Speaker's corner

25 April 2023 - Clare Park Farm

Farm to fork feeds Farnham

In a new twist on the feel-good food phrase “from farm to fork”, the farmer and his farm came to lunch at the 25 April meeting of the Probus Club of Farnham.

The farming life is far from simple these days. It is like juggling several balls in the air at the same time, round the clock in all seasons. 

It involves managing a volatile mixture of weather and market uncertainties, soil and resource conservation, environmental management and enhancement, as well as the whole point of it all - sowing, harvesting, and raising livestock for our food. 

These wonderful insights into modern farming were provided in a pre-lunch talk by Giles Porter, who heads the family farming business Clare Park Farm on Farnham’s doorstep outside Crondall. Local walkers of the fields and woodlands of Clare Park would see their green and pleasant surroundings in a new light. And it’s not as easy as it looks.

The farm encompasses 4,000 acres (about the area of the Scilly Isles) with an additional 1,000 acres of other people’s property under management. Classed as a mixed farm, Clare Park does any farm-related activity that will earn money: growing crops, keeping sheep, pigs, and chickens, plus letting out converted farm buildings for businesses, workshops and storage.

Wheat is the biggest crop because it is the most profitable. Secondary are barley for malt, plus oilseed rape, beans, peas and linseed oil, and grass for hay. Rapeseed, which produces the brilliant yellow fields in spring, used to be planted as much as wheat but the risk of beetles devouring the crop has resulted in less being grown. 

Crops are grown in rotation to maintain the fertility of the soil, while sheep graze the arable land after harvest to control weeds and fertilise the soil. 

Sheep number about 400 mainly of the Dorset breed that can produce lambs all year. Clare Park concentrates on lambing in September. They are sold for the table, rather than for their wool which unfortunately has become nearly worthless. Nowadays even the cost of shearing the sheep cannot be recovered.

In the interests of soil conservation Clare Park no longer ploughs the fields before planting. It has not ploughed for 20 years. Ploughing disturbs the microbes and structures that keep soil healthy. Crops are sown in the ground by direct drilling with minimal use of fertiliser, less herbicide than in the past and no insecticides. 

Precision farming is practised which means the soils of each field are mapped to show areas of higher and lower fertility so that doses of fertiliser can be tailored to enhance the poorer areas with the better parts needing less. After harvesting, yield maps can be produced to see whether the seeding and fertilising patterns have produced the desired results. The capability is coming of using driverless (autonomous) tractors and combine harvesters guided by satellites that can map a field to within two inches, so the machines can work the field and its contours without human input.

Giles said that while the availability of marketing data about future prices is a good indicator of what is in store for sales, there are still multiple variables, risks and uncertainties about when to lock into sales contracts with buyers. It is still a difficult call.

Farmers play a huge part in countryside stewardship and improvement. Yet despite incentives from government to look after the land, Giles maintains that at Clare Park “We farm the way we want to farm, despite the encouragement of government”.

There is a new subsidy, the Sustainable Farming Incentive, with management plans having to be introduced in exchange for money to incentivise sustainable practices. Giles says Clare Park manages hedgerows, plants trees, and creates ponds and habitats for birds and bees. 

The farm has “shedloads of skylarks”, and strong populations of bees and butterflies. He says for the enjoyment of these attractions and the countryside in general the farm encourages walkers to keep to the footpaths and control their dogs on leads.

Giles may have brought the farm to the Probus Club lunch but he could not stay to eat, as sunny weather called him back immediately after the talk for urgent tasks on the farm.

  Hugh Leggatt

January 2023 Probus talk:  A tour of duty over lunch

It is little known that Farnham’s local army regiment, The Princess of Wales’s, has deep and illustrious roots in the history of the British military, going back to the beginning of modern Britain, about 1660. 

Diana, Princess of Wales, was Colonel-in-Chief of the regiment in 1992, when it was formed by the amalgamation of The Queen’s Regiment and the Royal Hampshire Regiment. This succession of royal patronage goes back to Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II, for whom The Queen’s Regiment (1684) was named. 

