The Summer Tour June 28th-June 30th.
This excursion to Leicestershire proved very popular with 22 participants enjoying everything from a tour of the Burghley House Park led by the head forester to Pork Pie making, tasting Bison Burgers and visiting some very professional farming enterprises.
Although the weather was less than bright, a great deal was learnt about the history of the Capability Brown Landscape at Burghley House from Peter Glassey the Head Forester. Later that day the group convened at Ye Olde Pie Shoppe in Melton Mowbray and in “Generation Game” fashion created some rather tasty pork pies. These were collected on Friday morning where top marks had been awarded to John Barker for his splendid creation.
The second morning we headed north to Nottinghamshire to visit Strawsons who were packing Suffolk Grown Carrots in their processing plant. The afternoon saw us take in some cheese tasting and the evening we were treated to a Bison Farm visit by the eccentric owner George Wakeling and then enjoyed Venison and Bison fayre provided by his wife Ruth in their newly opened Farm cafe.
Day three The group visted a very progressive Farmer in Tom Hawthorne who is enthusiastic about what and how he does his farming. Operating a 12m controlled traffic system over 5,000 acres, he certainly appears to have thought long and hard about everything he does, a great credit to him. The afternoon saw the last visit of the tour before returning to Suffolk and that was a trip to the Allerton Project at Loddington. Here Alastair Leake hosted our tour of a farm demonstrating modern farming techniques with real conservation strategies and it was working. This was a wonderful conclusion to what had been an interesting and enlightening brief tour to the East Midlands.
The Club now looks forward to the New Season staring in November with a presentation on the lighter side of Pest Control.