Christmas and New Year bin collections – all you need to know

There are no changes to waste collection dates over Christmas and New Year, which means residents should present containers by 6am on their normal scheduled collection day.

• This year for the first time, wrapping paper can be recycled as long as it doesn’t spring back to a flat shape after being scrunched up, and doesn’t contain foil, glitter or synthetic material. 
• Wrapping paper must be contained within the green recycling box.  Recycling collection teams are unable to take recyclable wrapping paper presented in black bags or carrier bags. To check if wrapping paper is recyclable visit www.stroud.gov.uk
• Polystyrene foam can’t currently be recycled, so that should be placed in general waste and not in recycling.
• This is a time when many households will take deliveries wrapped in cardboard – please remember to flatten cardboard and put it in your recycling box. Extra cardboard should be reduced to approximately the size of a green box and placed neatly underneath or next to the recycling box on collection day.

Defra figures show that Stroud District Council is one of the top performing recycling councils in England. So once again please remember to minimise the amount of waste created and recycle as much Christmas waste as possible – glass, cans, plastic bottles and containers and cardboard packaging can all be recycled.

Food Waste

It is also important to reduce our food waste over the festive period, and if everyone can do their bit it will make a huge difference. For tips on reducing food waste this Christmas visit www.lovefoodhatewaste.com

Bad Weather

If bad weather strikes and snow or ice holds up collections, residents should leave their waste and recycling out for two days including Saturdays but not Sundays. If crews are unable to collect it within this period, it should be taken back in until the next scheduled collection. The safety of crews and the public is paramount in ice and snow conditions.

Collection Calendars 2022

Residents can download 2021/22 collection calendars via the My House section on the SDC website – www.stroud.gov.uk/my-house

Residents who do not have online access or who cannot download the calendar can call the council on 01453 766321 for a copy.

Christmas Trees

Registration for tree collection is open now until 3 January 2022. Real Christmas trees can be recycled at Household Recycling Centres – all visits must be pre-booked. To book a slot visit www.gloucestershirerecycles.com

You can also register your tree for collection to help Longfield Community Hospice

Dear Everyone,

As previously mentioned, we will be carol singing round the village on various evenings between now and Christmas Eve.  It would be grand if we could get to every house!

It will of course depend on weather and who is available but the plan is:

1. Tuesday 7th Wick Lane far end.  Meeting at Manor Lodge 6.30pm
2. Wednesday 8th – Hounds Green/The Street 6.30pm- meeting at Street Farm.  Richard and Jane have kindly offered to warm us all up afterwards with some mulled wine at Street Farm  (please let Jayne know if you are coming!)
3. Monday 13th – Taits Hill Road 6.30pm meeting on the pavement near Vale Vets (closer to the first houses so we don’t have so far to walk 😁)
4. Friday 17th – Echo Lane and Wick Lane -meeting at the Church 6.30pm   Pippa has kindly offered to warm us all up afterwards with some mulled wine at Church Farm House (please let Jayne  know if you’re coming!)
5. Monday 20th – The rest of the Street 6.30pm (may start a little earlier for Jess’s children to join in- TBC)
6. Tuesday 21st – Clingre Down and the bits of Taits Hill Road we missed
7. Wednesday 22nd – Anywhere we’ve missed
8. Thursday 23rd – Stinchcombe Manor and Yercombe Lodge  (TBC)  We won’t be going inside but singing outside the care home’s windows. Will confirm times with the homes.  Likely to be a little earlier than the others.

These dates are when Ian and Jayne will be going carolling and would love you to join us as often as you want to.  If you need further information please call Jayne on 07711 568661

Ho Ho Ho

Jayne Kirkham

A successful Fayre

The Village Hall Christmas Fayre 2021 was another great success last week-end despite any trial and tribulations due to COVID precautions. One must congratulate the Village Hall committee for putting on such a good annual event which is growing each year. I hear people are already booking for next!

Plenty of local crafts and produce and plenty of local craftswomen and men.

Just some of the comments:

• Lovely morning at the craft fayre, really great stalls and nice to see so many people there 😊 xx
• Superb craft fayre! Thank you to the organisers and stall holders, had a good wander around and came away with some lovely items 😃
• Great stalls, got some beautiful watercolour prints which I can’t wait to hang. Also lovely knitwear for the kiddies.
• And we had a lovely Cornish pasty! Great job.
• I bought a lovely tree 🎄🎄
• I bought some lovely Christmas presents . Only wish I had stay for tea and cake . 🍰🍰

Bitcoins – What a waste!

So, we have all heard of Bitcoins. Even if most of us don’t really understand what they are or even why you would want one. And I definitely would not know how to spend one. Most people understand that Bitcoins are a Crypto currency which people of suspicious character demand from you when they hold computers to ransom.

What people don’t know is how Bitcoins are manufactured. According to Bitcoin.org

“New bitcoins are generated by a competitive and decentralized process called “mining”. This process involves that individuals are rewarded by the network for their services. Bitcoin miners are processing transactions and securing the network using specialized hardware and are collecting new bitcoins in exchange. “

So, to cut a long story short, ANYONE with a computer and the right software can “Mine” for bitcoins. It just means leaving your computer on all the time! In practice however, people set up servers and server farms JUST to do this.

If fact this has become such a large industry, that Bitcoin mining now consumes around 91 terawatt-hours of electricity annually. To put this into context the UK generated 64.3 terawatt hours of electricity from all wind power in 2019.

What a waste!

Christmas Cheese

At the talk on our tabletop tombstones in St Cyrs a few months ago, a couple of people asked me about the local cheeses that were served.  As Christmas is coming, and with it the need to consume vast quantities (just me?) of port and Christmas cake, which both, as we know, taste even better with a little cheese, here is a bit more information about those local cheeses.

