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countrysmallholding.com    IN FOCUS Innovation in food preparation areas Anglo-French company makes it simpler and cheaper for UK farmers to shift to making and selling their own produce Read more » Castlemilk Moorits: a real success story A breed that combines all the best characteristics of its Hebridean ancestors Read more » Lowdown on the Lowlines Nick Weber of Wessex Lowlines explains the reasons for the success of these well-proportioned beef cattle that are well suited to smallholdings Read more »    TRENDING Killing and butchering sheep Feeding the family with produce from the smallholding is the ultimate goal for many of us. Tim Tyne gives a guide to slaughtering and butchering your sheep Read more »    LATEST On a (sausage) roll! Business is booming for one young pig farmer, as Liz Shankland discovers in this month’s Pig People Read more » ‘Townies’ transformed Veronica and Jules Hartley started their smallholding adventure three years ago – and have come on in leaps and bounds. They talked to John Wright Read more » Rock star smallholder Chris Stewart found fame as drummer with superband Genesis. Now he lives quietly on a smallholding in Spain, and wrote about his experiences in the celebrated book Driving Over Lemons. Chris, who has a new book out, talked to Liz Shankland Read more »    COMPETITIONS WIN this Mini Swiss Chalet Don’t miss the chance to win a £300 chicken house in our September issue, on sale next week. Order at www.buyamag.co.uk’ Read more »   SUBSCRIBE Country SmallholdingSubscription Offer » Buy a single issue of Country Smallholding » Order Today » Order Today » The English GardenSubscription Offer » Buy a single issue of The English Garden » Discover BritainSubscription Offer » Buy a single issue of Discover Britain» Home How To's Poultry Livestock Land Equipment In Focus Magazine Competitions Forum Breeders' Directory

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TABLE OF CONTENTS... • The Latest Issue of Home Farmer... • Mulberries - by Elizabeth McCorquodale... • Apple Trees... a few Tricks of the Trade... • Knit these Egg Hats for Charity... • Your Chance to Win... • And a further Chance to Win... Our New Subscriprion Gift... Sign up today and save over £1.00 on every issue (on Direct Debit), getHome Farmer delivered straight to your door every month and get a choice of either River Cottage Every Day, The Herb & Flower Cookbook or Paul Hollywood's Breadas a FREE GIFT. To subscribe by Direct Debit and save 25% click here. To subscribe for 12 issues by card click here. See you at... Come down and meet us at the Rare Breeds Show and Sale at Melton Mowbray Auction Mart on 13th September. We are also looking forward to having a stand at The Scottish Smallholders and Growers Festival It is Scotland’s largest smallholder event, celebrating the very best of Scottish smallholding, growing and crafting. Organised by smallholders, growers and crafters, it is aimed at anyone with an interest in the productive use of small land holdings and rural issues. The 2014 Festival will take place on Saturday 27th September at Lanark Agricultural Centre. We certainly hope to see some of you there... Your Chance to Win... In this month's issue we've also teamed up with VegTrug to offer a medium sized VegTrug and Trellis worth £200 to one lucky winner. Missing Words Speak Loudest... Please indulge an editor. We always try to make the newsletter enjoyable - it's what people need on a Friday morning - but occasionally there are more serious and pressing issues. One of these is the possibility that two thirds of the UK will be offered up to fracking, something I have been researching since a reader made me aware of it over three years ago. I have come to oppose it, but appreciate that there will be some who support it. Consequently, the best we can hope for is an informed debate, but when the government 'redacts' (censors, to you and me) some sixty three items from a thirteen page discussion document on the matter, and covers proposals for transport arrangements regarding waste water from the industry with nothing more than blank pages, then we perhaps have reason to be wary. To read more about the government's fracking 'missing words' roundclick here. Home Farmer Resource Site www.homefarmer.co.ukis becoming quite an extensive and wide-reaching resource for anyone seeking solutions to familiar problems, step-by-step 'how-to' instructions, recipes, news snippets, information and videos, and it's growing and growing all the time as we add lots more new features and items of topical interest. Visitwww.homefarmer.co.ukto see just a brief cross-section of the many different fascinating things you will find on our website. The Latest Issue of Home Farmer... So what's Inside the October Home Farmer? Well, quite simply the broadest range of subjects to be found in any 100 page magazine. From making seed bombs, growing medlars and quinces, and seasonal foraging for mushrooms and a raspberry that looks like it drank some of Dr Jekyll's formula, to normal raspberries and currants in a feature on soft fruit, and apples in a feature about... well, apples, of course!. We also have 3 of the best squash recipes from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and the River Cottage team and 17 pages of quick and easy crafty gift ideas - all nestled comfortably in between our usual features on growing, cooking, livestock and special projects. We also have some great competitions - you could win a polytunnel or a VegTrug, and there are free fruit bushes for every reader - a redcurrant and a blackcurrant bush together worth £15.90. But that's not all... the October issue comes with a new lick of paint as we have carried out a design update to freshen up the pages of your magazine. But don't worry, the content remains as varied as ever as we endeavour to bring you as wide a range of home farmer-ish topics as we can find out there. For a sneak preview of the October issue, check out the link below to the contents pages. IF YOU CAN'T CLICK ON THE LINKS, GO TO THE TOP OF THIS LETTER AND CLICK TO VIEW THE WEB VERSION.  