2: we don't need to go and actually kill all the
Speaker 2: miners because of the sins of their past. But yeah,
Speaker 2: the climate has changed, and it's clearly obvious that it has.
Speaker 2: And anyone who works on the land could have been
Speaker 2: telling you this for the last five or six years.
Speaker 2: Is that you started to see these weird weather patterns
Speaker 2: and weird reactions of nature to what's going on around here.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, like, oh, isn't the blackthorn early?
Speaker 2: Isn't the blackthorn early?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: The blackthorn is repeatedly early, and it's it's it's just
Speaker 2: obvious what's been going on.
Speaker 1: Stuff's getting very very strange, and people have this sort
Speaker 1: of positive spin on things. We're saying, well, you know,
Speaker 1: the vineyards of the Peak district are going to do
Speaker 1: very well, and you can grow sweet chestnuts in Northway
Speaker 1: now not if it doesn't fucking rain.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you could get a good tan on Irish white
Speaker 4: skinned legs.
Speaker 1: So you know, Yeah, what Calum and I were together
Speaker 1: with I'm just talking over you and there Calum and
Speaker 1: I were together with Amy on. I think we measured
Speaker 1: the tarmac temperature as about forty seven degrees on Friday
Speaker 1: in a completely airless, no moving air, heat reflecting off
Speaker 1: every metal surface car park in Skelmersdale, which is where
Speaker 1: it told to be paid me to be there.
Speaker 2: That sounds very silly to be paid to be in
Speaker 2: Skelmersdale car park, wouldn't you.
Speaker 4: At one point I put my knee on the floor
Speaker 4: and I burnt my knee. I was trying to get
Speaker 4: a shot from a low angle and I actually burnt
Speaker 4: my knee and I was like, this shouldn't.
Speaker 2: Happen here now, Yeah, no, not in Skelmersdale. Always been
Speaker 2: hot in Skelmersdale.
Speaker 4: It wasn't like I put my knee on like black
Speaker 4: freshly laid tarmac or something. It was like gray, dusty
Speaker 4: gravel and it still burnt my knee.
Speaker 1: So yeah, mad I was there to fly drones and
Speaker 1: it's at one point I just put the drone hovering
Speaker 1: above my head and use it as sort of a
Speaker 1: way of cooling down.
Speaker 3: What is by drone? I have to say.
Speaker 2: Harvest is in full swing here in Sunny Suffering, and
Speaker 2: it's the reports thus far is that the oil seed
Speaker 2: rape is coming in and itat's looking quite good because
Speaker 2: I'm not entirely sure how farmers seem to have universally
Speaker 2: got around the stem flea beetle and not being allowed
Speaker 2: to use neo nickeotinoids. But from a crop that was
Speaker 2: sort of more or less written off about three or
Speaker 2: four years ago, it's now they've managed to grow it
Speaker 2: effectively and well done them, And I'm told it's okay beans.
Speaker 2: Bad news is that they are about the size of peas,
Speaker 2: and so they'll be making a loss again. And barley,
Speaker 2: I mean hell, that was starting to come in about
Speaker 2: three weeks ago, and wheat is ready to go as well.
Speaker 2: But really bizarrely is I did some of my very
Speaker 2: amateurish wheat testing by doing the sort of test between
Speaker 2: your teeth.
Speaker 1: And this podcast that amateurish announcement.
Speaker 2: It's basically is it's the prodcast for amateurs, and so
Speaker 2: I did that sort of you know, grip test between
Speaker 2: your teeth, and I nearly lost the bloody mola because
Speaker 2: it's that that grow hard and desiccated already. So for
Speaker 2: the least, the dentists are in business exactly. The dentists
Speaker 2: are coming out well from it. And also all those
Speaker 2: know nothings who seem to think that round up is
Speaker 2: somehow akin to the Satan's own spawn. No one's having
Speaker 2: to spray anything off because the sun has done it all.
Speaker 2: So it's as desiccated as hell. I've heard eight tons
Speaker 2: a hectare on some wheak around here, which is pretty good,
Speaker 2: but it's very dry. So therefore they're having the guys
Speaker 2: are having to work extremely early in the morning when
Speaker 2: there's a bit of moisture about, and it's it's quite
Speaker 2: bizarre because at the moment I am working on a
Speaker 2: project to try and bring thatching straw back to the
Speaker 2: rotations in our farm cluster. And I have you and
Speaker 2: you put something off for absolutely ages ages away. This
Speaker 2: age of harvest is until co ages away. It's now
Speaker 2: what we on July the fourteenth, and some people are
Speaker 2: the third of the way through harvest and I'm thinking, shit,
Speaker 2: I haven't actually even sorted out yet. This rather obscure.
Speaker 2: Maris Widgeon, that's the name of the sea that we've
Speaker 2: got to get.
Speaker 1: There is that's a BBC Radio Suffolk presenter.
Speaker 2: Surely, Yeah, that's.
Speaker 1: A very good idea.
Speaker 2: Actually, it's the sort of thing Maris Wigeon does.
Speaker 4: That's what I write all my complaint letters.
Speaker 1: Put that in the book. Put that in the other book.
Speaker 2: Yours, sincerely, Maris Wigeon.
Speaker 4: I'll keep writing into Shooting Times asking where Richard nigis is.
Speaker 4: He was my best best writer ever. Love Maaris Wigeon.
Speaker 3: I don't like that one, well.
Speaker 2: Baris ma Marris, Maris Wigeon, that's what we're after there
Speaker 2: is only thirty tons of seed available from harvest twenty
Speaker 2: twenty six, and we've managed to ring fence five tons
Speaker 2: of that for our usage. You imagine having only having
Speaker 2: thirty tons of this stuff in the whole country that
Speaker 2: we can use, and so we have ring fenced five
Speaker 2: tons of that to go into the high suffolk, plus
Speaker 2: that thatching straw we're going to go and save the
Speaker 2: planet project.
