A summery September the First

The Met Office, for reasons which I am sure make sense to it, declares that the seasons begin on the first day of the relevant month. So, as far as they are concerned, autumn started yesterday. Everyone else is holding out for the autumn equinox on the 21st. Apart from Mother Nature who seemed to have decided that it started some time last week.  So it was something of an irony that yesterday, the first day of September, provided us with possibly the nicest summer day that we've had for about six weeks!

So we drove into Sheffield, captured Tabitha and Cally, and took ourselves out to Our Cow Molly's ice cream farm. Molly and her ice cream first came to my attention when the sandwich shop across the road from SHU turned into a soup and stew (with pizzas) shop and I wandered over one lunchtime to see what was what and found that a well as soup and stew and pizza, they also sold Our Cow Molly's ice cream. The ice cream was delicious. Then I discovered that they had a farm on the edge of Sheffield. And then I discovered that they also have a farm shop. I've been meaning to go and have a look for months. So we went out to visit in the sunshine. And found that they have lots of lovely ice cream flavours, some local meat, Molly's milk and other bits and pieces in their little shop. So we each had an ice cream (not Cally - she was allowed tastes of ours) and I bought a rather nice looking piece of Highland Cow rump steak.  The poor bloke who sold me this seemed very worried. He thought that I might think that a steak from a matured cow which had been properly hung might be off or something because it wasn't the pretty pink that beef from the supermarket is.  I assured him that I seldom buy steak from the supermarket and he seemed much happier. And I went off to eat my ice cream in their garden in the sunshine.  We shall have the steak tonight with our left over gardener's pie from Wednesday.

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So that was all fun, but it didn't take very long. It was still a beautiful afternoon, so we decided to go to the alpaca farm outside of Ringinglow. We were nearly thwarted in our ambition because the alpaca farm has the wrong postcode on their website. Took us into the depths of a quite nice housing estate somewhere out near Lodge Moor. All very nice - but not alpacas! So I put the Ringinglow pub into the sat nav and off we went again. And found the alpacas frolicking in the sunshine. I must say, they have the most amazing views to keep themselves entertained. We had a potter around, inspected the little shop and then took Taffa and Cally home and ambled back to our place.

I took this week off work partly because it's quite enticing to have five days off for the price of 3 days leave but also with the vague intention of giving the house a proper clean and tidy. So far I don't seem to have cleaned anything.  And it doesn't look like any cleaning is going to happen today. So far we've been out to Chatsworth to stock up on meat and fish and now we are heading out to The Nettle for lunch. I don't often achieve anything particularly useful after we've been to The Nettle for lunch!!

[LATER: I barbecued the rump steak on my griddle pan for tea this evening.  It was mouth waveringly tender. And extremely delicious. Not cheap - but I might see if we can get some more when next we have a special occasion or visitors or something]