Times Summer 2019 Issue: 5

Visit the Parish Website: englishcombe.net

Funded by Englishcombe Parish Council.

Welcome to the fifth edition of the Englishcombe Times!!

The Englishcombe Times was first published in June 2018 thanks to a grant received from the Bath & North East Somerset Community Empowerment Fund and delivered to each house in Englishcombe Parish. We hope that you have found it informative with its content and would like to thank all those who have supplied articles for the different editions.

Events to place in your diaries over the next couple of months: June 20th and 21st sees Cream Teas being served at the Old Acorn Barn in Englishcombe from 2:30 to 4:30pm, and July 20th and 21st the Village Weekend takes place at the Old School in Englishcombe. If you have an article for inclusion in future editions please send them to :

englishcombetimes@gmail.com Funding for the Englishcombe Times, from now on, is by Englishcombe Parish Council. You may or not be aware that an election for new councillors to the Parish Council should have been held on May 2nd along with the District Council Elections. As there were only 7 nomi-nations for 7 council places, it was deemed an uncontested election with all nominations automatically elected. A list of those elected can be seen either on the noticeboard in Eng-lishcombe Village (by the Post Box) or online going to the PARISH NOTICEBOARD on our website: englishcombe.net Englishcombe Parish is now in the Bathavon South Ward which comprises of : Freshford, Hinton Charterhouse, Monkton Combe, Shoscombe, Southstoke, Wellow, Camerton, Claverton, Combe Hay, Dunkerton, Tunley, Marksbury, Priston and ourselves. We are now represented by two councillors and at the election on May 2nd, Neil Butters and Matthew McCabe were elected to represent the Ward.

TELEVISION RETUNE DATES. To free up the airwaves for 5G , tv channels transmitted from the Mendip Transmitter (which covers our area) are having to be moved. Satellite and cable are not affected.

Those of you who use freeview on your tv from an aerial would already have had two notices of the requirement for retuning your set. In the first instance, affecting the BBC chan-

nels and the second, various Channel 4 channels. There will be two further updates in June. June 5th and June 19th. It will depend on the age of your equipment as to whether it will retune automatically or not. If you have not had a new aerial fitted since the introduction of digital tv in 2010, you may find you have reception difficulties. If this is the case, contact a local tv or aerial firm who know the area, for assistance.

Farming at this time of year.

We are at the time of year when the country lanes around our villages are subject to extra traffic courtesy to all the local farmers being out and about in their tractors, and it might be an opportunity to explain to those not in the know, what is going on.

May, weather permitting, signals the onset of silage making. We started preparing for this back in early spring, with the first application of Ammonium Nitrate fertiliser onto our fields of ryegrass, followed by a second dose in April. We then monitor the crop until it is at just the right growth stage (50% seed head emergence, for those who would like to know), and having checked the weather forecast to ensure that we have enough dry days ahead of us to start work, we mow the crop.

Once the grass has been mown, we leave it lying in the field for 24 hours to wilt. The reason for this is to reduce the water content of the crop before we try to ensile it. If the grass is too wet when you try to make silage you will lose liquid during the process and that liquid will carry out much of the nutrients with it causing the double problem of pollution prob-lems and the silage being of lower feed value for livestock. Conversely, if the grass becomes too dry before ensiling it is very difficult to make good silage and it will spoil and go mouldy: it is a fine line to tread.

So, after wilting it is time to collect the grass. We rake it up into rows and the use a forage harvester to blow it into trailers. At the same time this machine chops the grass into short lengths of about two inches. We do this as grass that is chopped short makes better silage than if it is left long and stemmy, but more importantly because it is a better product for cattle to eat when it is that length. A cow’s rumen works much better if what she is eating has lots of short fibres for the bugs in it to chomp on.

We carry the grass back to our silage clamp in the trailers where we tip them out and push it up into a big heap. You will see big machines doing this: the bigger the better. To make good silage the grass has to be compacted and all the air squashed out of it, and once the clamp is full, we cover it over with plastic sheets and weigh them down with old tyres. To make silage what we are really doing is pickling the grass, so we have to keep all air out to set up an an-aerobic fermentation to create an acidic environment – if any air gets in and the fermenta-tion becomes aerobic then the grass will just rot.

