Two Episodes, One Cuppa: Why You Should Tune In to Episodes 25 and 26 

We got carried away. Charlie was just back from three weeks in London, Frank had come straight off a dairy farm audit with a report due that night, and what was meant to be a normal episode turned into an hour and thirty-seven minutes of the kind of conversation you’d have leaning on a gate. Rather than trim it to the bone, we’ve split it into two episodes and dropped them on the same day. Pick one, or make a flask and do both. 

1. Episode 25 – From the Farm Gate Up 

The first half is all about what actually happens in the yard, particularly after dark. Frank explains why every farm review he does includes a night visit, because that’s when the criminal turns up, and that’s when you find out whether the sensor light works, how far it throws, and whether your cameras can still see anything once the sun goes down. 

The bit you’ll want to hear is the stable yard break-in caught on camera. Two lads, a torch, a gate latch, and a motion-activated light that cost about seventy quid. Watch what happens when it clicks on. It’s the best argument for affordable, well-placed lighting you’ll ever hear, and you’ll come away knowing what to look for on your own footage. 

You’ll also hear about a gamekeeper intimidated into opening his gates for hare coursers, a telehandler ram-raid on a cash machine in a lit high street, and why neither of those crimes is victimless. Then Frank reports back from a food security conference where MI5 and MI6 were on the stage and nobody, not once, mentioned cyber. If your milking parlour, feed system or grain store runs on software, that silence should worry you. There’s a simple question in there worth asking yourself: if the automation failed tomorrow, could you revert to traditional processes?

2. Episode 26 – From Whitehall Down 

The second half starts with the Director General of MI5 calling for government, business and communities to work together, and asks what that means for a farm in the Somerset or a forestry block in Northumberland. Frank walks through The Demeter Initiative and the “coalition of the willing” it needs: government, police, insurers, retailers, academics, and, most importantly, farmers with a proper voice in the room. There’s also news. Rural Safeguard is becoming a not-for-profit, so any sponsorship or grant goes straight into the programme. 

Then Charlie plays the cynic, and it’s worth the wait. Wiltshire Police’s “whole force response” versus Thames Valley’s dedicated rural crime task force, whether rural officers dropped into neighbourhood teams simply get swallowed up, what happens when Police and Crime Commissioners disappear, and whether we’d all be better off with one national police service. Frank disagrees with most of it. You’ll finish knowing how your local policing is actually structured, who to ask for by name, and how to hold them to account.

3. What you can use straight away  

Walk your yard at night and think like the thief who plans to steal your property. Check your lights and cameras in the dark, not in daylight. Tidy the workshop so a missing tool is obvious. Ask who supplies your inputs and who buys your outputs, and what happens if either disappears. Find out which rural crime officer covers your postcode. None of it costs much, and all of it makes you a harder target. 

Two episodes, one conversation, and a cow joke at the end. Give them a listen, and if you’ve got a story of your own, tell us. That’s how this works.

Tune into the episodes on Spotify: Episode 25 and Episode 26