Speaker 1: Very comendable.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's quite a lot of because seeds and things
Speaker 4: trade in a specific way. Quite a lot of people that,
Speaker 4: especially in America, that were farmers or got into farmers,
Speaker 4: end up in finance because they spend their whole life
Speaker 4: like trading wheat and commodities, pricing and looking at forecasting,
Speaker 4: and eventually they're like, yeah, I could farm this, or
Speaker 4: I could just trade the stuff that I'm trading already
Speaker 4: and do it times one thousand and make lots of money. Apparently,
Speaker 4: like the American Farm Conferences is a bit like going
Speaker 4: to Bloomberg or something. It becomes so entrenched in finance
Speaker 4: it's mad well not.
Speaker 1: A million miles away from that. And this is another
Speaker 1: bit of Richard Nigas journalism. In the Scribe Hound Writers chatterday,
Speaker 1: there was a discussion about pigeons, and I want to
Speaker 1: tribute what to whom, But it was about, you know,
Speaker 1: someone posting on Instagram or somewhere that they'd shot eight
Speaker 1: hundred pigeons or something like that. Wasn't there some ridiculous
Speaker 1: number of pigeons and is that the right thing to
Speaker 1: be putting on social media? And you made the calculation
Speaker 1: it was, you know, so many, that was only so
Speaker 1: many kilos of seed that they've taken.
Speaker 2: Me kill eight hundred pigeons will have consumed forty kilograms
Speaker 2: of wheat. So you know, we always say, is we're
Speaker 2: shooting pigeons as a pest. Now, most definitely you are
Speaker 2: if you're shooting them over young emerging ps or oil
Speaker 2: seed rape when that's coming up, you know, it comes
Speaker 2: to second leaf stage and they come in and mallet
Speaker 2: that it doesn't grow back again. They are a serious
Speaker 2: agricultural pest. But if you're shooting them right now and
Speaker 2: you shoot eight hundred and they are basically consuming combinable wheat.
Speaker 2: I looked at what the average average pigeon crop can
Speaker 2: take and if you shot eight hundred, they would only
Speaker 2: have forty kilos of wheat inside their crop combined, which
Speaker 2: comes to about two pounds eighty three at current wheat prices.
Speaker 1: So given current cartridge prices EI pigeon select cartridge, I
Speaker 1: think yeah, exactly, it's a bit more. I think it's
Speaker 1: it's like thirty, isn't it thirteen or fourteen quid for
Speaker 1: twenty five. Yeah, unless you're buying a slab, you'd be
Speaker 1: better off just going into the field pointing at eight
Speaker 1: hundred pigeons and then digging out a fiver from your wallet, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and handing it over to the farmer. It would both
Speaker 1: being profit exactly.
Speaker 2: I don't know what a pigeon breast retail's at, but
Speaker 2: I mean there's there's no doubt about it. The pigeon
Speaker 2: is an agricultural pest and it annoyed the wick off
Speaker 2: me when those people from Wild Justice started messing around
Speaker 2: with the license.
Speaker 1: Don't started on that in Wales. We lost a lot.
Speaker 2: You did, agreed and it and one would argue that
Speaker 2: the thing that they really did by fiddling around with it,
Speaker 2: and do you know in a way they're right, is
Speaker 2: that just treating various species as sporting targets. There is
Speaker 2: a there is an argument saying did you need to
Speaker 2: shoot that now? But from their meddling, they most definitely was.
Speaker 2: And the GWCT did some research which sadly really didn't
Speaker 2: get any of the recognition that it should have done.
Speaker 2: Was there was a demonstrable decline in that year in
Speaker 2: wild broods of pheasants and gray partridges, Curtis of the
Speaker 2: number of corvids that are around courtesy of their shenanigans,
Speaker 2: and do you know what, it was noticeable that a
Speaker 2: fairly honest broker. I know he he isn't everyone's mate,
Speaker 2: but Mark Avery dipped out of well justice by that
Speaker 2: point because I think he's got a very big be
Speaker 2: in his bonnet about driven grouse shooting. But I think
Speaker 2: on the whole he is actually an honest broker, and
Speaker 2: he dipped out of that now, whether that was due
Speaker 2: to his slightly poor health or whether it's because he went,
Speaker 2: do you know what, just winning this battle is not
Speaker 2: necessarily doing anything for his war effort. No.
Speaker 1: I asked Yolo Williams about this the one time I
Speaker 1: met him, although it was in my mustache owning period
Speaker 1: about a year and a half ago. So the one
Speaker 1: photo of me stood next to is and wearing very
Speaker 1: short shorts, a very short T shirt and I've got
Speaker 1: a mustache and look like I've just jumped out of
Speaker 1: the bushes that are on a.
Speaker 2: Heath or you're a seller scout, Yes.
Speaker 1: Exactly that. Yes, it's the Rhodesian. Yeah, yeah. I asked
Speaker 1: him about this and he said, well, you know, for
Speaker 1: the general licenses, you have to follow the science, and
Speaker 1: the science says that the numbers of magpies were declining.
Speaker 1: But as we've spoken about several times on here before,
Speaker 1: that's complete bollocks because there's not a huge army of
Speaker 1: ecologists out there whose sole job is to record the
Speaker 1: bird numbers. It's things are recorded through your local ecological
Speaker 1: record keeping, and that still relies on people being asked
Speaker 1: to actually record stuff. So the more common things are,
Speaker 1: the less likely they are to record it. So then, yeah,
Speaker 1: the common things will decline under that methodology, just in
Speaker 1: terms of sheer numbers, unless you're counting everything, and no
Speaker 1: one is.
Speaker 2: Yes, quite so anyway, cheers, cheers, cheers for a hot day.
Speaker 4: Cheers.
Speaker 1: Yes, so other podcasts in our sector, they do what
Speaker 1: are you drinking? So I think guns on pegs do that?
Speaker 1: I mean, what do you What are you drinking there, Richard?
Speaker 2: I am drinking the Premiere crew Asphol Cider, A good drink.
Speaker 1: For How are you there, young Callen?
Speaker 4: I can't afford real bs. I'm drinking Banditos from Audi
Speaker 4: Despasitos and.
Speaker 1: Later I might live on Desperadoes.