After we have cleared the fields, we apply a further dose of Ammonium Nitrate fertilis-er and hope that we will have enough rain for the crop to grow again before we go through the whole process again in late June. We will also be testing the soil for nutrients to check that the phosphate and potash levels are adequate and top them up if required. Later in the season we may take further cuts of silage or let the cattle graze the fields.

Having, weather permitting, filled our silage clamps, and left them to ferment, which takes about six weeks, we then have preserved grass which we are able to feed to our cattle through the course of the winter. We keep them in sheds over winter so that they are pro-tected from the worst of the weather and the fields are not damaged by them (and all their feet) when the soil is vulnerable due to higher rainfall and no grass growth.

I hope this has been a helpful insight into what is going on around the parish at this time of year and gone some way to explaining the presence of what seems like some enormous farm machinery on the roads.

Will Pow

From the Archives.

The Monday, July 17, 1967 edition of the Daily Sketch included the below article

about the non-existence of a Parish Council in Englishcombe.

WORDSEARCH

20 words associated with the Parish of Englishcombe.

COW, DOG, HORSE, FIELD, LANE, STILE, ROAD, WALL, GATE, CASTLE, STREAM, SCHOOL, BARROWMEAD, CHURCH, PADLEIGH, INGLESBATCH, KILKENNY, HAYCOMBE, NAILWELL, ENGLISHCOMBE.

The meeting of the re-constituted Englishcombe Parish Council was held at the

School House, Englishcombe, on Thursday 31st August, 1967. County Councillor

Mrs A. Riddick took the chair being the Authorised Person for the purposes of the

Somerset (Englishcombe Parish Council) Order, 1967. The 5 newly elected Parish

Councillors made the statutory declaration of acceptance of office, and then set

about electing the chairman, vice-chairman and clerk. Two Parish Councillors were

also appointed to serve upon the Managing Body of Englishcombe Primary School.

PHASE Nepal

With our youngest heading for university, Mark and I embraced our empty nest by reducing our work responsibilities and moving to an improved work/life balance that allows for some adventure. We had both travelled to Nepal BC (Before Children), and all three of our youngsters have visited Nepal to take advantage of trekking in the majestic Himalayas. The generous hospitality of the people combined with the stun-ning scenery meant there was always going to be a pull to return. We found out about the PHASE Nepal charity through colleagues - PHASE stands for ‘Practical help to achieve self-empowerment’. As the name sug-gests the Nepalese charity aims to support the most disadvantaged rural communities with programs designed to improve healthcare provision, ad-vance agricultural techniques and enable access to education particularly for girls. All the projects are run by Nepalese and aim to integrate or work along-side government initiatives. PHASE Nepal is supported through fundraising by PHASE Worldwide (based in Bristol in the UK) and has helped with some of the rebuilding following the 2015 earthquake. In March we were aboard a plane heading to Kathmandu starting a journey that was going to take both of us to different villages in the most remote rural provinces in North west Nepal where we were going to support and mentor PHASE healthcare workers. Just accessing these healthcare posts involved two further flights in uncomfortably small planes (ultimately navigating by line of sight over mountain passes at 11,000 feet with a maximum aeroplane ceil-ing of 12,000 feet); a day’s jeep ride bouncing along dirt roads carved into the edge of mountains with virtually nothing between the vehicle and hundreds of feet of drop -off; and then a day’s trek beyond the end of the track.

asthma and musculoskeletal problems - and unfamiliar such as malnutrition and children injured through falling from roofs (daily life plays out on the flat roofs of houses built into the hillside).

On arrival we were each wel-comed and absorbed into our re-spective villages’ life. We shared accommodation and food with the two PHASE healthcare workers (lentils, rice and spinach at 9am and 7pm). We sat in on their clin-ics and observed people present-ing with conditions both familiar to those we see in UK General Practice: childhood infections,

We were invited to the community immunisation days and the twice-weekly community maternal health education meetings covering topics such as: hy-giene; healthy weaning; breast feeding; nutrition and safe carrying of infants. We saw how PHASE poly-tunnels were enabling the growth of green vegeta-bles to tackle Vitamin A deficiency. We provided tutorials, gave support and answered questions about healthcare issues but we certainly learnt as much as we taught.

