Pembrokeshire
Countryfile is in Pembrokeshire to mark St David's Day. Matt Baker forages for food and Ellie Harrison is out at sea trying to spot a porpoise.
Countryfile is in Pembrokeshire to mark St David's Day. Matt Baker is in the heart of St David's itself. With the help of the local community, he forages for food to make the traditional Welsh dish cawl.
Ellie Harrison is out at sea trying to spot a frequent and much-welcome visitor to these shores - the porpoise.
Anita Rani visits the most westerly farm in Wales and discovers the home of Farms for City Children, where kids can get their hands dirty learning the agricultural way of life, from feeding lambs to milking goats.
Adam Henson is in Scotland meeting a very important ram which sold for more than £152,000. But what makes him so special?
In many cases the packaging on processed food tells us where it was made, but not where the ingredients come from. Tom Heap looks at calls to change the law to provide more information about what's in our food and finds out what that could mean to the people who make the products.
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Historic foraging
Matt Baker meets Julia Horton-Powdrill who runs foraging tours around the city of St Davids identifying and trying hedgerow foods and looking at the history behind them. The walk winds through the cathedral grounds, along some small country lanes and into the landscape beyond. In the middle ages one pilgrimage to St Davids was worth two to Rome and this tiny city became a spiritual centre. Matt discovers what the pilgrims would have picked and eaten as they journeyed through this land and gathers some wild ingredients for a special cookery lesson later in the show.
Adam meets Vicious Sid
Farming is often full of surprises and this week Adam is visiting a unique ram called Vicious Sid. He sold at Lanark auction in August 2014 for a staggering £152,250 - making him one of the most expensive rams sold in the UK. Adam visits the seller and one of the purchasers in Scotland to find out what makes him so special. He also gets to meet Vicious Sid’s recently born offspring. Â
Porpoise spotting
Ellie Harrison joins Cliff Benson from the Sea Trust on the cliff tops at Strumble Head as he completes the weekly porpoise survey, a voluntary project that has been running for 10 years to study their habits and habitat. Ellie then jumps on a boat and takes a trip around Ramsey Sound to take a closer look at these fascinating creatures. On board Ellie chats with Ffion the skipper about how important conservation is for the area's sea life. She also learns a little about the Pembroke Marine code, a voluntary code, specific to Pembroke, established by locals to protect their wildlife.
Farms for City Children
Anita Rani heads to Treginnis Farm on the scenic St Davids’ peninsula, the most westerly farm in Wales.  It is home to 800 sheep, a breeding herd of pigs, chickens, ducks, horses, goats and donkeys, and for this week, an army of farm hands from Lakeside Primary School in Cardiff. The children are here on a residential trip with the charity ‘Farms for City Children’, founded by children’s writer Michael Morpurgo.  All the children who visit are from urban backgrounds, many have never have been to the countryside before. In the lambing shed, Anita finds out what a hectic schedule of milking goats, shovelling dung and feeding chickens, has taught the children about rural life.Â
More food labelling?
The desire for British produce has never been stronger and although many foods already carry labels telling us where they are sourced, some think that this is not enough. Tom Heap looks at the pros and cons of mandatory country of origin labelling on processed foods, getting the opinion of those who have been campaigning for more labelling, as well as food manufacturers who think that could be bad for manufacturing and push up the price of processed food.Â
The bug farm
Ellie is on the hunt for cellar beetles. Despite being large and once commonly found under our skirting boards and in our cellars, very little is known about these nocturnal creatures. Dr Sarah Beynon has made it her life’s work to study beetles, and she is concerned that cellar beetles may be in decline as our homes become cleaner and there are fewer food scraps for the beetles to scavenge. Ellie meets Sarah at the family farm, currently being given a face-lift to make way for a beetle research centre. Sarah wants to show farmers that wildlife such as dung beetles can save them money, and Paul, her PhD student from Oxford University, is on the case. He enlists Ellie’s help with his dirty work of sifting through soil samples in the lab.
Cawl competition
Cawl is one of the national dishes of Wales and is often cooked on St David’s Day. It’s a soup or stew traditionally made with whatever meat and vegetables you can lay your hands on - these days it is most associated with lamb and leeks. Matt Baker meets Kathy James, landlady of the Farmers Arms to discover more about this special dish. Together they gather ingredients in their attempt to win the special ‘Countryfile cawl’ competition.
Credits
Role | Contributor |
---|---|
Presenter | Matt Baker |
Presenter | Ellie Harrison |
Presenter | Adam Henson |
Presenter | Tom Heap |
Presenter | Anita Rani |
Executive Producer | William Lyons |
Series Producer | Joanna Brame |
Broadcasts
- Sun 1 Mar 2015 19:00
- Sun 8 Mar 2015 08:00
- Mon 9 Mar 2015 01:3091Èȱ¬ Two except Wales