Weekend Report

Well now, that was rather a nice, gentle weekend.

The sun shone brightly in a blue, blue sky, although I would have to admit that it was definitely on the chilly side.

We were at Bishops' House on Saturday morning and had LOADS of visitors. We were a bit surprised by the steady stream of people heading in through the doors.  We had expected it to be quite quiet but I think the sunshine and the lack of snow/ice had enticed people out exploring.

Tabitha, Gareth and Cally dropped in on their way back home from somewhere to say hello.

We dropped round to Freyja and Simon's place on our way home to drop off the little bench top oven that we bought last year when our big oven died.  I put it away in a cupboard when we finally got around to replacing the main oven - and in that cupboard it remained, peacefully slumbering, until Freyja mentioned that she was thinking of buying one for their place.  No point buying a new one when we've got one sitting doing absolutely nothing at our place!

And then we went home, our journey enlivened only by the fact that the car's brake lights were intermittently jamming on. They've been doing that for some time and Nick the Mechanic can't really work out why.  What was particularly irritating on Saturday was that we have only just had a new brake light switch fitted.  Since we had the new one put in it's been worse than ever!  None of this would really matter (apart from the inherent danger of the vehicles behind not knowing when you are going to stop abruptly!) except that when the lights are stuck on, the car's electric system suffers and it makes the car engine stutter as though it is about to cut out.  This can be a tiny tad disconcerting!!! Nick turned out and fixed the switch on Saturday - but it's still doing it.  I think he is intending to have a thorough inspection and see what on earth is going on.

We let the new set of chickens out on Sunday afternoon, when we were both around to supervise. The Under Gardener had let them out earlier in the week, but Curry took off after the dominant new chook and a contretemps was only avoided by him intervening.  However, we couldn't leave the poor new chooks in their tiny run indefinitely ,so we gave it another go.  and this time it seemed to go quite smoothly.  Curry, Dimsim and the ducks took themselves off to one part of the orchard and the other four kept to a different bit.  So for the moment it looks as though we have two separate flocks. We have also renamed the new chooks - mostly because we don't know all their original names. The dominant chook is Bacon and the white one is Egg. The other two are Stew and Casserole. They are laying quite well. Anyone want any eggs :-D

I had intended to make a pork goulash for dinner on Saturday. I put bite size pieces of pork and chopped onion into the slow cooker before we went out in the morning.  Later in the afternoon I chopped up loads of lovely vegetables, cooked them, combined them with a tin of tomatoes and some paprika - and was just about to add the pork when I thought: You look absolutely stunningly beautiful and vibrant just as you are.  I am not going to add pork pieces after all.  So we had a really delicious vegetable goulash instead.  The poor abandoned pork pieces have gone into a different paprika flavoured stew for tonight and tomorrow!

There are new people at the Marsh Green Farm Shop. They seem very pleasant.  And I am very relieved to hear that they are not planning to replace the butcher, who makes amazing sausages and lovely bacon. It never goes well when excellent butchers are replaced!