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Hardeep's Sunday Lunch

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Hardeep Singh Kohli travels the UK cooking Sunday lunch for people with remarkable stories

Hardeep Singh Kohli travels around the UK cooking Sunday lunch for people with remarkable stories

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Hardeep's Sunday Lunch: Series 4

Hardeep's Sunday Lunch: Series 4: Dartmoor Hill Ponies

29/11/2015

Dartmoor Hill Ponies

Series 4

BBC Radio 4 - Hardeep's Sunday Lunch, Series 4, Dartmoor Hill Ponies

Hardeep Singh Kohli takes on a controversial cooking challenge.

Hardeep Singh Kohli takes on a controversial cooking challenge when he visits Dartmoor to find out more about a scheme to help save the iconic ponies.

In this last episode in the series Hardeep travels to Dartmoor for a taste of the iconic ponies that roam the moor. He meets the woman who's made it her life's mission to protect these semi wild ponies whose genes have been shaped by the harsh landscape in which they survive. Dartmoor hill ponies are wonderfully adapted to their environment, surviving by crushing the gorse with their feet so it can be eaten. It was said you could tell where you were on Dartmoor by the colour of the coats of the ponies around you, which was easy just over a hundred years ago when there were thirty thousand ponies on the moor. This rugged pony flourished for centuries because they could also be used for agricultural work. As farming has become mechanised the numbers of ponies have dwindled and today a little over one thousand remain. The presence of ponies on the moor helps maintain biodiversity and accessibility for visitors like Hardeep to enjoy. Now some conservationists have come up with a radical and controversial plan to save Dartmoor's hill ponies. Hardeep is cooking lunch for Charlotte Faulkner who lives on a farm in an ancient Dartmoor longhouse. Charlotte is worried that without intervention the Dartmoor hill ponies will disappear altogether. She has begun developing a range of pony meat called 'Taffety'. It is organic, low in fat and high in omega 3. Charlotte says it's delicious and by putting pony on the menu, she is hoping to give more value to the lives of animals otherwise destined for the slaughterhouse and she hopes it will help make the maintenance of herds viable again for farmers. But her plans have split her family.

Producer: Phil Pegum.

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