Green sack waste

Approximately 20% of the average household's rubbish consists of green garden waste. But putting this in black wheelie bins is having a negative impact on the environment, as well as wasting a valuable resource. Onyx Sheffield is now launching the latest initiative to encourage residents in the city to dispose of their garden rubbish in a more environmentally friendly way.

It is offering a "Buy One - Get One Free" offer on packs of green sacks for recycling garden waste.

The sacks are available in packs of 3 for £1.50. When the sacks are full, residents arrange a free collection by contacting the helpline number printed on the bag. Green waste in the sack is then taken to one of several composting facilities in the city and the valuable compost material is used to reclaim land.

The green waste sack collection is just one of the ways that green waste can be recycled in the city and one of the initiatives in place to increase the city's recycling rate to 21 % by April 2006. Help Sheffield to be cleaner and greener, get a green sack.

Green sacks are available locally from Totley and Greenhill libraries. For further information call the Onyx Helpline on 0845 355 5515

Planning matters

"Farfield" Townhead Road. An outline planning application has been made for the provision of two houses in the garden of this property. The property has a long frontage to Blackamoor Road and the proposal shows the two houses fronting onto that road. It also shows the existing house with gardens and a small paddock at the rear. Whereas, in principle, there can he no real objection to the development with two houses, the applicant does not show any of the trees that are on the site, or what is proposed in respect of the trees. It has to be said that a number of the trees are in a very poor state but we would expect those trees that are in good condition to he retained mainly for screening purposes.

"Walled Garden" Dore Moor Estate, Newfield Lane. The owners of the Walled Garden that was originally part of Door Moore House have made an application to build a bungalow in the Walled Garden. There have been a number of similar applications and enquiries, but as the property is well into the Green Belt, these have been turned down. It is almost certain that this application will be refused also. Dore Moor House was split up for sale in the 1980's and a strong indication was given as to the possibilities (or otherwise) of any development on the parcels of land. There was no real prospect of any development on the Walled Garden, and it is a pity it was sold off separately.

114 Totley Brook Road. There are two new planning applications on this property. You may recall that it has been the subject of applications in the past. The property occupies one of the larger Edwardian houses on Totley Brook Road. The owners have applied once more to build houses in the back garden. There are three shown in one application. The other application shows two in the back garden and one at the side of the house. The Village Society considers this to be inappropriate development. The properties at the rear would destroy the privacy of adjacent houses apart from it being a serious over development of the site.

12 Townhead Road. You will recall the demolition of the front stone garden wall to this property and the construction of a car parking space. The work was done without planning consent, even though the property is in the Dore Conservation Area. The Council served an Enforcement Notice and the owner appealed. A Public Inquiry was held in June at which the Village Society made representation. The Inspector has not yet given his decision. The concern is that the loss of the stone walls in the village, in this way, would be seriously detrimental to the principles of the Conservation Area.

"Long Acre", Newfield Lane. A number of people have spoken to me about the excavations in the recreation ground and the breach in the boundary of Long Acre. The work relates to the provision of a drain, connecting the property to a main sewer, and not a footpath across the Recreation Ground. The land should be fully reinstated after the completion of the drain and we will be watching progress here. There will be no footpath across the Rec from Long Acre. The application for that was turned down.

David Heslop

Farming Notes

Compared with 40 years ago getting the harvest in now is a doddle. Right up to 1963 we were still cutting the corn with a binder. Then it had to be stooked, (stooks always faced Holmesfield Church), and left to dry for at least a week. As likely as not it would rain on them and the top of the stooks would grow together and have to be restooked. Before loading them on a dray and carting them back to be stacked, a job known as leading, the stooks were pulled over to let the bottoms dry. Quite often it rained on them before leading so they had to be stooked again. All the time the corn was in the stooks the birds were eating it, then when it was in the stack the rats were having a go at it. It's surprising we ever got anything at all. One year we didn't. I think it was 1960. The weather was so bad we never did get it harvested.

Haymaking wasn't any easier. We got our first pickup baler in 1962. Before that we mowed it, with a horse pulled mower until 1955. When the first tractors arrived it was still basically the same process with the machine pulled by a tractor rather than horses. The hay was turned several times at intervals of a day or so, then raked into windrows, cocked up and led off. To get hay without it being rained on was unusual. Pick up balers revolutionised the job of getting hay from the field to the stack but it still needed a week in the field to dry out after being cut. Again it usually got rained on at some stage. The worst stage was if the bales got wet before being led off, as they wouldn't dry out. A shower of rain could reduce the feed value of the crop by half.

Compared to manufacturing industry in the 60's, every new development in farming mechanisation was always eagerly seized. Anything to speed the job up and cut down the labour. Every day motor and engineering works were on strike over the introduction of new machinery, but not on the farms.

At least not in my time. My father remembered the time when hay was mown by itinerant Irish labourers who came over and cut the grass with scythes. We had a room in one of the barns were they would stay. He said one man could cut an acre a day, which was really going some. The first horse drawn mowing machines in Dore came in around the time of the First War. He said the old scythesmen would drive short stakes in the hayfield to break the cutter bar as they were afraid of losing work.

Father was the first farmer in Dore to get a binder to cut the corn, but they still used a scythe for the next 40 years for opening out. This was cutting the first swath so that uncut corn wasn't run over and wasted. He used to cut other farmers' corn for them before they got their own binders. You could adjust the height of the cutter bar so more or less stubble would be left. If too low it'd pick up earth so he usually left a few inches of stubble. Old Harold Thorpe used to run around after him saying "Can you just get it a little bit lower". This meant he'd have a bit more straw.

The lengths they went to get every last scrap of produce from the land. I don't know what they'd make of today's world with the government paying grants not to grow crops.