Speaker 4: Eighteen fifty seven, cronin Iceberg. I love an Audi special
Speaker 4: Me love they do like all that stuff, don't They?
Speaker 2: On guns on pegs asking what people are drinking? What
Speaker 2: color are your garters?
Speaker 1: I think they should be applauded in how open they
Speaker 1: are talking about subjects, given how closeted the British countryside
Speaker 1: can be at times. Yes, and it's very difficult to
Speaker 1: open up. I mean, let's just just check in with
Speaker 1: guns on pegs and see what they're saying. Now portable,
Speaker 1: pop it in the car, take it up the shoot,
Speaker 1: have a few sausages after a workday. Bloody fantastic. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's it's quite brave to come out with that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, mainstream podcast, Isn't it? Really?
Speaker 2: Is that good for young people to be encouraged to
Speaker 2: take it up the shoot?
Speaker 1: I mean with willing participants of a valid age and
Speaker 1: everyone's able to give consent in a correct way and
Speaker 1: everything's done safely and don't scare the horses. I suppose
Speaker 1: it's okay.
Speaker 4: For a while, I support support Avian in his LGT
Speaker 4: HGTV plus Sky TV endeavor fantastic. You know, I'm sorry
Speaker 4: for it.
Speaker 1: I mean they're going to bought him with a prop.
Speaker 1: Are you going to hold his coat for him?
Speaker 2: I think they call me an ally. It's not for me.
Speaker 2: I'm an ally that on Pegg's ally.
Speaker 4: That's why I am on on Blue Sky.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Perhaps you know, we were discussing what T shirts we
Speaker 2: should have, and perhaps we should have Country Slide Guns
Speaker 2: on Pegs. Ally, take it up the shute. It's a
Speaker 2: nice side, it's a nice.
Speaker 4: Just I think just take it up the Shute be
Speaker 4: a great T shirt.
Speaker 1: Just off of one. I'll just send it to Avian.
Speaker 1: If you listen to the rest of that Guns on
Speaker 1: Pegs episode, it is very homo erotic. They talk about
Speaker 1: sort of leather based fire flappers that you can get
Speaker 1: used for other purposes, and yeah, there's there's all sorts
Speaker 1: of things in there.
Speaker 2: Well, I went on there once and they made me
Speaker 2: have some pink glasses.
Speaker 3: Afterwards, I mean, you.
Speaker 2: Know, people keep saying that the countryside is a race
Speaker 2: and be not diverse. Well, I mean Avian's Cornish. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I mean that's that's an ethnic minority, is.
Speaker 1: An ethnic minority, and.
Speaker 2: Clearly there's diversity as you've just portrayed there with that
Speaker 2: shortcut Richard.
Speaker 1: So yeah it is. And I found gay racists in
Speaker 1: the countryside quite often.
Speaker 4: Actually, yeah, nothing wrong, for some of my best friends
Speaker 4: are gay racist.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Nothing anyway enough talking about it. I've heard some.
Speaker 4: The countryside is full of the most diverse people ever,
Speaker 4: and not specifically ethnicity. I will say that's slightly skewed
Speaker 4: to the to the general.
Speaker 1: British, but the kind.
Speaker 4: Of the people you get on shoot days, you've got
Speaker 4: proper local types. You go up to like a Norfolk
Speaker 4: a Norfolk shoot day, and you listen to the people
Speaker 4: that are in the beating line up. You'll have you
Speaker 4: have people that are like some shoots, you'll have people
Speaker 4: that are heart surgeons at the one of the best
Speaker 4: hospitals in the world. And then you'll have someone that
Speaker 4: you think I wouldn't possibly trust you to look after
Speaker 4: my cat, like for if I went away for the weekend, like,
Speaker 4: I'm not sure how you got dressed this morning. So
Speaker 4: you've got the you've got the shotgun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how did you?
Speaker 4: I know why you're in the beating team and not
Speaker 4: with a gun, because.
Speaker 2: Is no word of a life, you know, on a
Speaker 2: you know, before you have a day, you go and
Speaker 2: have a sweepsteak on the numbers of birds are going
Speaker 2: to be shot and the numbers of cartridges which will
Speaker 2: be expended on that. I went on a day once
Speaker 2: where all the guns and all the beaters are all
Speaker 2: in the same sort of shed. A barn would be
Speaker 2: to give it too much sort of credibility, in credence
Speaker 2: before we said, and there were three x's, right, which
Speaker 2: were put in where you put your name, so they'd
Speaker 2: sort of put numbers, and they'd put an x, a
Speaker 2: scribble which could have been thirty one, could have been
Speaker 2: eight hundred and forty two, and then another scribble for
Speaker 2: cartridges expended, and you think you actually can't write, can you?
Speaker 2: And these you look at these old boys and you think, well,
Speaker 2: you know they've got quite a good farward business, or
Speaker 2: they're very good agricultural contractors. But you just know that
Speaker 2: they left school probably at fourteen at the request of
Speaker 2: the head master, and they paid no attention from the
Speaker 2: probably about the age of ten. But if you speak
Speaker 2: to them about I don't know what the linits, they
Speaker 2: will give you an expert opinion on that. But you
Speaker 2: ask them to go and write down how many shots,
Speaker 2: how many cartridges you think might have been expended, and
Speaker 2: how many birds are going to be shot, they can't
Speaker 2: write the numbers and their own name is basically a squiggle.
Speaker 2: It's quite fascinating.
Speaker 4: Really, that's quite extreme to be that illiterate, even like
Speaker 4: pick up quite basic stuff. But yeah, that does exist.
