Pine Hoverflies, A Solar Powered Boat and a Stand Up Comedian Farmer

We are in East Lothian with Patricia Stephen, founder of Phantassie Organic Produce. They head out to the fields during pumpkin planting and chat about the growth in organic food and farming over recent years.

Friday 12th July was the launch of this year’s Big Butterfly Count organised by the charity Butterfly Conservation. Mark met Apithanny Bourne, their East Scotland branch chair, at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh to find out more about the count and see if they could spot the elusive Holly Blue.

In this week’s Scotland Outdoors podcast, Helen Needham is in rural Wales with musician Owen Shiers. Owen lives in a housing cooperative in Ceredigion which was formerly a sheep farm and is now a woodland. He explained how that process had happened and they chat about the concept of rewilding.

A year ago, Mark headed out on a trip with Hans Unkles, co-owner of Scotland’s first ever electric, solar-powered fishing vessel. A couple of weeks ago, Mark and Rachel caught up with Hans to hear how the first year of the boat has gone and if anyone has been inspired to follow in his footsteps.

The Pine Hoverfly is one of the rarest species in Scotland. It used to thrive in Pine woodlands across the country but is now confined to just a small area of the Cairngorms. Rachel visits the Highland Wildlife Park near Kingussie where the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland are working on a breeding programme. Dr Helen Taylor told her about the project which has involved releasing thousands of eggs and larvae into the Cairngorms National Park in an attempt to save the species from extinction.

Farmer turned comedian Jim Smith has become pretty well known across Scotland over the last few years, especially in farming circles. He’s appeared at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, on TV and radio and now he has his own BBC Radio 4 series- Me and the Farmer. Jim chats to us live about his journey from cattle to comedy.

Two years ago, journalist Paul English encountered a team of archaeologists exploring a patch of land in Govan in Glasgow. The team, from the University of Glasgow, were taking part in a research project to uncover what they could of the one remaining site of the Glasgow Garden Festival of 1988. Paul recently went back to catch up with the team and see what treasures they’d uncovered.

While on the outskirts of Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago, Mark bumped into a man on a strange looking electric bike. It turned out to be Jim Gayes who is working with the charity Sustrans on mapping the off-road National Cycle Network. He explained more about how the bike system works and why the mapping is important.