To view the contents panel click here. To buy this issue click here. Mulberries - by Elizabeth McCorquodale... Elizabeth McCorquodale worked incredibly hard as usual to produce an article about Medlars, Quinces and Mulberries, but due to the crafts section in the October issue, there really wasn't enough space to do the article full justice and use all her photographs, so we have published the section on mulberries online. It contains a wonderful story too about an abortive attempt by King James I and his gardener, William Stallenge, to topple the French silk industry with a UK enterprise based on the mulberry tree. To read Elizabeth McCorquodale's article about mulberries click here. Apple Trees... a few Tricks of the Trade... In the October issue of Home Farmer we feature both soft fruits and apples, the latter in articles by John Harrison and Dave Hamilton. John mentions a particular supplier of trees in Wales, Ian Sturrock, who specialises in traditional hardy varieties such as the Bardsey apple pictured, which are suited to the colder, wetter climates of Wales and more northern regions of the UK. Many are similar to but more appropriate than many more familiar varities if you live more than half an hour's drive north of Watford. He also specialises in pear, plum and damson varieties too, all organic and developed at his nursery in Wales. Ian has some very useful videos of grafting and other procedures on his website which owners (or prospective owners) of apple and other fruit trees will certainly find useful. The videos deal with various aspects of getting the most from them and include subjects such as pruning, caning newly grafted trees and fancy training. To see Ian's fruit tree videos click here. Knit these Egg Hats for Charity... We've come up with this quick-knit pattern to raise money for Lucky Hens Rescue. So if you feel like wielding a pair of knitting needles and have some spare oddments of wool around, please feel free to knit up these fun 'egg hats' and send a few up to Lucky Hens Rescue to help with their fund-raising activities. Feel free to share on Facebook and retweet this. Click here for the pattern. Your Chance to Win... Enter now by email and your details will go in the pot to win a set of preserving labels from AA Labels. Simply go to www.aalabels.comto answer the question: Which types of adhesive labels do AA Labels offer? To enter, email your answer, along with your name and address, to ruth@homefarmer.co.uk Mark all emails 'AA Label Comp./newsletter.' All entries should be received by us no later than the 2nd September. And a further Chance to Win... In this month's issue we've teamed up with Ferryman Polytunnelswho have kindly given us an 8 x 10' polytunnel for one lucky reader.

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If this e-mail appears as text-only, please use this link to view the html version. EBLEX events 5 August 2014 Body Condition Refresher – Nantwich 6 August 2014 Sheep Lameness, Mastitis & Nutrition Vet CPD – Malvern 6 August 2014 Sheep EBVs and Genomics – Somerset 6 August 2014 Focus Farm launch meeting: Flock Health Topics – Richmond 14 August 2014 Body Condition Refresher – Lacock 15 August 2014 Body Condition Refresher – Leamington Spa 19 August 2014 Improving Grass Management to Increase Profitability – Callington 19 August 2014 Body Condition Refresher – Morpeth 21 August 2014 Body Condition Refresher – Tonbridge  Contact us The EBLEX head office is based at: EBLEX Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board Stoneleigh Park Kenilworth Warwickshire CV8 2TL Telephone: 024 7669 2051 Email our head officeIf you no longer wish to receive this newsletter, you can unsubscribe to take your name off our list. We do not share your data with third parties. © Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board 2014. EBLEX is a division of the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB). All content is correct at the time of publication. Welcome The beef industry was in the news for all the wrong reasons last week, with several British papers printing articles about a US studyclaiming that beef production is 10 times more damaging to the environment than production systems involving other livestock.  Some of the most attention-grabbing headlines focused on the land and water requirements of beef production, with the study finding that it requires 28 times more land and 11 times more irrigation water than other types of livestock production. I'm sure we at EBLEX HQ weren't alone in reacting with frustration to this latest critique of beef production, which painted a picture of a resource-hungry global industry with little regard for the consequences of its actions. Broadening the conclusions of a study such as this out to a global level fails to acknowledge important differences between production systems. Most of the coverage included a line about how, while the study is based on US data, its findings are equally applicable to Europe. But, even within a single continent, the diverse range of climates and terrains means that any conclusions are going to be an over-simplification at the very