to wonder why people have become so detached from the countryside?

[petswinprizes]

Inspired partly by the badger nests mentioned elsewhere, and partly from a question about the 'dead, black crop in the field' from the head teacher of a rural school (field beans, in case you're wondering), why is so little known about the countryside?

When children are small, its all Tractor Ted, Big Barn Farm, stories about animals in farmyards, then as soon as they get to school, whoosh, nothing.

How can we all consume so much, and have so little knowledge about where it comes from and how it is grown?

I always saw the big Countryside march (against banning fox hunting) as a moment where country people and city people realised they did not see eye to eye.

I got the impression that lots of the pro hunting 'country' people on the march worked in the city.

Maybe some but not lots

You are probably right - maybe it's just that posh people have loud voices!

Tell me about it

We live on a farm, in the house land is farmed by tenant farmer, we run a B&b and got a bad review on trip advisor because of muck spreading one weekend, you would have thought that farm might have been a clue.

Some people are just ridiculous five .

It's pure arable farmland where we live. The gamekeeper has warned us off ever ever setting foot off the footpath for fear of getting shot.

The nt bang on about taking children into wild spaces-we live in an aob and there are virtually none.

Our friends who live in London have a romanticised idea of what the countryside is. But it's a working space like any other.

FiveGoMad... that could have been my cousin. She was horrified and left quite a pissy review when her 'Farmhouse B+B' was "actually on a fucking farm", as she put it!

She still chunters on about it. She was expected 'Farmhouse Chic' not the actual real deal, with tractors and smells and animals and things!

I'm pretty scared of sheep, and goats, its because they are dead behind the eyes

Anyone looking to get kids more into nature should look for their local woodcraft folk group my 3yo loves going.

Highway I'm terrified of cows. They are menacing. Thank god it's all crops round us-I could never walk through a field with cows in it.

I think part of the disconnect is due to school. We live in a small town but my DC know about 'the countryside' and 'farming' from DH and me, who fruit picked etc as (semi) rural teenagers. The primary school they went to is right by a hay field (one sports day the farmer stopped cutting his hay and stood on the tractor to watch his son in a race) but very little was ever taught to the children about farming or the countryside.

They had a bit of a go at that Forest Schools thing, which involved doing what I did as a kid but under adult supervision (my DC didn't really rate it, since I let them do that kind of thing without adult supervision), but I don't think anyone tried to teach them to ID trees, birds or fungi. One child got a big telling off for feeding others blackberries or something - 'Some plants are poisonous etc etc'.

The lack of awareness of rural life even permeated history lessons. They all did the 'The Victorians', with much banging on about industrialisation, the factories, child labour etc etc, with not one mention of all the local great-grandparents who must have been sent out picking stones and rook scaring a century ago, and the general overwhelming hard graft and poverty of rural life and how that all changed over time as well. This was very ironic as there was a lot of effort to make teaching relevant to the children, and most of the children in the school were probably descended from the rural working classes (mine were). Come World War II, the school wanted family stories...

Sorry. That was long and a little ranty.

I grew up in a house next to farm land and 'shooting land' (never did find out what type of game). People would come and stay and wonder where the fireworks were - no not fireworks that's a shotgun.

We had teens and dogs out rabbiting early last Sunday-we never shut the curtains/have obscured glass in bathrooms at the back of our house as we're not overlooked and I got a right shock getting out of the shower!

the Countryside march ...

Yes, I think the foxhunting issue did highlight that country and town people 'don't see eye to eye'. I think it also highlighted the arrogance bred from ignorance that I referred to in my first post on this thread. Support for foxhunting has become a sort of last taboo - but of those millions who are so virulently anti-foxhunting, how many actually understand country life, I wonder?

I also notice that those who are so virulently anti-foxhunting generally need to be educated to learn that fox populations need to be controlled... Once they have understood that, they can't cite an appropriate alternative way of controlling fox populations. So basically, it comes down to the fact that many people are passionately 'anti-' a thing about which they have no understanding at all. And of course New Labour saw that as fine and a nice easy vote winner, not really doing any harm because who would lose out from that? Only a few bumpkins, farmers and that.

Oh, merrymouse, could your misconception about the march have anything to do with misconceptions about the countryside generally, do you think? Because it sounds to me as if you've bought the one about how foxhunting was just a cruel sport with no practical purpose and indulged in by rich poshos - nothing to do with decent working folk. Actually, it didn't used to be like that.

Nope. I didn't express any opinion for or against fox hunting. I live in the countryside and a fox hunt passes the end of my road. They seem perfectly nice people, but there don't seem to be enough of them to truly represent the feelings of everybody in the local area.

My in-laws live in rural Wales. I think there is also a hunt there, but again it only concerns a tiny part of the population.

At the time of the march I worked in a rather Sloaney part of London and knew quite a lot of posh people who had a lovely day out with their chums from boarding school. They were very pleasant, well meaning people, but I don't think they had ever been bothered by a lack of rural transport or post offices or were particularly bothered about them.

I suppose my point is that clumping together all issues that affect people who live in rural areas and having spokes people like Otis Ferry and Prince Charles is a bit of a turn off (although to be fair perhaps nobody actually asked them).

I agree with your last point about 'dumping together all issues', merrymouse.
I'd not have seen Prince Charles or the Ferry kid as rural spokespeople, but it's interesting that maybe that's how they're seen.

How funny if it was Nonana a week either side and she would have been fine but we are a working countryside here even though it is a very popular tourist destination

petswinprizes and conference, I couldn't agree more. I got ridiculed for suggesting building yet more houses on greenfield sites (i.e. farmland) might not be the most intelligent idea. It was a pointless argument apparently since we already import such a arge proportion of our food so we'll just carry on doing that. After all, people need houses and there's a shortage isn't there. Hmmm. I suspect a food shortage might cause people to re-assess what's actually more important.

I'm just waiting for "shoots" to be banned by the next labour government.

Funnily enough,Steam, shooting's really blossomed since foxhunting was banned - farmed pheasants everywhere round here. (I just popped over from road kill thread to mention it!)

Can't even contemplate the idea of banning shooting. The kind people round here keep my freezer stocked up over Winter with pheasants and rabbits they've shot. Last year I even got a hare but gutting that was just AWFUL.
My friend text earlier to say he's got a grouse for me tomorrow, which I've never had before.