Brighling Bell-ringers has several vacancies for additional bell-ringers.

In an effort to spread the word that we need more ringers and to give people the opportunity to see the bells being rung – and show how much fun it can be – we are holding an open afternoon from 2 to 5pm on Saturday 1st June.

Ringing bells is a wonderful thing to do and doesn’t require you to have any particular skills, just a willingness to learn. It’s availble to people of all ages and with some initial weekly training followed by regular practise you can quite quickly master the basics of ringing in a team.

At Brightling we don’t currently ring for Sunday services and you don’t have to be a churchgoer so the committment is simply to come along one evening a week for practise so that when there is a special occasion we can put together a team of at least 6 ringers.

If you’re an experienced ringer please consider coming along on a Thursday evening (at 7:15 pm) to try us out.

We’re a very friendly group who will make you feel most welcome. We’re trying hard to keep a tradition going that is unique to Britain and is experiencing a resurgence in popularity alongside other artisan skills. We hope lots of people will be attracted to our open day and be tempted to give it a go!

Sadly there were only 3 church bells rung at Brightling on Easter Sunday morning this year. The church has 8 lovely bells and we would really like to be ringing at least 6 of them to celebrate Easter, Christmas and weddings.

Contact Chris lever on 07875 701398 or Chris Holden on 07871 187057

Bring-And-Buy Plant Sale Saturday 25^th May 9.30 To 12.00 in Brightling Village Hall

This is our annual event to raise funds to support  ever-increasing cost of the hire of the marquee for this year’s Flower Show.  We would love to sell any spare plants  or produce you are able to donate. Does anyone have a glut of rhubarb?

You will be able to buy an “ instant “ vegetable garden as we have a wide variety of vegetable plants including tomatoes*, peppers, cucumbers  broad beans , peas etc. We will also have loads of annuals for your borders including interesting varieties and colours of sweet pea, cosmos, cleome, tagetes, nicotiana .    There will also be an interesting range of perennials, succulents  and shrubs and who knows what interesting things may turn up on the day?

We are also keen to recycle  any plant pots or multi -pack trays you may have by  re-using them for the plant stall at the Flower Show. Please bring them along to the sale.

Note the earlier start than usual as it is Heathfield Show  Day but we hope that you will pop is on your way to the show.

If you would like me to pick up any plants or pots for recycling  from you, please give me a ring on  01424 838402

Vanessa Everett

*We now have donations of some amazing tomato plants  of so many different varieties that I have done a descriptive  list for you to peruse.

Tomato Menu – All £1.20 except Sungold

Apero 

By far the finest-tasting cherry tomato on our trials (and a top-seller in the best supermarkets), with good yields of rich red, slightly elongated fruit. RHS Award of Garden Merit winner. Sow end January-April, harvest June-September. For greenhouse or outdoors.(Cordon variety – One stem grown by pinching off side-shoots as they appear, needs staking and tying in.)

F1 Shirley

Best for showing. Matures early, and crops heavily on short jointed plants. Nicely shaped fruits of fine quality. Resistant to tomato mosaic virus, leaf mould, greenback and fusarium. RHS Award of Garden Merit winner. Which? Best Buy. (Cordon variety – one stem grown by pinching off side-shoots as they appear, needs staking and tying in.)

Gardener’s Delight

‘Bite-sized’ fruits packed with rich, sweet flavour. Heavy crops borne on long trusses. Which? Best Buy since 1984. (Cordon variety – one stem grown by pinching off side-shoots as they appear, needs staking and tying in.)

Sungold

A superb orange-coloured, cherry-fruited tomato with a vigorous habit, Sungold has a luscious flavour and exceptional sweetness. Grow indoors or out – harvest into the new year in a cool greenhouse! RHS Award of Garden Merit winner. £1.50

Harzfeuer A field variety highly regarded across Europe, belongs to the earliest heterotic hybrids with increased productivity. Thanks to the resistance to adverse weather conditions, including temperature fluctuations, this presented variety may be grown in the open field (in warmer regions). It yields rich harvest for a long time under unheated covers. This variety produces impressive, round, unrippled fruit with a firm skin that does not break and shelters fleshy, sweet, vividly red fruit flesh. These tomatoes will not be affected by green shoulders, nor have hyperpigmented stains. They taste great both raw, for example in sandwiches, and processed.

Costoluto Fiorentino Tomato ‘Costoluto Fiorentino’ is a medium-sized beefsteak tomato which his deeply ridges. It I sa  delicious, juicy Italian variety of tomato which grows and crops very reliably .It’s more prolific and easier to grow than other larger-fruited kinds. Really best under cover, or against a south facing wall.

Brandy Wine

Tomato ‘Brandywine’ is particularly recognisable for its unusual leaves that resemble potato foliage. Dating back to 1885, Tomato ‘Brandywine’ is regarded as one of the world’s finest flavoured ‘beefsteak’ tomatoes. This exceptional variety produces heavy yields of firm, clear skinned, light rosy pink fruits, often with slightly green shoulders. With a full, sweet flavour these fruits are delicious eaten fresh from the plant in salads, and sandwiches. This cordon variety is suitable for growing in the greenhouse or outdoors. Height: 200cm (79″). Spread: 50cm (20″)

Black Russian ( Noire de Crimee)

These medium sized black tomatoes grow on compact plants bearing plenty of dark mahogany-brown fruits, with a delicious blend of sugar and acid. Tomato ‘Black Russian’ is an old variety with a rich, complex flavour that has to be tasted to be believed. This cordon variety is well suited to the indoor or outdoor cultivation.

