Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú

Thank you to everyone who applied for the wild flower seed packs. We had a huge demand for the packs and all 230,000 have now been allocated. Sorry if you were not able to get a free pack yourself, but if you still want to grow wild flowers you should be able to buy similar packets of seeds at your local garden centre. Ìý

On this week’s Countryfile, Tom Heap is at Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire to meet Her Royal Highness, The Princess Royal. The Princess has run her estate here as a working farm for nearly forty years and tells Tom what brought her into agriculture and how she has to make the land pay its own way.Ìý The interview also reveals how Princess Anne feels about many of the big rural issues. She shares her views on genetically modified food, the importance of continuing to produce rare breeds and the management of bovine TB in the UK. Plus Tom gets a rare insight into her life on the estate and meets ‘Annie’, an abandoned horse that the Princess has found a home for.Ìý

John Craven is exploring one of Gloucestershire’s worst kept secrets! The Slad Valley. The writer Laurie Lee immortalised his rural childhood home here when he wrote his most famous work, Cider with Rosie. 100 years since his birth John meets Laurie’s daughter to find out more about the man and his love of this beautiful landscape. He then helps Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust as they pick 10 top spots for posts which will be markers for a walk through the valley, each one featuring Laurie’s lesser-known poetry.

This week Adam Henson is on home turf with his own rare breeds of pig, sheep and cattle. Then he goes to meet someone who is just as passionate about these types of farm animal.Ìý Around 40 years ago, Gloucester Cattle were almost extinct, but thanks to a handful of passionate farmers the breed was saved.Ìý Adam visits Charles Martell who bought his first cattle with a view to reinstating the famous farmhouse Double and Single Gloucester cheeses back in the 1970s. He still makes it to this day, following an ancient recipe and using milk from his own herd.Ìý Adam attempts the historic, and rather unusual, method of testing if the cheese is any good - by walking on it!

Ìý