Mrs. Sandra Bailey. She lives and farms with her husband David and family at Hilltop farm on the Holsworthy to Bradworthy road. She is often found walking the cows to nearby fields and helps with much farm work. She has another role working in the school office and helping with children at Bradworthy CP School. She is someone who wants to put something back into the Community and has a real way with children and us locals.
Last year, in spite of being wet, it was very good for growing grass. The potato crop was poor and corn crops were a mixture of yields. Stock prices are still low and more are giving up farming as a way of life. It is interesting to see TV adverts about supporting the NFU Insurance Company, you do not need to be in farming for a quote.
Sign outside a Church - for the best results follow the Maker. What did one plate say to the other plate? Lunch is on me. What has twenty heads but no brains. A book of matches.
With the sale of the Sutcombe Rectory we saw one of the last Church houses in Devon being sold and not to be lived in by a rector. While this sale was on our Rector, Rev. Richard Dorrington, said on TV that he would be hard pressed on his pay to keep up the Rectory and grounds. How times have changed.
At last there is a better local transport service but timing is sometimes a problem, but Ring and Ride offer a good local service. All Councils are now into "Best value", which means we hope to give a better service and value for money in all local services. Very often locals contact me about road problems. Whilst I am happy to pass this on to the highway people it is a County Council matter. As a District Council we are happy to help local organisations by way of the Matching grant.
The joys of hand milking. Some time ago I asked a group of country people how many of them could hand milk a cow. Not many hands went up apart from those over 50. While going to school each morning and evening it was one of my tasks to hand milk 4 Devon Cross cows, which was hard but satisfying work. One old Devon cow had a kick like a mule and was known as a hard milker but always gave good milk and a first class calf. This tells you I am ageing fast. At Trebarwick my late father and I used to take it in turns to milk our Guernsey Cross cow right up to 6 years ago. It's interesting to note that by hand milking and not machine milking very few udder problems needed the Vet.
The ITV network Carlton covers this area by way of Westcountry Live and other sometimes interesting programmes. As for local news on this station its coverage is very good and up to date. The problem is, and I have taken it up with the programmers, is that in this part of the parish we cannot, in the main, get the news slot from Barnstaple that seeks to cover out area. The reason is that we tune to a transmitter that is not covering us. I much preferred the programme when we saw all the local outputs. This was a far better service. What do you think? Please let me know.