These interesting details formed part of a talk to the Club on 24 January by pre-lunch guest speaker Colonel Patrick Crowley MBE, deputy colonel of The Princess of Wales’s Regiment. 

He said traditionally the British military was formed around local associations, typically by the raising of forces by local lords and landowners in times of trouble. Until quite recently if you joined the army and came from Farnham you would most likely be in the Princess of Wales’s. Nowadays with multiple amalgamations of regiments driven mostly by defence budget allocations, recruitment draws on a much wider pool than London and the South-East. 

Tracing the history of the regiment from the formation of the Trained Bands of London, raised by the wealthy merchants of the City in 1572, about 48 regiments, according to the Regiment’s “family tree”, had become eight by the 19th and early 20th century and by the 21st century only one, the Princess of Wales’s, remains.

Catherine of Braganza brought possession of Tangier to Britain by her marriage to the king leading to the formation of The Tangier Regiment of Foot in 1661 to guard the Moroccan city. This regiment stands at the foot of the family tree that led to The Princess of Wales’s, via The Queen’s Own (1727) and The Queen’s Regiment (1966) among many others.

Patrick said in the wars we remember today, the Princess of Wales’s in its current and previous forms took part and made sacrifices for King, Queen and country from jungles to deserts across the world. The roll call includes Quebec (1752), Gallipoli, The Somme (1916) and Northern Ireland. 

It remains England’s most senior regiment and its most decorated, with the only living Victoria Cross winner, Johnson Beharry, who was awarded Britain’s highest military honour for valour in Iraq.

Patrick said the British Army’s purpose now centres on the prevention of war, working mainly with allies. The army is currently training Ukrainians, supporting Nato in eastern Europe, peacekeeping in the Balkans and filling in for national crises. “The military is generally invisible to the public, but when needed it has to be there and it has to be ready”.

(Patrick’s new book Infantry Die Hards is on sale to raise funds for the PWRR Benevolent Fund – see British Commission for Military History » Infantry Die Hards by Patrick Crowley (bcmh.org.uk))

Hugh Leggatt

July 2022 Probus Talk:  Insights into local journalism 

At the July lunch, the editor of the Farnham Herald, Colin Channon, provided a lively and entertaining hour-long account of his experiences as editor of South Coast newspapers such as the Chichester Observer, and of his current tenure in Farnham.

It was he who managed to make the change of the heavy-duty broadsheet Herald to the more appealing and newsy tabloid the newspaper is today, a feat accomplished in spite of owner Sir Ray Tindle having said such a change would happen only “over my dead body”.

Colin and his team drew up a prototype edition of a tabloid format, complete with dummy news and content, and it was the “suits” (management) who presented Sir Ray with the idea and who managed to get it through without a fuss. Since then the paper has thrived in its role as a mirror of the community.

The paper, which is published from the Farnham office by a core of only about five people, with alternative pages put together for editions in Alton and Haslemere, has since won awards, such as UK local paper of the year, and has become a valuable and respected conduit of local news, community information, readers’ views and nostalgia.

The Herald has covered public controversies such as the Brightwells East Street development, and air pollution problems in central Farnham, with Colin claiming that it was the paper’s reporting that helped bring about action to tackle pollution through the Farnham Infrastructure Project. “It shows the difference a local paper can make to the community,” he said.

The number of letters to the editor is a reliable barometer of the extent to which the paper is engaged in the issues people care about, he added. Ninety-nine percent of letters submitted are printed over as much as four pages, whereas some Tindle papers in the group he worked for would get only two letters.

Women are the main buyers of the newspaper, he said, often including it in their weekly shop. The front page layout with emphasis on a visual image supported by brief caption information and a newsy headline is the “grabber” to drive sales. The circulation is between 8,000 and 9,000 a week with additional readers who may share it in the same household, or pass it on to their neighbours. 

Colin says advertisers like the “gravitas” of the printed page to display their wares over online newspaper ads, while readers love - for instance - the spreads of pictures of school reception classes, coverage of carnivals and festivals, and end of term social events in the summer. 

So Colin reckons the future is secure for the printed newspaper, at least in Farnham.

Hugh Leggatt