Page 57 - Simply Vegetables Winter 2021/22

CHRIS SNELL
The funeral took place on Monday 4th October of Chris Snell, Plant Health and Seeds Inspector of the UK Plant Health Service for Thirsk, Northallerton and Tees Valley. Chris was born into a North Lincolnshire farming family in 1963 when his passion for farming began.
He studied at Shuttleworth Agricultural College, and in 1987 joined Plant Health and Seeds Inspectorate in Beverley, and officially became ‘The Man from The Ministry’!
His next posting was to King’s Lynn, where he quickly becoming a key inspector dealing with the first finds
of Rizomania throughout Suffolk and Norfolk. Chris led the PHSI taking over fruit certification (PHPS). This led to Chris becoming a PHSI PHPS expert, and he trained many inspectors from across the country in this work.
He also tackled several novel findings, including Chrysanthemum White Rust, working alongside industry, helping them to control, what was discovered to be, a widespread problem.
Eventually a return to his beloved Yorkshire was on the cards, and
so in 1997, he came to work in Northallerton, making the family home there with his wife Jane, and children, Alice and George.
He always looked forward to the summer seed potato inspections with colleagues on the North York Moors. Chris became an expert crop inspector, as exemplified by his senior position on the Potato Technical Advice Panel and PHSI lead events such as the International Harrogate Potato Show.
This led to a long relationship being built with farmers and growers in the horticultural industry, including the diagnostic lab at Sand Hutton where he was a well-known personality. He did his job with a benevolent but firm hand (as shown by the time he spent all day shooting with a potato growing client on the Saturday and failing his tuber inspection on the Monday!)
In Scruton, Chris quickly got involved in many aspects of village life and made an admirable contribution.
Chris was Chairman and a founder member of the Scruton Allotments. He had the enthusiasm and vision, that they would be a great community asset for the village, bringing likeminded people together. He enjoyed sharing his growing knowledge with others and encouraging their interest. He
was especially keen to encourage the younger generation to grow food and flowers and was always thrilled to
show anyone his plot, greenhouses, hens and ferrets.
He would bike down to the allotment daily to feed his hens and get ingredients for a meal, and he would stop and talk to everyone he passed. A wave just wouldn’t do, he loved to chat to people, see how they were doing and find out their news. He would return hours later with only half of what he went for, but thoroughly up to speed with the village news! More recently we remember him presiding over the fun of the potato challenge and trying to encourage a surprise visitor, our local MP, Rishi Sunak, to enter next year!
Chris was a committee member and Director of the North Yorkshire County Show. He was Trade Stand Secretary for well over 15 years, which he ran with efficiency and enthusiasm. He introduced a food marquee concept
to the show, where shoppers sample and buy quality, local food direct from artisan producers. This platform proved very useful to many start up food businesses that are still thriving today.
Another of Chris’s great passions was shooting, of which he excelled. He was fortunate to shoot far and wide. However, he also put a lot back into shooting, spending much of his spare time rearing and looking after birds, loading on the grouse moor, running local shoots, often preferring to walk with his dogs, whilst others shot. He was only too happy to advise others
in developing their shoot through his knowledge and experience. Chris was a countryman, whose love of wildlife, the countryside, and sporting pursuits, made him a source of sound advice.
Whatever Chris was doing, early starts were always the order of the day, be it walking the dogs, working, or shooting, he usually had a reason to be marching across fields, and he did it all at pace, and woe betide those who couldn’t keep up with him!
Chris was a truly good man, who deserved a much longer life. We can be consoled that he spent his last day just as he would have liked it, up on the grouse moor with his two dogs, on a most beautiful sunny day, and that is how we will remember him.
North Yorkshire
and South
Durham DA
Like many of the DA’s within the Northern Branch, we have been cautious about starting face to face meetings once again.
The problem for us was in
fact twofold, that the location we’d used for the past 15 years was becoming too small for
our needs, and because of the limited car parking facility and restrictions to parking in the vicinity may have had an effect on our ability to attract and retain new members. So once we had decided to go ahead we needed
a new location with adequate facilities, we eventually decided on The Billingham Constitutional Club, which ticked all of our boxes, it has ample space for all of our needs, good selection of drinks, great car parking, easy access to the A19 and easy access via public transport.
We had our first meeting there on 27th October, it was a great turn out to listen to Adrian Read giving a good informative talk on Winter veg which prompted some good debate, not all of our regulars were there but there was an excellent turn-out from the local community, hopefully a sign of greater things to come.
Unfortunately, just a few weeks before the meeting we were informed about the sudden death of Chris Snell one of our enthusiastic members, he will be sadly missed. Chris was a great help in boosting numbers with bringing additional members to the meetings.
It was great to get back in the swing and reconnect with our members, no need to worry that it would be a waste of time. We have another meeting scheduled for this year on the 24th Nov, after this we have a Christmas break and resume our meetings in 2022 on Wednesday 26th Jan which will be a short presentation followed by the DA’s AGM.
Billingham Constitutional Club, 31 Wolviston Rd, Stockton- on-Tees, Billingham TS23 2RU Geoff Wilson
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