Modern silageing equipment can get the grass crop harvested in a couple of days with a quality undreamed of in the old days. The machinery is so expensive that it's not economic for a farmer to have his own tackle. It's a job for contractors, so all the farmer has to do is make a phone call and then take a deep breath when the bill arrives!

Despite the huge improvement in harvesting machinery and crop varieties, the overriding factor is still the weather. From the London based media you get the impression that we're suffering unprecedented drought. A recent report in the Daily Express showed a picture of an almost empty reservoir and said water use restrictions are unavoidable. The last paragraph did acknowledge that other parts of the country had had more rain. Why don't they show a picture Ladybower and Howden dams brimful and at the end say we believe other parts of the country have had LESS rain.

For the record recent local monthly rainfall statistics from Weston Park are:-

At the time of writing, July 2005 statistics aren't available, but we must have had at least 20 mm on July 28^th.

Richard Farnsworth

The Wildlife Garden

My road suffered a "Boscastle event" during the big thunderstorm in June. Although it was relatively short-lived, "tropical downpour" hardly does justice to the intensity of this deluge and as is often the case with rain in summer, it fell onto ground baked hard after days of hot weather. Inevitably a lot ran off; first in trickles, then in small rivulets which joined together to form a sheet of water that covered the entire road as it rushed downhill, bubbling along over blocked drains.

Flooding from summer storms is hardly something new, but what is worrying an increasing number of local authorities is that it seems to be happening in areas not previously considered at risk and these episodes are becoming much more regular and severe. It would be easy to blame all this on global warming or perhaps even the council's inability to clean road drains (which are often blocked due to builders using them as convenient places to dump all their surplus concrete and plaster), but there might also be another underlying factor, our current love affair with block paving.

Having paving in one form or another in the garden is as old as the hills, but what has changed is that more and more front gardens are now being paved-over, with plants relegated to narrow strips around the edges or grown in a few strategically placed pots.

You could of course argue that this is very responsible of the owners, as they are moving cars off already congested streets onto their property. But isn't it more likely to be simply a response to the problem faced by multiple-car-owning households who want a secure place to park their burgeoning collection of vehicles, rather than any benevolent intention?

Nevertheless, in theory block-paving should be far better at preventing run off than traditional non-porous materials (like concrete or tarmac) as it is bedded on sand, but from what I have seen happening to rain water on my neighbour's plot, there seems to be very little difference between them.

During the thunderstorm, water surged across their paving and ran off, somewhat predictably, into my garden. (As a workman later explained to me, block paving is fine under normal conditions as rain will slowly seep away through the sand, but it just can't cope with heavy rain.) And just like the annual flooding of the Nile brings silt washed down from the Ethiopian Highlands, my neighbour's run off carried kilos of sand from between the paving blocks, along with all sorts of flotsam including plastic bags, twigs, sweet wrappers and even a plastic toy soldier.

Although I had enough sand dumped on my garden to make a fair-sized delta, the consequences of all this hard landscaping are potentially much more serious for wildlife. Paved areas offer few feeding opportunities for birds and mammals which eat worms or soil-living insects, for example blackbirds, starlings and hedgehogs.

As if this isn't enough, back gardens are still being covered in timber decking - despite it being lethal in wet weather - and to suppress weeds and limit the amount of time spent maintaining a garden, shrubs and perennials are increasingly grown through plastic membranes. If we're not careful, our gardens will become as wildlife-friendly as a supermarket car park and this may already be contributing to the steady decline of British hedgehogs.

What I find ironic about all this enthusiasm for block paving "deserts" is that it has opened up a whole new ecological environment for plants that thrive in narrow, well-drained cracks, which in turn has generated a boom in sales of pressure cleaners. At weekends, not only do you get people cleaning their vehicles with these noisy devices, they are now being increasingly used for their block paving as well, by householders trying to get rid of all the encroaching weeds.

This however is a sisyphian task as the more often paving is pressure washed, the more sand is removed and the more plants will find a ready home there. And where does all the sand end up? In the drains of course, helping create yet more "Boscastle events" each time the heavens open. Perhaps "blocked drain paving" would be a better name for these surfaces?

Jack Daw

Wild About Gardens is a joint project between The Wildlife Trusts and the Royal Horticultural Society. It aims to promote gardening for wildlife throughout all gardens in the UK. You can find out more at www.wildaboutgardens.org.uk

Yes! It is that time of year again. We have ordered 2000 bulbs this year; fewer than in previous years but enough to make for a good addition to the Spring display.

The daffodils and crocuses are becoming well established. Last years addition in Townhead Road and by the Doctors Surgery in Dore Road made a good shown. The snowdrops on the Village Green were a picture and will continue to thicken up each year. We still have problems of vehicles driving over the grass verges, and even onto the Village Green, but somehow the crocus and other bulbs seem to survive.

This year we will be planting at the Parkers Lane/Causeway Head Road junction and hope to complete the planting on Cross Lane up to Hathersage Road. Anyone interested in helping (or donating towards the cost) is most welcome. Please contact me on 236 5043 or Anne Elsdon on 236 0002.

David Heslop

Farmers have been ordered to clean up the countryside and remove their rusty tractors, mounds of tyres, bale twine and oil drums. The spring clean is to ensure that farmers comply with tight waste controls set out in a European directive which the Government has ignored for more than ten years.

An immediate ban on farmers dumping old machinery and equipment on their land and burning plastic waste was announced this spring when senior officials at the Department of the Environment admitted that the Government had been guilty of breaching Brussels laws and that a hefty fine could be imposed by the European Commission.

Farmers have been exempted from the law in the past because ministers felt that the timing was not right for implementation when farmers were struggling with the BSE crisis and foot-and-mouth disease.