-
Shire Horse Farm
Julia Bradbury heads off to North Yorkshire to catch up with the residents of Staintondale Shire Horse Farm near Scarborough. For the last twenty-five years, it's been run by Tony Jenkins as more of a mini theme park than a farm, with Wild West shows featuring his palomino ponies and displays of his shire horses. Back in the spring, Tony’s wife, Anne, said that at the age of 78 it was time for him to pack up his spurs and retire. Julia goes back to see whether he’s taken her advice, or decided that the show must go on.
The Shire Horse Society: Heritage -
Cooking Christmas dinner
Matt and the boys get on with preparing the Christmas roast – hogget from Matt’s parents’ farm in County Durham. Hogget is lamb from a slightly older animal, and it’s the traditional centrepiece of the Christmas meal in the Baker household. While Matt prepares the main course, Julia has roped in the local Women's Institute to help her with dessert – delicious chocolate brownies. Here’s how to make them.
Ingredients:
* 175g unsalted butter
* 200g dark chocolate
* 75g cooked cranberries
* 75g sifted cocoa powder
* 100g sifted plain flour
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 300g caster sugar
* 4 large eggs
Recipe:
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Centigrade (Gas Mark 4) and line a 20cm x 30cm baking tin with greaseproof paper. Melt the butter and the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water, mixing gently until smooth. Stir in the cranberries, then remove the mixture from the heat. Separately, mix the cocoa powder, flour, baking powder and sugar. Add this mixture to the other, then stir until it’s all combined well. Beat the eggs, then mix those in too. Pour the brownie mix into the baking tin, and place in the oven for around 15 to 20 minutes. After removing the brownies from the oven, allow them to cool in the tray for half an hour before turning them out onto a chopping board and cutting into squares. -
Christmas trees
For three weeks every year, Christmas trees are thrust into the spotlight, adorned with bright lights and baubles. Then suddenly the fuss is all over. But there can be life after the living room for our Christmas trees, as James Wong discovers. Every year, cut trees are buried in the sand in Formby, on the north west coast of England, to stop the dunes eroding; trees are also turned into mulch for the parks and gardens of towns like Halifax; and for living Christmas trees, there are woodland areas specially set aside where they can take root again outdoors.
Waste Online: Cutting down on Christmas waste -
Preparing for the shoot
Williamstrip is a four thousand acre shooting estate, situated a stone’s throw from Adam’s farm in the Cotswolds. The Christmas break marks the culmination of a year’s hard work by three gamekeepers, who have raised thousands of pheasants ready for the shooting season. Dave Harris, the Head Keeper, agreed to take Matt Baker along as his apprentice for the day, as they distribute wheat to feed the pheasants and stake out this season's best shooting areas.
BBC South Today: The Gamekeeper -
A stately Christmas
Christmas is just days away, but work is far from over on the Dunham Massey estate in Cheshire. With a list of big winter jobs to get through, it’s all hands on deck – and Countryfile's Katie Knapman and Jules Hudson are there to help out. Katie assists with building the scaffold that’s needed to unhook the antique curtains and then clean them, before getting to work polishing the family silver. Meanwhile, Jules explores Dunham Massey’s newly-opened winter garden and helps volunteers plant a whopping 200 thousand bulbs. He's then drafted in to clean the tree trunks of the young silver birch trees, giving Dunham Massey some of the best kept saplings in the country.
The National Trust: Dunham Massey -
A winter crop
Not everything in the fields stops growing when the weather turns cold. On the farms of Lincolnshire, for example, the fields are full of brussels sprouts. For the Petit family in Boston, sprouts have provided a valuable livelihood for years. They own a 500 acre farm where they grow over a thousand tonnes of them every year – and John Craven drops in to help with the harvest. He then heads off to nearby Spalding to meet one of the biggest chicory growers in the country and see an example of the darkened sheds where the top-grade herb is grown. Finally, loaded down with winter vegetables, he heads back to Adam's farm for Christmas dinner.
Royal Horticultural Society: Hardy winter vegetables -
Christmas dinner at Adam's
(The photo above shows the team enjoying their Christmas dinner. From left to right: James Wong, Katie Knapman, Adam Henson, John Craven, Matt Baker, Julia Bradbury and Jules Hudson.)
The Countryfile presenters gather together for a farmhouse Christmas dinner. Matt has brought the lamb from his parents’ farm in County Durham, Julia has rustled up a dessert with the help of the local Women’s Institute, and John supplied the fresh vegetables from his visit to Lincolnshire. While they tuck in to their Christmas fayre, the Countryfile posse look back at some of the lighter moments from 2009.
Credits
- Presenter
- Julia Bradbury
- Presenter
- Matt Baker
- Presenter
- John Craven
- Presenter
- James Wong
- Presenter
- Adam Henson
- Producer
- Teresa Bogan
- Executive Producer
- Andrew Thorman