Speaker 4: It's quite mad that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I could probably find you ten people in the
Speaker 1: local area who are can point to and go, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they're at that level. Yeah, because particularly if
Speaker 1: it was if it wasn't just right down for the sweepstake,
Speaker 1: it was apply to the Welsh government for this ground,
Speaker 1: or apply for this thing, or fill in this form
Speaker 1: to make sure that you don't get fined because you've
Speaker 1: done a prior notification of storage of waste or something
Speaker 1: like that. You know, they're just that whole world that
Speaker 1: they have to work with it in order to say
Speaker 1: legal just doesn't exist for them now because of it,
Speaker 1: there are organizations. So we're here in Wales, we've got
Speaker 1: farming connect and you can go to them and basically say,
Speaker 1: I want to do this, but I have no idea
Speaker 1: how to get this ground. I have no idea what's
Speaker 1: available for me. And they'll tell you. You'll tell you, you know,
Speaker 1: these are the things you can apply for. They'll help
Speaker 1: you find funded training for chainsaw tickets and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So there is some help out there, but there are
Speaker 1: there are quite a few people still there like that.
Speaker 1: And as you say they are, they have so much
Speaker 1: knowledge about things that have just gone by, and I
Speaker 1: will mourn their passing a little bit because they're just
Speaker 1: they were a feature of the countryside that just won't
Speaker 1: be there.
Speaker 2: I think utterly they are a feature of the countryside
Speaker 2: and probably they would be now diagnosed with dyspraxia or
Speaker 2: dyslexia or those things. They would just consider me. I'm
Speaker 2: fifty five and I know that kids in my era
Speaker 2: who were slow were put in the remedial class where
Speaker 2: they basically were given bits of last the scene and
Speaker 2: was saying, you know, if you go you're you're going
Speaker 2: to be fit for nothing.
Speaker 3: And say.
Speaker 2: The one thing I find about a lot of these
Speaker 2: old boys is that they truly.
Speaker 3: Struggle to write their name.
Speaker 2: But if you actually engage with them, there is a
Speaker 2: level of reticence which I think you find quite frequently in.
Speaker 3: Rural working class people.
Speaker 2: If you've got an accent like mine, they think is
Speaker 2: he one of them? In one of us? Is he easy?
Speaker 2: Is he one of them? But you go and chat
Speaker 2: them very quickly or discover gosh, they are the absolute
Speaker 2: doi ends of society, and they're probably the person who
Speaker 2: is the captain of the bell ringers and is also
Speaker 2: the one and only person who can tell you exactly
Speaker 2: where you're going to go and find a hazel dorm ouse.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I say, long long live them, but sadly
Speaker 2: they disappearing fast.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, asked the fellow as w cut the hay.
Speaker 1: That's something that's come up very very recently for upland management.
Speaker 1: Hello everybody, Richard Prideau here. Yes, that's right, the one
Speaker 1: in Wales, not the one who messes around with hedges,
Speaker 1: although I have been known to fondle a hedge or two.
Speaker 1: This is well, this is an insert. This is Richard
Speaker 1: from the future. Really just telling you what's happening with
Speaker 1: a few things that forgot to put in this episode.
Speaker 1: I'm a bit crap. The game fair bingo card that
Speaker 1: is ready to go pretty much. We've just got one
Speaker 1: more thing to work out. But they will be available
Speaker 1: to purchase online from nine am on Saturday morning, So
Speaker 1: that's this coming Saturday, which I believe is the eighteenth
Speaker 1: of July. At nine am, they will be live and
Speaker 1: ready to purchase. And the way it works is that
Speaker 1: you go to well the link in the bottom of
Speaker 1: the episode notes for this, or you go to store
Speaker 1: dot Sidecountry dot co dot uk. There you'll see it
Speaker 1: available as a product. Now it will only cost one
Speaker 1: pound because basically you're downloading an A four PDF to
Speaker 1: print off yourself. But there'll be three options. You can
Speaker 1: choose option one, two or three and you'll get the
Speaker 1: bingo card appropriate for that number. And on there you'll
Speaker 1: find all sorts of things that you can then tick
Speaker 1: off and see at the game fare and the winner
Speaker 1: gets well, the winner gets to know that they've won,
Speaker 1: and that's it. But I want you to tag us
Speaker 1: on social media, tag Country Slide on Instagram or Twitter
Speaker 1: or x whatever we're calling it. This week and we'll
Speaker 1: see who you've seen there. So if you want to
Speaker 1: take a photo of a wolf on a fleecy jumper,
Speaker 1: or a dog in a pram or a pith helmet
Speaker 1: or an inappropriate kilt, then you can do so. Just
Speaker 1: try not to get yourselves in trouble. We want to
Speaker 1: see your photos if you can. And all of the
Speaker 1: profits from this, because there's a little bit of a
Speaker 1: card processing fee. It's not much, it's a couple of pens,
Speaker 1: but it knocks it off every amount. All of the
Speaker 1: profits from this go to the GWCT, so they'll get
Speaker 1: we'll pay them the money afterwards, so they get the money.
Speaker 1: So it's all a bit of fun. It's all very
Speaker 1: very silly, but they get the money. The other thing
Speaker 1: is that we finally have T shirts. They will also
Speaker 1: be available to buy. If you go to the link
Speaker 1: in the show notes, you can go and buy your
Speaker 1: T shirts. Now, these are a bit of a test.
Speaker 1: We are working out whether this is going to work,
Speaker 1: whether these designs work, whether we've got the placement on
Speaker 1: the shirt correct, the printing, all of these little things.
Speaker 1: So the way we've set it up is that we
Speaker 1: are selling them at what it costs us. So we're
Speaker 1: going via a thing called t Mill which allows us
Speaker 1: to just upload the designs and then they print your
Speaker 1: T shirt when you order, and they send your T
Speaker 1: shirt to you. We are listing them up until the
Speaker 1: game there at cost price. So whatever the price that's
Speaker 1: listed on there, that is we're not making any money
Speaker 1: from out that's all going to that company, but you
Speaker 1: get them at the cheapest price. We can possibly make
Speaker 1: it so that you can you can buy it, you
Speaker 1: can test it, you can see whether it works. We
Speaker 1: want your feedback. We want your feedback of could this
Speaker 1: logo be a bit smaller, could it go a bit lower,
Speaker 1: go a bit higher for the ladies? Maybe Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know whether you want dirty dunnucks pressed all the
Speaker 1: way across your lady lumps and exactly where you want them,
Speaker 1: But well you can give the feedback because I have
Speaker 1: no idea. But there will be female specific sizes. There's
Speaker 1: a few different options in there. So we've tried to
Speaker 1: make everything as clear as possible and that's why it's
Speaker 1: taken a little while to set up. Please go to
Speaker 1: the links in the show notes. That's the little bit
Speaker 1: of description you get with a podcast and at nine
Speaker 1: am or Saturday morning to buy all of these shiny,
Speaker 1: lovely things. Right anyway, back to the pod. Well, as
Speaker 1: I look out of the window, we're about to have
Speaker 1: a fantastic sunset because the air is absolutely full of
Speaker 1: smoke particles. These are actually from the Peak District wildfires.
