Among the many things they get up to at County Hall, one operation which I can unhesitatingly single out for praise (yes, you did read that correctly) is the...

Lots of clever people with much better qualifications than me have written about the importance of landscape to memory.  All I can say is that I agree with them....

A few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting the then Secretary of State for the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Owen Paterson, at the...

It’s official – summer ends today.  And once again I have failed to harvest nature’s bounty from the garden: the redcurrants and blackcurrants remain unpicked, the birds ate all...

You have to wade through a fair amount of fertiliser in this game (journalism, I mean) but this weekend’s government announcement that it would guarantee European Union farm subsidies...

It looks like it’s going to be an excellent year for my apples. I got the trees pruned hard last year – for the first time in decades –...

I think that if there is one element of the countryside which defines rural Cornwall, it is our hedges. They mark ownership boundaries. They stop livestock escaping from fields....

When I moved into this house 30 years ago, one of the first curios which I noticed the previous owners had left behind, hanging on a shed wall, was...

Life in rural Cornwall, particularly for anyone involved in agriculture, is often portrayed as a battle against wild animals. Any beast which competes with us for space and resources,...

Something you might think I would have learned by now is that almost every initiative I try to take on running this place has some unintended consequence. For example,...

So far, very few of the millions of words written about last week’s Brexit have touched on the environment. It is a sobering thought that many of the reasons...

The patch of oil on my garage floor is now so large I’m thinking of joining OPEC. Unfortunately the oil comes not from a deep well of latent riches,...

Another year, another show over. By the time you read this, planning for 2017 will be well underway. For me, the stand-out story of last week’s Royal Cornwall Show...

As scholarly readers of the Cornish Guardian, and William Shakespeare, will know, Hamlet was not talking about chickens when he said “I must be cruel only to be kind.”...

Hard to believe, but once upon a time I might have been an engineer. This weekend I had good reason to wish that 45 years ago, history had taken...

Only two weeks to go. There’s an eerie calm about Wadebridge right now, as if people know what’s coming and they know how to deal with it. The show...

You can’t walk very far along a country lane in North Cornwall at this time of year without noticing the riot of wild flowers in the hedgerows. The smell...

A young chap called last week to ask if he could look at my trees. He was from Western Power, and as the company had not looked at the...

If there’s one aspect to poultry-keeping which I really dislike more than any other, it’s cleaning out the chicken shed. It’s one of those jobs which I can always...

  In 1999 I made a television documentary about The Beast of Bodmin Moor. Armed with only a video camera, I spent two weeks in a tent, near Bolventor,...

They say that the pen is mightier than the sword, which sadly turned out not to be true for the 71 journalists killed last year for trying to do...

It is often said that as a nation, we care more about animals than we do about children.  A small and very subtle change to the way we approach...

Exciting times up in the orchard, where my first colony of Cornish black bees arrived this week.   There can be few people more ignorant about bees than me.  Until...

When it comes to gardening, I am what could only be described as a reluctant participant. I think it was Rudyard Kipling who said: “Gardens are not made by...

One of the many curious aspects of living in an old house is the bizarre stuff you can just find, and then ponder what secrets it holds.   Rarely...

A full-page, anonymous, advert last week condemned Cornwall as a “developers’ paradise” because of the perceived rush to build new houses on green fields wherever they become available. Cornwall...

I have never been to the village of Miserden, in Gloucestershire, but I am in no doubt that it must be hell on Earth. Miserden this week won the...

Once, entirely by accident, I caught a badger. We’d been having problems with foxes, and the badger had wandered into the live trap up in the orchard, no doubt...

One of the first things that every journo learns is that “dog bites man” is not a story. “Man bites dog” is much more interesting. Similarly, “village pub not...

One of the disadvantages of having a Y-chromosome is the tendency to make lists of things which need fixing (a pair of X-chromosomes would of course allow me simply...

A tough decision to make last weekend – whether to join village friends at the local cider farm for the annual Wassail, or stay in and watch the latest...

  I was amused to read this week that there are no fewer than 30 government ministers entitled to attend Cabinet meetings – but that not one of them...

I’m sure we’ve all heard the one about the small child, gazing in wonder at a new-born lamb, who turns to his father and asks “where do lambs come...

I recently ticked off something that’s been on my to-do list for 25 years, and installed a couple of wood-burning stoves. The house had two empty spaces (a little-used...

It’s that time of year when my routine now has to include a daily check of the mouse trap. Most days in January, the “Little Nipper” – now nearly...

When I was about six years old, my father taught me how to shoot. No doubt this was an act of gross irresponsibility on his part. I’m sure that...

About a year ago the government promised us it was on a mission to create a “paradise” for bees. Next weekend I plan to join in with this national...

I said goodbye to my pigs last week. They were back within days, enjoying an even-more-carefree space, in the freezer.The pigs had spent five months helping clear my overgrown...