They are communities that work hard but understand how to pace the day and make time to sit and share a laugh; a people that will always give their last portion of rice and lentil and will rebuild after the devastating earthquake of 2015 with patient resilience. This was an “adventure” that was both a privilege and humbling. If anyone is interested in finding out more:.

These are communities with no material wealth, existing through subsistence living dependant on the unpredictable elements, with high rates of maternal and infant mortality. However, they are also communities that understand and appreciate the value of trust, friendship and neighbours.

Helen Dinwoodie

St Peter’s Church,

Englishcombe

Services at St Peter’s All are welcome at all these services!

Sunday June 2nd 11:15am Café Church

Sunday June 16th 11:15am Holy Communion

Sunday July 7th 11:15am Café Church

Sunday July 21st 11:15am Holy Communion

Sunday August 4th 11:15am Café Church

Sunday August 18th 11:15am Holy Communion

Vicar: the Revd Dr Catherine Sourbut-Groves

contact (01225) 478952 or priest@stbarnabasbath.co.uk

What does being wrong feel like?

The feeling of being wrong is the topic up for discussion in our July ‘Café

Church’ at St Peter’s Englishcombe. On the first Sunday of May we had

our soft launch, and proved that it is possible to serve delicious fresh

coffee in a 900 year old church building. In the discussion that followed we decided that it would be a good plan to have a theme each month that we could talk about. This month is taken from a popular TED talk by Kathryn Schulz entitled ‘on being wrong’. Most of us will do anything to avoid being wrong. But what if we're wrong about that? "Wrongologist" Kathryn Schulz makes a compelling case for not just admitting but embracing our fallibility. Kathryn Schulz is a staff writer for the New Yorker and is the author of "Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error." In the talk, using an amusing illustration of the character ‘Wile E Coyote’ running in the air off the edge of a cliff, Kathryn makes the observation that being wrong feels exactly like being right until we realise our error. Through this exploration she is able to open up the idea that the solid ground we often think we are standing on may not be as stable as we had hope. Considering the possibility of being wrong in this way can allow time to reflect on past revelations, and also of the possibility that there may yet be fresh discoveries of ‘wrongness’ in store. Kathryn’s talk has been seen by almost four and half million people and transcribed into 41 languages, you can view it at: https://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

And if you want to join in the conversation then come along to St Peter’s on the 2nd of July at 11.15 am, but watch your next step, the ground might not be as solid as you think.

Spot light on Englishcombe Parish

I seem to remember that in the last issue of the Times, I said that a form to discov-

er the transport patterns and wishes of the entire parish would be forthcoming.

Well, it is to be, but we must possess ourselves with patience, like with everything

else at this moment of time in the history of our nation.

For me, the control "off" button for the TV (or whatever other confusing device

you use to be in the loop of regurgitated ideas and political nostrums) is increasing-

ly activated to cut short the twitterings, in both the old and contemporary meaning

of the word. All we know is that in guesses to the eventual outcome of our or in-

deed politicians' decisions, we will forget what media types have said would hap-

pen.

Meanwhile, in the peaceful parish of Englishcombe, life goes on for its inhabitants

both human and animal. Will Pow gave a most interesting talk at the Parish Annual

Meeting in April on how he employs modern technology to extract the best from

the land. Agriculture was a subject I sadly neglected in life in favour of the built

environment which might have had something to do with my inability to get to

grips with geography at school (my wife Penny had no such problems and is expert

in the subject). I now find matters to do with land and food fascinating, albeit ra-

ther late in life.

On the subject of land, do take advantage

of perambulating the Millstream and Or-

chard sites in the village to witness the

fruits of the labour of its committee. The

younger generation might be persuaded

to record the natural inhabitants of these

sites, including the siting of voles.

Returning to the political scene, we should, whatever our persuasion in this, con-

gratulate our previous Chairman of this council, Matt McCabe on his successful

election to BATHNES Council. We know and expect great things (if there is any

money left in the bank). I would like to express my own and the thanks of the Par-

ish Council to David Veale our previous councillor, for the help and guidance he has

given.

Robert Law

Community Speedwatch

Parishioners continue to raise the issue of speeding with the parish council. Therefore the parish council has met with the police and BANES Council about the best way of tackling this issue. At present the most effective way of addressing this issue is for the parish coun-cil to help set up a Community Speedwatch group.