Speaker 1: Because our local wildfires here in Wales, they're all being
Speaker 1: blown out towards islands. They're getting our smoke and we're
Speaker 1: getting smoke from Oldham, so it's blowing all the way
Speaker 1: over here. Oh yeah, it was. It was a very
Speaker 1: very hazy day for most of the day and you
Speaker 1: can smell. You can smell burning heather and burning burning
Speaker 1: wood out and outside. I've got friends in Canada who
Speaker 1: talk about this, you know. So, oh you smell the
Speaker 1: smoke from these wildfires hundreds of miles away and you go, yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: but bloody hell you can.
Speaker 2: Do you think that? I mean, it's clearly that the
Speaker 2: wildfire thing is the whole playbook that the Moorland groups
Speaker 2: and whatnot have been saying, this is an accident waiting
Speaker 2: to happen.
Speaker 3: Has now happened.
Speaker 2: Do you think that their warnings went unheeded because a
Speaker 2: they were slightly aggressive in some of their tactics earlier on.
Speaker 2: Or is it be just because people would rather almost
Speaker 2: see people fry other than admit that grousemore owners and
Speaker 2: those who managed grousemores were correct.
Speaker 1: I've got slightly different take on it here in Wales,
Speaker 1: but this kind of okay, this actually illustrates the points
Speaker 1: I think. So we have one grouse moore here in Wales,
Speaker 1: one active grouse moore and that's right on the Welsh
Speaker 1: border near Rexham, tiny little place kept very well. It's
Speaker 1: where you find black grouse as well. So we've got that.
Speaker 1: To the rest of it. We've got lots of abandoned
Speaker 1: grousemores which are now just sheep grazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah you showed me something, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Wanted to see them basically covered in bracken, bracken and
Speaker 1: dead heather from the flea beetle that's gone through. And
Speaker 1: you will just think about that bit we drove that
Speaker 1: high road where we met that mad old man with
Speaker 1: the model gliders. Yes, that bit. Now, given how dry
Speaker 1: it is, if you just went up there with a match,
Speaker 1: you could probably get the whole hillside going in five minutes.
Speaker 1: So we don't have grouse small. So the grousemoll management
Speaker 1: argument doesn't exist in Wales really and as such the
Speaker 1: Maland Association doesn't, you know, because it's not relevant here.
Speaker 1: National Gamekeepers Organization, who have a huge input into this
Speaker 1: bask all these other places don't really have a voice
Speaker 1: when it comes to upland management because although there are
Speaker 1: shoots up on uplands in Wales, they're not grouse shoots
Speaker 1: and they're not managed for that. They're just sort of
Speaker 1: pheasant pens at the edge of a mountain. So it's
Speaker 1: Natural Resources Whales and the NFU and Farmers Union for Whales.
Speaker 1: They're they're sort of the ones that talk, and then
Speaker 1: you've got the fire services. Well, land management doesn't really
Speaker 1: come into it as much as you would think with that,
Speaker 1: so the argument here is about they just say, oh,
Speaker 1: just re wet or let trees grow, and that's about it.
Speaker 1: The National Resources Whales really restricted burning. So I think
Speaker 1: where we're at now is you can only burn from
Speaker 1: November the one March the fifteenth, and if you do
Speaker 1: it a day outside of that, you in Nakazya farm payments.
Speaker 1: So what a lot of places do they mow and
Speaker 1: they use robot flail mowers and things to mow up
Speaker 1: and down. But what this does is leaves a lot
Speaker 1: of woody debris behind as well, so there's virtually no
Speaker 1: burning happens here now. And what's just happened on Conway Mountain,
Speaker 1: which is where Gareth Wyne Jones previously mentioned on this podcast.
Speaker 1: He where he farms, and two hundred acres went up
Speaker 1: this weekend, but it stopped at places where there was
Speaker 1: a change of vegetation, so where there was a dry
Speaker 1: stone wall and that there was sort of grazing one
Speaker 1: side and not the other, or a track, a very
Speaker 1: well used track and footway in between two zones. It
Speaker 1: stopped dead there so it didn't jump over. And already
Speaker 1: that's being used to say, okay, so that's why you
Speaker 1: should have fire breaks, that's why you should have areas
Speaker 1: cut through and things like that. In England. I do
Speaker 1: think that the Morder Association of people that did say
Speaker 1: things a lot, They said a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: probably natural England probably fought back against. They said, well,
Speaker 1: if you're saying that will do the exact opposite then
Speaker 1: and it was only when maybe the National Trust and
Speaker 1: those kind of landowners actually said no, we're really concerned
Speaker 1: about wildfire and arbits as well. Can we start managing
Speaker 1: it like a grouse moore, just without the fox shooting.
Speaker 1: So when Natural and England sort of relented, but I
Speaker 1: don't I don't think it was just a case they've
Speaker 1: got the wrong message. I think it was that Natural
Speaker 1: England and don't particularly care what happens on the uplands
Speaker 1: beyond what they can measure in terms of is this
Speaker 1: peat and we know the peat map that they have
Speaker 1: is wrong. They do like, well, we're just going to
Speaker 1: try and rewt this and put leaky damse in and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. That'll all fix everything, without actually going
Speaker 1: to check it on the ground, and without accounting for
Speaker 1: as we discussed at the beginning of the show, the
Speaker 1: factor doesn't bloody rain anymore. Yeah, quiet in the summer.