Cerney Ash

One of the original goats cheeses produced in the UK and has won numerous awards, including the 2015 World Cheese Awards’ Best goat Cheese. 

Cerney Cheese was started and continues to be run by Lady Isabel Angus.  Having developed a love for French cheeses, she persuaded a local French farmer’s wife to teach her the basics of cheese-making.  Armed with the basics, and aided by her two goats, she began experimenting.  The intention was never to sell to the public, just to make use of land and enjoy some self-sufficiency.  But when she moved to North Cerney in 1983, a local villager persuaded Isabel to let him sell twelve cheeses. They flew off the shelves and Cerney Cheese was born.

Kelston Park

Like the goat cheese story above, people tend to think of soft cheese as a French import but the soft Bath Cheese was well known in the 18th and 19th centuries.  It was even recommended to Admiral Lord Nelson in a letter from his father, written shortly after Nelson’s victory at the Battle of Copenhagen: 

    “My dear Horatio,
    On Tuesday next I intend (God willing) to leave Bath and tho’ not very strong, yet, hope to reach Lothian on Thursday, as I must remain a few days in London. As let me not interrupt any of your engagements. 
    Recollecting that Sir William and Lady Hamilton seemed gratified by the flavour of a cream cheese, I have taken the liberty of sending 2 or 3 cheeses of Bath manufacture. 
    I am my dear son, your most affectionate
    Edmund Nelson”

In 1990 farmer dairy farmer Graham Padfield tracked down the recipe for Bath cheese and revived his grandmother’s cheesemaking business at Park Farm near Kelston, Bath.  The recipe stipulates that the cheese, soft and covered with white mould, must be made with full cream milk, that salt be sprinkled on the young cheeses with the aid of a feather. 

Bath Soft Cheese is sold in blocks and is delicious, especially if you leave it a couple of weeks to ripen fully.

But they found a quirk in making the cheese into a deeper rounded shape: the original mushroomy flavour of Bath cheese and becomes lighter and more citrus.  They call this Kelston Park and it is delicious.

Bath Soft cheese Company also make Bath Blue.  Likened to Stilton, it is a classic blue veined cheese, ripened for 8-10 weeks.  In the 2014-15 World Cheese Awards, it beat nearly 2,600 cheeses from 33 countries to be crowned overall champion.

Single Gloucester

In 1994 single Gloucester was awarded Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status.  It can only be made on Gloucestershire farms which have a herd of Old Gloucester cows, one of the rarest cattle breeds in the country.  Jonathan Crump at Standish Park Farm near Eastington is one of only six cheese makers producing Single Gloucester.  He is the only one that uses ONLY Old Gloucester cows’ milk and both his cows and his cheeses have won awards.

To taste, Single Gloucester is creamy and buttery with a fresh citrus finish and I have heard people say that it is so much better than Double Gloucester and that is why it is so rare.  Which is quite funny because, being quick and easy to produce, taking only 8 weeks to mature,  traditionally it was used as part payment to farm workers.  The good stuff was the Double Gloucester which takes three months to mature and was the cheese that commanded the highest price.

Double Gloucester

Jonathan Crump says this taking twice as long to mature as its cheaper sibling is the reason for Double Gloucester’s name but there are other theories:  that the creamy milk had to be skimmed twice; that the cream from the morning milk was added to the evening milk; that the truckle is typically twice the height.  Whatever, this was the cheese that was sent to markets and shops for people to display on their dinner tables. The addition of carrot juice gave it the Wow factor colour.

And for extra Wow and probably ‘ouch’ and the sound of ambulance sirens and much jollity, Double Gloucester is the cheese used every year at Cooper’s Hill for the cheese-rolling and wake.  The first person to reach the bottom of the 50% gradient 180m slope wins the cheese.

If you have only tasted supermarket Double Gloucester, you are probably thinking ‘meh’.  Try some of Jonathan Crump’s.  It is unpasturised and made from organic milk from cows grazed on permanent pasture with hay only for winter feed.   Once tasted, you’ll probably be tempted to run down Coopers Hill in the hope of winning the truckle.  Safer, although not so entertaining for the spectators, is to go and see if they have some for sale in Leaf and Ground.

more info:

www.cerneycheese.co.uk
www.parkfarm.co.uk
www.jonathancrumpsgloucestercheeses.co.uk

Jayne Kirkham

What’s YOUR favourite Local Cheese?

Please add your favourite local cheeses in the Comments below and why and where you can buy.

Lucy McDonald: world record holder

Lucy McDonald has set a new world record for Junior Power Lifting in the under 25 years old and 67.5kg body weight.

She set the British Records in the summer for Squat 165kg, Bench Press 85kg and Deadlift 185kg and so also became the Total British Record Holder with 435kg.

In competition at the GPC (Global Powerlifting Committee) British Championship last week-end, she broke her own records and lifted Squat 187.5kg, Bench Press 95.5kg and Deadlift 185.5kg

She now has the World Records for the Bench Press and the Total lifted (468.5kg)

Lucy was born and still lives in the village. She is now a qualified personal trainer instructor and works at Severn Plus at South Woodchester helping youngsters with learning needs.

I’m told that she is also handy with a chainsaw!

Crafts Fayre

Stinchcombe Village Hall

Saturday 4 December 2021
10am – 3pm

AN OPPORTUNITY TO PURCHASE THAT INDIVIDUAL GIFT WHILE SUPPORTING LOCAL CRAFT WORKERS

• Gifts & Crafts of all types
• Christmas Trees
• Raffle
• Refreshments

Enquiries 01453 546200

COVID REGULATIONS WILL APPLY

STALL HOLDERS MAY REQUIRE CASH PAYMENTS