Mr Stripey  A  very attractive bi-coloured beef steak variety producing good yields of red tomatoes with yellow orange stripes averaging 1lb in weight. This open pollinated Heirloom variety has a mild, low acid flavour with yellow flesh and a pink centre. Requires warmth and a good summer to thrive outside. Indeterminate. Grow on under cooler conditions and when about 8 inches tall, either plant in their growing position in the greenhouse or gradually acclimatise them to outdoor conditions and plant out 18 inches apart in a warm and sunny spot in moist, fertile well drained soil and keep watered.

Oh Happy Day With superb blight resistance, Tomato ‘Oh Happy Day’ is a real bonus for gardeners. It is a cross between a very blight-resistant North American line and a French Marmande type. In T&M trials, ‘Oh Happy Day’ F1 resisted blight infection for three weeks longer than ‘Mountain Magic’.The round, slightly flatter, 150g tomatoes grow in clusters of 3-7 fruits which have a superb taste balance of acidity and sweetness. This cordon variety is perfect for containers or planters in the greenhouse or on the patio, but can also be planted in a sunny spot in the garden Height: 200cm (79″). Spread: 50cm (20″).

The 2019 European elections in the United Kingdom will take place on Thursday 23 May 2019.

The polling station for the parish of Brightling will be the Village Hall, which will be open from 7am to 10pm.

Citizens of the UK and other EU member states resident in this country and aged over 18 can vote.

We are part of the South-east region, which is allocated a total of 10 representatives.

You have one vote and you vote for a party, not a person (there are some independents; each independent functions as a one-person party).

Each party has put forward a list of (up to) 10 candidates.

After voting, the 10 seats are allocated to the parties on the ballot in a broadly proportional way (for example if a party gets 60% of the votes it will get around 6 of the 10 seats).

If the party that you vote for gets one seat out of the 10 then it goes to the top person on that party’s list; if they win two seats then they go to the top two people on that party’s list and so on.

The following parties are standing:

…and 3 independents.

Full list and official declaration is here.

Seen on Sunday afternoon (12 May 2019) in Kent Lane, near Hunters Farm, a (male) peacock walking down the road.  Didn’t manage to get a photo, unfortunately.

Does anyone else know anything about this bird?

Also raised at the recent Annual Parish Meeting was the rather high number and duration of power cuts recently. Thanks to persistent and effective enquiry by Mr Charles Everett we have subsequently learned that nearly all the recent power cuts (all bar one in fact) were caused by the same underlying fault, namely a fault in the insulators on one particular pole which was causing the network’s trip switches to trip. Each time the problem occurred they would come along and re-set the trip switches, but the underlying fault remained, so they would randomly trip again. This faulty insulators have now been replaced, so I would be hopeful we will see far fewer power cuts in future (if they do not diminish, then we can try and summon a representative from the distribution company to come to a Parish Council meeting and explain themselves).

A planned upgrade to the Netherfield phone mast is to include equipment manufactured by Huawei, the controversial Chinese Telecommunications firm.

Documents were submitted to Rother District Council on 8th March 2019 under reference RR/2019/851/TN for the installation of additional telecommunications equipment at the existing phone mast in Darwell Woods, Netherfield.

One of the submitted documents details the equipment to be installed as “Microwave only (Huawei)” and “Huawei dish link equipment”.

The full document can be viewed here (scroll to page 5)

In a covering letter, the installers, Clarke Telecom, say “In view of the minor nature of the works we would not envisage writing or consulting with the Ward Councillors or Parish/town Council in this instance.”

The phone mast carries signals on behalf of Vodafone and also Airwave, the mobile phone service for the emergency services.  The new Huawei equipment will be mounted next to the Airwave equipment.

The phone mast is located in Darwell Woods, and provides mobile phone signal and 4G data to Netherfield and Brightling.

Huawei has been in the news recently since details of the National Security Council meeting in April 2019 were leaked to the Daily Telegraph.  The decision taken at that meeting was to allow Huawei to suppy “non-core” components to the phone and mobile data network, but several ministers argued for a total ban on Huawei equipment, on the grounds that although it is ostensibly a private company it is in practice under the control of the Chinese authorities, and the equipment could potentially contain “back-door” vulnerabilities which could be used in a cyber-attack.  In 2012, Vodafone found a number of hidden back-doors in Huawei equipment.  Recently, a US official has warned that the UK’s leaked proposal to adopt Huawei technology for 5G mobile phone networks risks affecting intelligence cooperation with the US.

The results for the new ward of “Burwash and the Weald”, which includes Brightling, were as follows:

Barnes, John (Cons) – 683 elected
Kirby-Green, Eleanor (Cons) – 606 elected
Lindstrom, Laurel (Lib Dem) – 360
Varrall, Mary (Lib Dem) – 425
Wedmore, Andrew (Green) – 369

The turnout was 37.22%

The election, held on 2nd May, was for Rother District Council.

The overall result was dramatic.  The Conservatives were reduced from 29 to 14 seats, losing 12 of the 13 seats that they held in Bexhill.  The election also saw the first Green councillor to be elected to Rother District Council.  The new make-up of Rother District Council is: 13 Independents, 14 Conservatives, 7 Liberal Democrats, 3 Labour and 1 Green.

High Weald AONB partnership announces

We are delighted that this well-respected national programme is coming to the area following our invite. It offers free business skills workshops to local family farms whose main enterprise is dairy or livestock, whether owner-occupied or tenanted.

Several local farms have expressed an interest and we’re looking for more farmers to participate.

The programme is an opportunity for families to look at the viability and long-term potential of their farms to help them make decisions for the future. The Prince’s Countryside Fund advises that:

“68% of farmers report that they are more optimistic about the future of their family farm as a result of being on the programme.”

Seven local workshops will be run between September and March for participating farms. Topics include business planning, understanding accounts and budgeting and exploring new opportunities.