Speaker 1: I think that's the biggest problem is Natural England aren't
Speaker 1: paying attention to the effects of what they've done more
Speaker 1: than you know, the messaging from the organizations. I don't know,
Speaker 1: because it's not something that ever really comes across in
Speaker 1: stuff is that you don't have unless you have a combat.
Speaker 1: That's about it.
Speaker 2: Oh funny enough, that was it Literally the first guy,
Speaker 2: so went on the on the farm WhatsApp group went
Speaker 2: I'm going to start the barley today and went, well
Speaker 2: you're brave and early, and hey, presto, massive fire went
Speaker 2: up just because.
Speaker 3: I mean the thing I find wholly oxymoronic.
Speaker 2: I went down to a I was invited to a
Speaker 2: meeting down at the headquarters of the GWCT down in
Speaker 2: the New Forest, and I thought, I'm going to have
Speaker 2: a drive round because I've not been down to the
Speaker 2: New Forest since I was a child. And I thought, well,
Speaker 2: I'm going to have a bit of a bimbal round.
Speaker 3: And I was driving along some.
Speaker 5: Little open road through the New Forest, and all of
Speaker 5: a sudden my view was obscured by a mass of smoke.
Speaker 2: And they are burning the new Forest, because that's how
Speaker 2: they managed there, exactly the same way as in the uplands.
Speaker 2: They manage the ingress of scrub by burning, and they
Speaker 2: are legally allowed to do so between the first of
Speaker 2: November and the thirty first of Arch. Quite understand, the
Speaker 2: same principle as you would have in the uplands is
Speaker 2: you don't want to go and disturb that's.
Speaker 4: Quite It's quite wet at that point, though, Is that
Speaker 4: not really hard to burn.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing that they do the same exactly
Speaker 2: the same with the uplands, is that they're not burning
Speaker 2: at a time. I mean, you think about it, you
Speaker 2: are burning heather because it's a natural process. It's something
Speaker 2: we've been doing.
Speaker 3: Is the earliest.
Speaker 2: I mean, they've actually.
Speaker 3: Proven that this is not just old, this is proper old.
Speaker 4: They reckon that carbon dated it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, I mean that the oldest thousand, the
Speaker 2: oldest known use of fire by man for heating from
Speaker 2: Suffolk and it was Neanderthal human beings doing it, and
Speaker 2: it was my great grandfather.
Speaker 3: Yes, the.
Speaker 2: Negus spelled ng, which I know is a bit dodgy
Speaker 2: on the old name in front, but it's something which
Speaker 2: we have done for such a long time.
Speaker 3: It's quite literally a trace memory of humans.
Speaker 2: It's how we cleared the forest, is how we we
Speaker 2: opened up places of scrub so that we could put
Speaker 2: our cattle on and graze it there. But if they're
Speaker 2: allowed to do it in the new forest and in
Speaker 2: the new forest, apparently they're quite happy with that because
Speaker 2: that is done by Forestry England and the verderers of
Speaker 2: the new forest, and the verderers and the New Forest,
Speaker 2: although their history goes back that they were basically the
Speaker 2: deer hunters of the.
Speaker 3: New Forest when it was a deer park.
Speaker 2: That's acceptable because they're doing it, and apparently that carbon
Speaker 2: is okay that they're releasing there from doing that. But
Speaker 2: the moment you happen to be a bloke in the
Speaker 2: uplands and you're doing it for the purposes of exactly
Speaker 2: the same thing as what the verderers and Forestry England
Speaker 2: are doing down in the New Forest, it suddenly turns
Speaker 2: into the worst thing ever. And but it is just
Speaker 2: something that I think is that possibly this is something
Speaker 2: that's coming to buy us and I use us in
Speaker 2: inverted commas in the ars is. We've been so vociferous
Speaker 2: about saying, you stupid bloody towny tony Juniper, you've got
Speaker 2: no idea what you're talking about. If we had actually
Speaker 2: slightly had been like the verderers of the New Forest
Speaker 2: and said this is our historic way of managing the more,
Speaker 2: we might have got away with it. But as it
Speaker 2: turns out, you in North Wales and of smelling smuts
Speaker 2: of wildfires under your nose, because the likes of Juniper's
Speaker 2: gang of incompetence have allowed this to happen.
Speaker 1: So have you ever read any of the stuff about
Speaker 1: wildfire in North America? How they managed that?
Speaker 3: Okay, so it's not about Suffolk. I don't read anything.
Speaker 4: But the ones in like California and stuff are crazy,
Speaker 4: aren't they?
Speaker 1: They are? And there's there's a very interesting history with
Speaker 1: the US Forest Service. So and we can learn a
Speaker 1: lot of that from here, about a lot of from that.
Speaker 1: For here was a good book on this by a
Speaker 1: guy called Philip Connors, I think, and it's called Fire
Speaker 1: Season and it's he is one of these guys that
Speaker 1: used to do seasonal fire lookout work one of these
Speaker 1: big towers. Yeah, and you'd live in this tower and
Speaker 1: this little cabin next to it, and you just spend
Speaker 1: all of your time up there, and your whole job
Speaker 1: in the summer was to spot fires in the distance
Speaker 1: and get a range and a bearing from it on
Speaker 1: that fire. And then you caught radio another tower and
Speaker 1: see if they can see it, and they get a
Speaker 1: range on it, and you triangulate the position based on that.
Speaker 1: Really interesting system. But they in they talks about the
Speaker 1: change from what was there in the middle of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, which was complete suppression of every single fire.
Speaker 1: Always put a fire output. You know, work really hard
Speaker 1: to any forest fire, any grassland fire of any type,
Speaker 1: put it out the moment, spot a huge effort to
Speaker 1: put it out. No fires should exist. And what they
Speaker 1: learned from that was what you do is you build
Speaker 1: up a lot of woody debris and a lot of
Speaker 1: fire load that then when you do get a fire
Speaker 1: that you can't get to in time, or it does
Speaker 1: get there before and or you just can't fight it,
Speaker 1: it will take everything because there's so much fuel there.
