Several requests have been received by the Parish Council to reintroduce an allotment scheme to the village. Although we are surrounded by agricultural land, suitable space to achieve this has proved hard to come by. The unused area of land alongside Old Croft Close has been identified as suitable and is being signed over to the Parish Council by Chelmsford Borough Council. Six prospective allotment holders have requested space and are ready with spades and forks poised ready for the off in time to turn the land before winter. Should any villager wish to put their names onto a waiting list for future availability please contact the Parish Clerk - Lorraine Green 01245 266555. Allotments are strictly controlled and an annual rental is charged.

Mid Essex Primary Care Trust has launched a campaign to reduce medicine wastage which is costing the NHS in Essex a staggering £11 million a year through medicines which are ordered and not used. The biggest waste is through repeat prescriptions which are ordered and not needed because patients have stopped using the drugs. In Mid Essex alone the money lost through medicine wastage could pay for 400 more hip replacements or 280 more heart by-pass operations. If unused medicines are left lying around the home they are a danger - particularly to young children. Writtle surgery runs a scheme where medicines handed in are recycled, provided they are within date, to third world countries.

Sunday, 28th September, 2008 at 12.30pm Good Easter Village Hall 

TICKETS £8 FROM DI MATTHEWS ON 231630 

Please join us at 11.00am for a service of thanksgiving in the Church

The Marriages at Golden Wells would welcome villagers to use their hard tennis court. If you are interested please give them a call on 231294 to make arrangements. It is essential that you call first!

Chairman Cllr Alan Hall

Vice Chairman Cllr Maurice Bailey

Councillors: Richard Matthews - Guy Pitt - Jim Willsher - Jill Ryder - Sharon West

Clerk to the Council: Mrs Lorraine Green. Tel: 01245 266555

Every birdwatcher has a "most wanted "list….and for many years the bird I have most wanted to see in Good Easter or any where in Essex for that matter is the Red Kite.

When I started birdwatching in the early 1970's the only place to see this raptor was in mid-Wales where 30+ pairs were the last remnants of a population that in the nineteenth century was common all over Britain, even in central London.

Since then, conservation work by the RSPB and various re-introduction schemes have seen this magnificent bird of prey spread once again over much of the country.

On July 30th, I was walking my dog up the Essex Way behind Mill Road and I scanned west to the woods at Leaden Roding for the pair of Buzzards that have spent the summer there. I immediately found a Red Kite quartering low over the corn field known as Further Broadfield. From the plumage I could say it was in its second calendar year probably was dispersing from its natal area, maybe in the Chilterns.

This for me was one of the most exciting record I have had in 35 years here.

"Firsts" such as this are of course now exceedingly rare for me locally, but amazingly, I had another "first" this spring when in May, I heard a Redstart singing in an oak tree at the bottom of Heyrons Lane. This is a very attractive but scarce summer visitor to the oak woods of Wales and western Britain and not a bird I expected to find here.

To top all this excitement, I also had two "second" records; On March 27th I found a Stonechat in a rape field just up the lane. This is a bird of gorsey heathland and coastal cliffs, and was the first since my only previous record 9 years ago.

On April 15th a Curlew flew over Pipers Farm reservoir. My only other record in the village was in 1979 . My Good Easter total now stands at 112 species.

The summer was, as you will recall cold and dull. Five Turtle Dove territories locally was about four more than usual.

This could be because Malta, one of the arch villains when it comes to shooting and trapping of birds, was successfully taken to court by the EU over its Government's refusal to obey the EU directive on conservation of migrant birds.

If you must go there for your hols, I'll tell you now the only birds you will see are dead ones in jars in the supermarkets.

In one respect, the summer for me is over when the Swifts leave.  This year it was the night of 31st July.

The Mill Rd Swifts had the poorest year ever. Only 4 pairs arrived by the second week of May. This year there were only 16 birds after the nesting had finished. Last year there were over 30, and the usual nightly screaming round the chimneytops in the weeks before departure occurred only rarely. The 60+ birds seen over Greate and Little Tweache were probably a social gathering of local birds with others from neighbouring villages.- if you do not know all the mediaeval names of all the fields around the village, buy the definitive history of Good Easter "SEVEN MILES FROM EVERYWHERE ON THE WAY TO NOWHERE" available from the editor of "Village News"

Finally, you may have heard of a Tigon. There used to be one I think in Colchester Zoo. It is the hybrid offspring of the union between a Lioness and a Tiger. They are able to conceive because they belong to the same Genus "Panthera"

It would seem also that a Camel and a Zebra can also reproduce successfully with each other. I know this because last week I came across a warning sign by a roadside that warned; "Humped Zebra Crossing." 

Martin Henry

Please click here to see images of the Village Fete 2008