travel

As our speaker from Genus pulled out last week, I decided to step in and give the members a talk on my 10 months away travelling, which I got back from a year ago. After showing a big whack of photos, all accompanied by a story or two, I finished up with a video made up of clips I took accompanied by a good soundtrack. Even if I did go on a bit, I think everyone enjoyed it, and there was discussion afterwards amongst a few about getting in gear and going travelling themselves!

catch the pigeon

Luke once again did a fine job organising our annual club clay pigeon shoot last night, held at his place. Despite it looking like it was going to hammer down all evening, the rain held off and we managed to give everyone 10 shots at the clays. Winners were Ben Kelly for Boys, and Amy Trehane for girls (the advice from father paid off!)

updated calendar

Just to let you know the club calendar is now right up to date, to my knowledge, with the latest club programme as there were some inaccuracies before. Clay Pigeon Shoot tomorrow night!

farm walk

Two dairy farm walks in a week for some of us! The first being on our club exchange, the second last night, courtesy of Rex Ward and family.

Rex has three farms based around Crackington Haven, all based around grazing and feed production for his 300 odd cow dairy unit.  And with us on a trailer on the back of his TM190, we saw them all... very quickly!

Upon return to Trehole Farm, we had a good look around their cubicles and parlour which were extremely well thought through and set out, and were shown a number of clever things they'd setup to increase efficiency and reduces costs. The most impressive bit for me was the backing gate which doubled as a scraper.

After a customary pasty and cake, we headed off to the Wilsey. Many thanks to the Wards for taking the time to show us around.

club exchange

Last weekend, for the first time in years, we did a club exchange with Praze YFC which went something like this:

Saturday morning: six of us met 8.45am, and travelled down to a dairy farm on the outskirts of Camborne for a farm walk around their NZ style setup. 270 acre farm recently converted from arable to organic dairy, 160 cows, and part of a group of four farms based near Exeter.

Pasty lunch, then down to Hayle sands for an afternoon on the beach, with Lanson members braving the sea, followed by beach games. Split into groups and split to three praze member's houses to shower and drop off bags.

Evening- Back to Penzance for a meal at the Meadery (a pirate themed restaurant). Everyone sat down with their friends, only to be split up by myself and Emma to mix everyone up which worked well! A few drinks followed.

Sunday - get taken to Bissoe near Truro, to cycle the 'mineral tramway' down to Portreath. where we met up with the others who got out of bed too late! Spot of lunch then a leisurly cycle back again before saying goodbye to everyone.

Brilliant weekend, lets do the same when Praze come up to us on the first weekend in September.

c&d

In our first proper meeting for a few weeks, last night's visit was to the offices of our 'local rag'; The Cornish & Devon Post.

Bill Roberts took us on a brief tour of the building, showing us the departments, then talked about the history of the newspaper, and his near 50 years there!

A few facts were that it's owned by the Tindle Group of papers (one of about 230 papers Tindle owns), about 14,000 copies are sold each week, and it's actually printed in Stoke-On-Trent and brought down.

Remember club exchange with Praze YFC this weekend!

summer ball

Thanks to everyone who came along to Launceston YFC's annual Summer Ball, this time held at our home farm, and for making it such a terrific night.

The rain managed to just about hold off, the electric didn't go out once (for a change!), the tent looked beautiful, and the Horse Band did a great set for us, followed by Pheonix Disco's DJ'ing taking us into the very early hours!

Much planning, many meetings, and lots of stress & preparation goes into organising our ball every year, and this year the holder of the organiser badge was Sarah Webber, who worked hard to get everything together. Thanks also to all the members who came out to the field on the days before, and sorted out all the food, which I think everyone will agree was better than ever. Other thanks go to my parents for use of the field, the Countryman Inn bar, Jess for selling tickets, and Graham, Ed, Verrin and Anthony for their work on the electrics.

Charlotte Parker still has 4 of the 5 raffle prizes, so speak to her if you want to know if you won!

This forthcoming weekend it our club exchange with Praze YFC, going down there fri night - I'm hoping for as many people to come along as poss for what will no doubt be a very fun weekend. Remember, you can still  come for part days if you're busy