Speaker 1: You just generate so much heat that it'll be a
Speaker 1: completely devastating wildfire rather than the smaller wildfire which can
Speaker 1: be recovered from in the year or so. So they
Speaker 1: changed it to okay, now we assess the fire and see,
Speaker 1: should we just let this fire burn? Is it just
Speaker 1: going to take away all this vegetation or this dead
Speaker 1: vegetation we don't need anymore, and actually reduces the fire
Speaker 1: risk by having lots of little fires rather than one
Speaker 1: big fire. And that's sort of where we are now
Speaker 1: in the UK, that we don't have fire as part
Speaker 1: of our management process anymore. And what that's done is
Speaker 1: meant that when a fire does hit, it probably rips through.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of tools for our listeners to go
Speaker 1: and have a look at. National Gamekeepers Organization have the
Speaker 1: MALL and Wildfire Danger Index and they've got this map
Speaker 1: and keepers and land managers put on there. They do
Speaker 1: an assessment about how much you know, what risk therough
Speaker 1: is of wildfire and it's about as bad as it
Speaker 1: can get at the moment. Everything's in extreme risk purple,
Speaker 1: so that's quite interesting. If you've got a house on
Speaker 1: the edge of a Morland then yeah, you can go
Speaker 1: and see how much danger you're in. There's also this
Speaker 1: thing the thirty thirty thirty rule, which is if the
Speaker 1: weather and the temperatures are over thirty degrees, the relative
Speaker 1: humidity is below thirty percent, and the wind is over
Speaker 1: thirty kilometers an hour, then that's apocalyptic wildfire scenario because
Speaker 1: you'll get very dry vegetation, all the volatile oils in
Speaker 1: the vegetation is already starting to evaporate in those temperatures
Speaker 1: as well, and then the wind will drive it quicker
Speaker 1: than you can draft. Then you can fight it. And
Speaker 1: those are the conditions. When there was a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago there was a wildfire fighting team in the US,
Speaker 1: I think it was in Utah, got overtaken by fire,
Speaker 1: basically gone into the wrong place. They couldn't get out
Speaker 1: of the gully they were in, and the fire overtook
Speaker 1: them and burnt them all to death in this one gully.
Speaker 1: There's a film about it with Josh Brolin. You can
Speaker 1: go and lock up. It's not a cheerful film.
Speaker 3: One for the.
Speaker 2: Family on a Sunday afternoon when you're fed up with
Speaker 2: our antiques roadshows.
Speaker 1: Don't watch that, kids, wildfire scary.
Speaker 2: I have to say I know a few Upland keepers
Speaker 2: and their relationship with fire is that they they laugh
Speaker 2: because a friend of mine he sends me when they're
Speaker 2: actually mirror burning up there. He sends me photographs and
Speaker 2: moving film and I go, no, you're going to die.
Speaker 2: And they know what they're doing. But they're also hugely
Speaker 2: respectful of it. Now, I would just like to move
Speaker 2: this on slightly because being respectful of fire. I made
Speaker 2: a comment before we start recording Country Slide, I happen
Speaker 2: to say, callum, have you had your hair cut?
Speaker 3: And now Richard's given us some really hot.
Speaker 1: Facts on.
Speaker 2: Loading of burnable material. Calum, have you had your haircut off?
Speaker 2: Something else happened to it?
Speaker 4: Well, I had to have. I had a forced haircut.
Speaker 2: Due to.
Speaker 4: So I have recently purchased a pizza oven.
Speaker 1: And remember listeners when we said he was addicted to
Speaker 1: buying kitchen gadgets last week, And.
Speaker 4: In this pizza raven, at some point I filled the
Speaker 4: entirety of the pizza raven.
Speaker 3: With gas.
Speaker 4: Whatever the whatever the one is, so filling the oven
Speaker 4: with gas and then slightly opening the oven door and
Speaker 4: then pressing the ignition, so that caused a bush of
Speaker 4: flames to come out of said pizza oven and directly
Speaker 4: into my face, which I held my arm up to
Speaker 4: defend my beauty from from fire. And I burned all
Speaker 4: of my a lot, quite a lot of my beard off,
Speaker 4: quite a lot of my eyebrows, I'd say fifty percent
Speaker 4: of my eyelashes, which I think was the biggest shame,
Speaker 4: and most of my fringe.
Speaker 3: So to say, are very essex now they are.
Speaker 2: They are longer, so they are not her suit.
Speaker 5: Are they?
Speaker 1: They were improved?
Speaker 2: Well, But the haircut I had to google it because
Speaker 2: I couldn't remember it, because you know, I was born
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy one, So seventies glam rock is a
Speaker 2: vague memory. But it is only a vague memory. But
Speaker 2: I had to google it and I put in weird
Speaker 2: bloke band seventies hair and it came up immediately. Because
Speaker 2: Google's bullying.
Speaker 1: That's got a broad result.
Speaker 2: Dave Hill, the English musician from Slade. So for those
Speaker 2: of you old enough to remember Dave Hill from Slade,
Speaker 2: that is now how Callum's hair looks. And for those
Speaker 2: of you who aren't old enough to remember what Dave
Speaker 2: Hill from Slade looks like, just google Dave Hill, Slade,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies and you will now see our beloved Callum
Speaker 2: looks like I sound more like gay icon Mark Armond
Speaker 2: at present.
Speaker 3: I think that's going for.
Speaker 1: And if you want to mentally recreate what it looked
Speaker 1: like in Callum's backguarden when this happened, I just want
Speaker 1: you to picture a Japanese soldier in one of those
Speaker 1: commando comics from the eighties being flame throwed by a
Speaker 1: US marine.
Speaker 4: Going.
Speaker 3: Four eyes seven.
Speaker 1: Yes, this is bigger.
Speaker 4: Someone's gonna go on chat GPT today, aren't they?
Speaker 1: Do you know what? Though?
Speaker 3: Because of the transformation you've undergone and knowing the county
Speaker 3: which you're from, and they will jump there onto any
Speaker 3: skincare regime or fashion notion.
Speaker 2: You may have landed finally on something where you are
Speaker 2: going to make it rich callum after stickhead in my oven.