least. In the UK we primarily graze ruminants to convert grass, which cannot be used to feed people, into nutritious food for our growing population. In many cases these animals occupy areas of farmland which couldn't be used to grow other crops. And our rain-fed pasture system means we have very little reliance on irrigation; it takes just 67 litres of water to produce 1kg of beef. There are also environmental benefits of grazing cattle and sheep in terms of landscape management and maintaining biodiversity, as well as the ability of permanent pasture to capture and store carbon. The true picture of beef's environmental impact is complex and nuanced. However, one thing consumers can be certain of is that by buying quality assured beef from England, they're supporting one of the most efficient and sustainable livestock production systems in the world. Nick Allen Sector Director EBLEX news Online EBLEX campaign aims to get students cooking with lamb Students are being encouraged to cook with lamb as part of an EBLEX campaign to get it back on their menu at meal times. The LambSoc campaign is aimed at developing an online community of 18 to 25-year-olds, creating videos with popular YouTubers, based on EBLEX's initial lamb keema recipe. It will also encourage students to post videos and photos of their efforts and sharing content to spread the word. It is aiming to achieve 20,000 likes on Facebook and 500,000 video views across all channels by next April. Read more... Yearbook highlights strong year for sheep meat exports Volume and value of UK sheep meat exports performed strongly again last year, according to the AHDB/EBLEX Cattle and Sheep Yearbook 2014. Volumes in 2013 increased nine per cent on the year to 103,200 tonnes, while the value of sheep meat exports for the same period rose eight per cent on 2012 to £381.6 million. There was substantial growth in exports to non-EU markets with shipments totalling 17,600 tonnes, compared to 12,300 tonnes in 2012. Read more... Austrian food service sector gets taste for beef and lamb Members of the high-end Austrian food service sector were given a taste of Quality Standard beef and lamb at a special reception in Vienna. Premium beef and lamb was served at the event in the British embassy, organised by EBLEX in conjunction with UKTI Austria, which was attended by 50 people. A similar event showcasing beef and lamb is due to take place in Cologne, Germany. Read more... Tri-Nations trophy heads to southern hemisphere New Zealand's butchery team have successfully defended their title at the 2014 Tri-Nations Butchers' Challenge in a closely-fought contest of skill and speed. The annual competition took place on British soil for the first time at the Great Yorkshire Show on July 10, and saw teams of six of the best butchers from Britain, New Zealand and Australia tackle a side of beef and full lamb carcase over two hours. The task was not only to expertly butcher the meat, but also to create an innovative display using creative cuts. Read more... Online - a significant opportunity for butchers A recent survey has revealed that one in three butcher's shops has a company website, turnover from online ordering is expected to rise by 175% in five years and a quarter of shops with websites have an online ordering facility. The survey, which is understood to be the first to examine online sales in the sector, was commissioned by EBLEX and revealed that total butcher's shop sales are estimated to be worth £2.24 billion annually, with just over £4million (0.2%) being accounted for in online sales.Read more... BRP news Check ram credentials online Looking on the internet can help sheep producers ensure they purchase the optimum genetics for their flock, according to EBLEX breeding specialist Sam Boon. "With an investment in a performance recorded ram with a high Estimated Breeding Value (EBV) shown to be worth an additional £800-£1000 over his working lifetime, extra genetic information can be valuable. "Information about breeding potential (EBVs/Indexes) is now often displayed at sales. However, there is more information available for most Signet recorded flocks on the Signet website. "This enables potential purchasers to identify how many lambs a flock has produced that meet their breeding requirements and generate breeding charts for rams of interest." Selecting replacement heifers Selecting the right replacement heifers is essential for herd improvement, health status and herd profitability, advises EBLEX's Dr Mary Vickers. "Heifers born early in the calving season are most likely to be grown sufficiently well to meet target first service weight of 65% of mature cow weight," she said. "Onset of puberty and successful conception are closely linked to weight, so ideally weigh heifers at weaning and select those capable of reaching 65% of mature weight for service at 15 months of age. "Information on the heifer's dam, and sire if available, should also inform the selection decision, taking into account the traits that are important for the herd." Industry news New secretary of state at Defra Prime Minister David Cameron confirmed last month that Norfolk MP Liz Truss would replace Owen Paterson as Secretary of State at Defra as part of a cabinet reshuffle. Liz says that she is "looking forward to tackling the important issues facing our rural communities including championing British food, protecting people from flooding and improving the environment." Mrs Truss, who became the youngest member of the new Cabinet, moved to Defra from the Department of Education and has gained rapid promotion having only been an MP since 2010.   Read more...