BY ALLISON LEE One of the most difficult tasks I faced when I moved my smallholding to North Yorkshire was finding a farrier. I, along with my donkeys and ponies, had a good relationship with our existing farrier, and I was keen to make the transition as seamless as possible. Finding a farrier isn’t just a simple matter of doing a Google search, sourcing someone … Continue reading Farrier
BY NICK PEARCE The photograph of a wing-tagged Marsh Harrier (below) grounded at Brighton Marina has renewed scrutiny of marking practices used on protected raptors. The bird bears yellow tags coded SN and MS—markers consistent with the North West Norfolk Ringing Group’s long-running wing tagging project, which has tagged over 1,000 Marsh Harriers since 2011. The practice is licensed and promoted as a conservation research … Continue reading Lumbered for Life: Raptor Tagging Cruelty
BY MARCO BELLANTI In 1992, I left computer recruitment to become a gardener. I knew what the physical work would involve. What I came to understand more fully was how much an occupation could influence the way people treated you. I had been heading a recruitment division and was asked to expand it by employing two more members of staff. I later discovered that both … Continue reading The Work I Chose
CSM EDITORIAL On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day, the nation will fall silent. The Cenotaph will be wreathed in wreaths, and the political class will stand shoulder to shoulder, poppies pinned to their lapels. They will bow their heads and intone, with practiced sincerity, “We will remember them.” And then they will return to Westminster and continue the quiet persecution of the living. … Continue reading The Poppy and the Precipice
BY PHILIP WALLING On a beautiful spring day in early May 2025, the eight-day trial of two Cumbrian men at Newcastle Crown Court ended when the jury returned a unanimous verdict that they were of guilty of criminal damage. In September 2023, they had felled the Sacred Sycamore on Hadrian’s Wall. Mrs Justice Lambert adjourned sentence until July 15 for reports. She refused bail for … Continue reading The Case of the Sacred Sycamore
BY JOHN NASH The ‘animal rights’ tin-rattler and lynx magicker, Eduardo Gonçalves, has a long history of dodgy antics. John Nash has been on top of them for years. Seems that Gonçalves is at it again. MPs take note. And others wielding useful authority. Eduardo Gonçalves is at it again, trying to sneak his nasty little willie into the nether regions of the Mother of … Continue reading Just Say No
VICAR Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine, I trust that You are well. November is a month of remembrance. It is the month when we wear our poppies and gather at the war memorial, when we fall silent at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day. It is the month when we remember those who gave their lives in the service of their country, and … Continue reading A Prayer for Remembrance
BY ALLISON LEE Jennyruth Workshops began in the garden shed of Barrie and his son, Jonathan, who has Down Syndrome. Barrie wanted to give his son the chance to develop skills, as opportunities were few and far between at the time. As things progressed, Barrie and his wife, Sue, decided that other adults with learning disabilities should also have the opportunity to develop their skills … Continue reading Thriving Through Craft And Care
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN There is a photograph circulating, and it shocks. A masked ‘man’ in a balaclava, hood up, stares at a child on a pony. The child is small, seven perhaps younger, dressed in the tan coat and velvet helmet of a hunting child. The man’s eyes are fixed on him. The expression, whichever benefit of the doubt is given, is hatred. Assume the … Continue reading The Boy is Not Your Enemy
BY NICHOLAS ENGERT The summer that seemed perpetual has long gone. It seemed as if it might never end. November has arrived. The transition from summer to mid autumn has seemed almost seamless and winter is now not far away. The summer heatwaves, one after another, are but a distant memory as the autumn redefines our landscape and way of life for the coming months. … Continue reading The Yielding of the Seasons
BY SEAN WALSH Shovegate: the evidence is inconclusive. To those of you who still defend the VAR system in football or the DBS review mechanism in cricket, may I draw your attention to the strange affair of Shovegate, in which the reliably caddish Nigel Farage is said to have pushed past LibDem MP Caroline Voaden (who? pictured above) in the House of Commons earlier this … Continue reading Shoved?
BY PAUL T HORGAN It is a truth, universally understood, that Europe does not want, nor does it need, another totalitarian dictatorship that uses terror and murder to subjugate its captive population. This was the sentiment behind the creation of the European Convention on Human Rights, and also the Court to administer its clauses and sections. This document has constitutional strength, such that it is … Continue reading The New “Nazis”
BY CALUM CAMPBELL Why the Lynx Reintroduction Fantasy Deserves to Stay Extinct The High Court has finally done what common sense should have done years ago: it has stopped the Lynx UK Trust’s quixotic campaign to dump wild predators into the English countryside dead in its tracks. Ms Justice Obi dismissed the Trust’s challenge over Natural England’s refusal to grant a licence for a three-year … Continue reading Leave the Lynx Out
BY THOMAS CLAYPOLE Support our British farmers—and here’s the good news: you don’t have to replace your entire weekly shop in one heroic afternoon to do it. Your first trip to a farm shop can be gloriously small: one ingredient for a meal you’ve already planned, a loaf for the weekend, or just a few vegetables that catch your eye. That modest beginning leaves room … Continue reading Support British Farmers Today
BY PAUL T HORGAN Looking at the disturbances across the Channel, commentators are worried the same may happen here, and soon. Perhaps they are right, but perhaps not. The weather here is too bad for regular outbreaks of civil disorder. In fact it was a torrential downpour that did it for the Chartists in 1848 while the rest of Europe fell to revolutionaries. There is … Continue reading A Very British Uprising
BY BERT BURNETT The Moral High Ground Is Easy When Your Hare Count Is Zero There is one certainty that will emerge from the new falconry licensing regime for mountain hares in Scotland, and it has nothing to do with principle. No licence will be granted to fly a hawk at a hare on land owned by a conservation NGO or a rewilding estate. Not … Continue reading No Hares, No Licence
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN There is a moment, familiar to any man who has ordered a gin and tonic in a fashionable bar, when the soul recoils. The barman, a young fellow whose moustache suggests he has never done a day’s physical labour and whose tattoo suggests he believes himself oppressed, reaches for a bottle of something pink. He calls it gin. He calls it ‘botanical’. … Continue reading The Last Redoubt of Human Civilisation
BY RICHARD TAYLOR On 1 July this year, the Government Actuary’s Department (GAD) told us the Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS) for England and Wales (TPS) had magically gotten £3.3bn a year cheaper! It hasn’t. From April 2027, the employer contribution to teachers’ pensions falls from 28.68% to 17.68% of salary, yet every teacher will still retire on exactly what they were promised before, in a … Continue reading The £309bn Pension Fund That Doesn’t Exist
BY ALLISON LEE It is often said that animal companionship offers significant benefits to humans, and having had the pleasure of owning a variety of animals—both domestic and farm—I can certainly attest to this. While cats and dogs are the most common domestic companions, many farm animals can also provide endless fun and companionship. Animal interaction brings a range of mental and emotional benefits, including … Continue reading Hooves, Snouts, and Heart
BY IAN MITCHELL In praise of unearned income The world owes to Darwin some ground-breaking insights into the history of life on earth. Mankind and its environment, he argued, was not a creation of God’s but the product of many millions of years’ evolution, starting from much simpler life forms. The theme of this book is how Darwin changed our view of history. No longer … Continue reading Darwin, Son of Capitalism