Community Speedwatch is where members of the parish join with the support of the police to monitor speeds of vehicles using speed detection devices. Vehicles exceeding the speed limit are referred to the police with the aim of educating drivers to reduce their speeds. In cases where education is blatantly ignored and evidence of repeat or excessive offences is collated enforcement and prosecution follow.

Volunteers receive appropriate training and are supported by our neighbourhood policing team. The scheme aims to cater for the problem of real or perceived speed related offend-ing, and through partnership with the community it is to be used in circumstances that are necessary, justifiable and proportionate in order to:

Reduce death and injury on the roads

Improve the quality of life for local communities

Reduce the speed of vehicles to the speed limit

Increase public awareness of inappropriate speed

The parish council is looking for volunteers to take part. Therefore let us know if you would be interested in getting involved. Please send your name and contact details to the clerk at clerk.englishcombe@googlemail.com.

Planning Applications The parish council has responded to consultations on the following planning applications since the last issue of the Englishcombe Times was published. For each application outlined is the current status of the application with B&NES Council planning department.

Planning Application REF 19/00293/FUL Haycombe Farm Barn Haycombe Farm Lane Eng-lishcombe Change of use, extension and conversion of building used as a Pilates studio to a single residential unit (Resubmission) APPROVED

Planning Application REF 19/00440/FUL Rectory Farm House Rectory Farm Lane Remedial repairs and alterations to the existing cart shed. PENDING DECISION

Planning Application 19/00442/FUL and 19/00443/LBA Rectory Farm House Rectory Farm Lane Remedial repairs to the external opening to the cellar PENDING DECISION

Planning Application REF 19/00444/LBA Rectory Farm House Rectory Farm Lane Remedial repairs to the external envelope of the main house PENDING DECISION

Planning Application REF 19/00447/LBA Tithe Barn Rectory Farm Lane Remedial infestation treatment to the timber roof structure to the Tithe Barn WITHDRAWN

Planning Application - 19/00795/TCA Manor Farm Barn Church Lane Mountain Ash – fell. Replace with cherry tree nearby PERMITTED

What’s on:

Coffee Mornings every Thursday from 11:00am—1.00pm at The Old School, Englishcombe.

Sharing Lunch at The Old School on the 1st Sunday of each month at 1:15pm. Proceeds go to support the Kanyawegi Children's Home in Kenya (Emmanuel Home).

Bible Study at The Old School on the 1st Tuesday of each month at 7:30pm.

Salem Chapel Services every Sunday—11:15am Breaking of Bread Service. — 6:30pm Family Service. June 2019 2 11:15am Café Church at St Peter’s Church. 16 11:15am Holy Communion Service at St Peter’s Church. 17 7:30pm Parish Council Meeting at the Old School, Englishcombe. 20 2:30pm Cream Teas at the Old Acorn Barn, Englishcombe BA2 9DU. 21 2:30pm Cream Teas at the Old Acorn Barn, Englishcombe BA2 9DU. July 2019 7 11:15am Café Church at St Peter’s Church. 20 2:30pm Village Weekend at the Old School, Englishcombe. 21 11:15am Holy Communion Service at St Peter’s Church. 21 3:30pm Village Weekend at the Old School, Englishcombe. 29 7:30pm Parish Council Meeting at The Old School, Englishcombe. August 2019 4 11:15am Café Church at St Peter’s Church. 18 11:15am Holy Communion Service at St Peter’s Church.

FROM THE EDITOR This is the fifth issue of the Englishcombe Times, initially funded by a grant received by Eng-lishcombe Parish Council from Bath & North East Somerset Community Empowerment Fund, to be delivered to every house in the Parish. The next issue for the Autumn is scheduled for September. If you have any articles for this issue, please let me have them by August 18th. If you do not want to receive a copy, again, please let me know so you can be removed from the delivery list.

Further copies will be available to download from the Parish Website www.englishcombe.net

Contact : Mister Tim on email address: englishcombetimes@gmail.com

If you are not receiving Parish Council communications and would like to, please contact the

Parish Clerk asking to be put on the Email Register.

Email address is clerk.englishcombe@googlemail.com or phone 01761 411305.