This month we are fortunate to have a second talk and look forward to hearing from Dr Jolyon Medlock who will be telling us all about 'Ticks, Mosquitoes and their diseases' at 7.30pm in the Victoria Hall.

Jolyon has 25 years extensive field experience of infectious disease ecology in UK, Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. He first worked in Africa on malaria control and lymphatic filariasis and since 2002 has been at Porton Down working for UK government health agencies.

Jolyon leads the Medical Entomology group advising UK government on vector-borne disease risk and managing the UK-wide vector surveillance systems for diseases such as Lyme borreliosis, rickettsiosis, West Nile virus, Zika, chikungunya and dengue. With over 100 peer reviewed papers and book chapters, Jolyon's research includes focus on the impacts of environmental and climatic change and habitat management for the changing status of vector-borne disease.

Everyone is welcome. The talk is free for members and £2 for visitors over 21. Doors and the bar will open at 7pm.

​The Society meeting this November will be one of the rare occasions when I actually know something of the topic we shall hear about. A little over a year ago I paid a visit to a stretch of riverbank in the Wylye Valley to hear all about work being done by local farmers. They were  running a programme of soil sampling and trials, with the aim of reducing levels of nitrate, phosphate and sediment run-off reaching the river and groundwater. 
 
The man I heard speak a year ago, Robin Leech, is coming to talk to us on the topic of Wylye Valley Farmer Cluster: monitoring rivers, at 7:30pm on Thursday 14th November (in the Victoria Hall on Tisbury High Street).
 
​Robin is a passionate naturalist, skilled in bird and invertebrate identification, who is making ecology into a career. He is employed by a local farmer and landowner and acts as co-ordinator for the group of farmers involved in this project work.

We shall hear how the project is going, one year on from my visit. And we shall also hear, I am sure, about the Landscape Recovery Project initiated this year for the wider Wylye Valley, involving both the Wessex Rivers Trust and Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, that aims to restore the river to a more natural state and reconnect it to the floodplain.

All of which should have huge benefits for biodiversity, alongside improving water quality and sequestering carbon.

Dick Budden

Come along to the film this Thursday 7th November for the viewing at 6pm of "Six inches of soil". Doors and bar open at 5:30. Free for members or £2 for guests.​

This is a story of courage, vision and hope; an inspiring story of three young farmers on the first year of their journey to heal the soil and help transform the food system. Working with communities, small businesses, chefs and entrepreneurs, they, and others like them, are leading the way to transform how our food is produced and consumed. 

As the trio strive to adopt regenerative practices and create viable businesses, they meet seasoned mentors who help them on their journey. They are joined by other experts providing wisdom and solutions from a growing movement of people dedicated to changing the trajectory for food, farming and the planet.

Mainstream “industrial” farming practices significantly contribute to soil degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change. Regenerative farming practices promote healthier soils, provide healthier, affordable food, restore biodiversity and sequester carbon.

Regenerative farming techniques work in harmony with, rather than against nature. They keep carbon in the ground and create resilient systems in the face of climate uncertainty. Together with a focus on local food systems, shorter supply chains, the advantages are numerous. We get to know who is growing our food and how, farmers get paid a fair price and have the satisfaction of producing healthy food in a healthy environment. 

​Dick Budden

At this time of year hedges are looking at their best, as far as fruit is concerned. The winter storms and hedge cutting haven’t bashed it away, and the birds and animals haven’t started in earnest.

Following this summer’s wetter than normal weather, there is a good crop of rosehips, crab apples, and berries on blackthorn, spindle, hawthorn, wayfaring tree, guelder rose, rowan, elder and buckthorn. This (incomplete) list shows how important it is to plant a whole range of species when planting a hedge. Ancient hedges can have many more species than more recently planted ones, where the predominant species is often hawthorn, as it is cheap to buy and stock proof.

Last winter, no hedges, except those by the roadside, were cut on Wallmead Farm, because it was too wet to get any tractors into the fields without creating mud and ruts for months and the damage would be too much to remedy easily. 

Over the years, I have learnt that cutting should be as late as possible, and certainly not before Christmas, to let the birds and animals have time to eat their fill. Conservation subsidies help with the cost of hedge cutting if it is only done every second or third year, so that is what I have done too. The reason for this is that the flowering and therefore the fruit only happens on growth that is older than a year old. Yearly cutting results in no fruit at all.

When a tall and wide hedge is cut back, the result can look awful! With a flail (which all hedge cutters are) large stems are torn with a jagged edge and the hedge looks as if it has been mauled, a sight which I am sure is familiar to you all. The hedge does recover when spring comes and new shoots appear.

Before hedge cutters (going back 50 years or more), most hedges would have been laid on a rotation of about 15 years; hedges were radically thinned, and the remaining stems were cut at the base halfway through and bent to about 45 degrees to form an impenetrable barrier. 

This essentially is the advice to follow from The People’s Trust for Endangered Species, who have done research on this subject: to cut each two or three years gently, so it increases in height and width slowly, and then to lay it once every 15-20 years. There is a subsidy to help pay for this very slow and expensive job. 

​Peter Shallcross