Speaker 4: I don't know how women wear them fake eyelashes, because
Speaker 4: every time I blink it feels like I've got a
Speaker 4: new set of eyes. It's like I'm conscious of every
Speaker 4: blink because just not having eyelashes anymore is pretty rough.
Speaker 4: It's really weird feeling.
Speaker 3: Well, do you know it's quite amusing actually, because I
Speaker 3: don't recommend it.
Speaker 2: I'm a bit fed up with eating money jack because
Speaker 2: I have a lot of munk jack in the freezer.
Speaker 4: You know that's not normal.
Speaker 3: Do you know that it is at our circles? That's
Speaker 3: quite normal?
Speaker 2: And you know I've tried all the norm So what
Speaker 2: I did was, I've got a haunch. I went and
Speaker 2: boned it out, and I used the Countryside WhatsApp group
Speaker 2: to check my thought process, and I thought, right, I'm
Speaker 2: going to go ask Hugo Campbell Hill. The idea here
Speaker 2: in the food section is pretty valuable because you basically
Speaker 2: get direct access to people.
Speaker 3: Who I've either tried it and go and don't do that,
Speaker 3: or people.
Speaker 2: Who are experimental chefs and they're doing something and then
Speaker 2: you can find out whether they're complete idiots or a genius.
Speaker 2: So anyway, I boned this thing out. I said, Hugo,
Speaker 2: what fancy doing is on a roll this like almost
Speaker 2: a breast of lamb with some force meat stuffing and
Speaker 2: then go and he said, oh, yes, that's brilliant, but
Speaker 2: barbecue it, and literally as he said, barbecue it.
Speaker 3: Via the power of WhatsApp over.
Speaker 2: On the other group, there's Callum's face burnt to a
Speaker 2: flipping walker's crisp going just bring him with pizza oven
Speaker 2: and the idea of me switching on my bloody or
Speaker 2: you should have some charcoal in.
Speaker 4: I went, do you know what, like a horse, you
Speaker 4: fall off you and get back on?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I've fallen off horses more times than most people, right,
Speaker 2: but I never came off looking like.
Speaker 3: I've been thrown by the US Ranger Battalion on even.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was like, I'm trying to think what that
Speaker 4: picture is. Who's that picture where the person has just
Speaker 4: been like nap and there and there.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you're thinking of the album cover of rage
Speaker 1: against the machines first album. Aren't You is what they
Speaker 1: what they call the photo not self immolating monk.
Speaker 2: I have to say it's I mean, it's a thing.
Speaker 2: But look did you carry on and complete the pizza cooking?
Speaker 2: And did everyone around you laugh?
Speaker 4: I was cooking a chicken chicking in your pizza oven
Speaker 4: and considering I gassed it for ten minutes, it did
Speaker 4: still it did still come out quite well. No, no,
Speaker 4: you can't say anything else.
Speaker 1: Considering you've just had the kitchen redone as well, so
Speaker 1: you've got a brand new kitchen inside. You have now
Speaker 1: moved outside to effectively a damp well, I say damp patio,
Speaker 1: but damp would be an improvement in current conditions because
Speaker 1: you've bought the pizza ovens, so now everything's happening outside.
Speaker 1: So is the kitchen just unused or is that where
Speaker 1: you're storing all of the pizza dishes and things?
Speaker 4: Well, it's a getting it all outside. But yeah, just
Speaker 4: cook him with a bit of fire. Fire is great,
Speaker 4: isn't it not?
Speaker 3: According to your eyelashes?
Speaker 4: No, yeah, but you know if look, you can't make
Speaker 4: I can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs
Speaker 4: and sometimes sometimes eyebrows are collateral damage in the process.
Speaker 3: You really need eyebrows.
Speaker 4: And you know, there was a good meme the other day.
Speaker 4: It was like my mum didn't raise a quitter, she
Speaker 4: raised a complainer. I complain about almost everything I have
Speaker 4: to do. I'll do it, and i'll do it well,
Speaker 4: but I'll complain about it the whole way. But I
Speaker 4: am surprisingly an optimist. I feel like I have learned
Speaker 4: a lesson taking my eyebrows off and and the lesson
Speaker 4: is not to fuck around with gas. And I've learned
Speaker 4: a lesson that it could have been worse. I could
Speaker 4: have blown something up properly, but all I did was
Speaker 4: loose some eyebrows. So now not only am I going
Speaker 4: to be very careful in future because I know the consequences.
Speaker 4: Only the only damage is my pride and my eyebrows.
Speaker 4: And everyone got a laugh, So it's a win win.
Speaker 1: And if you've got to die, at least die in
Speaker 1: an anecdote, you know.
Speaker 4: I know it was a bit like it was a
Speaker 4: bit like one of the scenes from Casualty where you
Speaker 4: know it's going to happen.
Speaker 2: They like you.
Speaker 4: It's rolling hills and then it cuts to a shot
Speaker 4: of calor gas and then suddenly someone's lighting up a
Speaker 4: pizza up.
Speaker 2: And what we should do is that we should take
Speaker 2: Callum when we go to the game fair in a
Speaker 2: couple of weeks time, we will take Callum with us
Speaker 2: and we will portrayde him in front of the Moreland
Speaker 2: Associations stand that they will have and say this is
Speaker 2: what happens when you get a load of deadwood, you know.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I think it's I think it's a it's
Speaker 2: a public service thing that control burning is good, out
Speaker 2: of control wildfare as you end up looking like Callum.
Speaker 2: I think it's Look, it's just how we operate here
Speaker 2: at Country Slide. We operate a public service thing because
Speaker 2: the BBC can't be asked anymore.
Speaker 1: So there we go, there we go. Well, I think
Speaker 1: that's a good time to bring it to an end.
Speaker 1: This would be the end of the main show. We'll
Speaker 1: go of the patron only after show next and I
Speaker 1: think in the after show, I'm going to start by
Speaker 1: talking about my observations of Callum's interactions with his clients
Speaker 1: on Friday.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, thank you everyone, goodbye.
Speaker 2: Yes