CPRE Hampshire Countryside Awards

The CPRE Hampshire Countryside Awards scheme was launched in 2007 to recognise significant achievements across the county which support our goal of “a beautiful, diverse and living countryside that everyone can value and enjoy”.

It is one of the best established Awards schemes in the county and over 20 projects have been recognised by an award to date.

For 2011 CPRE Hampshire was proud to have the Awards sponsored by Steve’s Leaves.

The programme was being run in conjunction with Hampshire Fare & Hampshire Ambassadors.

Who Won?

The scheme welcomed applications from all sections of the community and from projects of all types, big and small. For 2011 the focus was on three categories in which environmentally outstanding projects ccould be nominated. The three categories were:

• Rural Enterprise (Public Sector or Commercial) with a particular emphasis on “Field to Table” – food related businesses
• Voluntary / Community
• Schools

Full details on 2011 Winners are available on the CPRE Hampshire web-site, click here for further information.

Helping the Tree Sparrow

March 2011

The days are getting noticeably longer and it is certainly feeling a lot warmer.  The seeds of our first Steve’s Leaves crop of the UK season have been sown at our Wiltshire farm in the Vale of Pewsey.  Now we wait patiently for the tiny shoots to push through soil.

As well as drilling the first crop, we have also been busy getting things ready for other farm inhabitants.  As well as the Barn Owl project mentioned last month, we are looking to help out the increasingly rare Tree Sparrows.  Quite a number were spotted on our farm during a visit last year from the Conservation Grade team who give us our Nature Friendly Farming accreditation.  Since then we have been working up a way to help them out.  This has included providing supplementary winter feed from wild bird seed crops planted on the field margins adjacent to our cropped land.  We have also been working with the local Wildlife Trust to identify sites to erect nesting boxes.

With the help of the local school, 22 nesting boxes have been assembled by the children.  This week they came onto the farm to put them up - with some help from the adults!  We and the children await the first signs of the Tree Sparrows taking up residence and the prospect of some Baby Tree Sparrows.