farmlife and rural living

...is what we sang, as the children all came into Church, carrying their assortment of harvest baskets. Quite relieved they were too, to hand over their fruitful burdens (it's a long walk from school, when you're carrying a pumpkin, or several cans of tinned fruit, because your mum forgot all about harvest festival, and didn't call in at Tesco on the way home from work.) Traditionally, harvest is celebrated as the end of the food and farming cycle, rewarding us for our hard work and diligence...Read Full Story

I was involved in discussions last week about the kinds of things that people look for when they visit the countryside. Once you start to think about it, you realise that the countryside means so many different things to so many different people. One of the points raised, was about the gap that often exists between visitor perceptions, or preconceptions of the countryside - and what it actually is. ( and the tendency of certain tourist businesses, to perpetuate and commercially exploit this...Read Full Story

Surfing the net, as you do, up popped this BlackBerry definition ... an 'always connected' wireless solution providing emails on the go, text messaging service, internet connection etc. etc. - so says the blurb on these nifty little devices. For me, it's another ploy to keep me on task at my desk, (even if I am on the move) when I'd rather not be! I have chosen my way of working, to break free from the magnetic field of the office desk, and the PC as much as I can. I would not want to...Read Full Story

....now that's better. At risk of sounding like my father, who always used to say, at the mere mention of ' curry '- that the only way to eat rice was in a pudding, with sugar and milk on - I now hear myself saying that the way to enjoy blackberries, is to pick them and put them in a pie with some apple! that holds more promise of enjoyment for me, than 24 hr web connection, with intravenous texts and email alerts. ( I'm afraid you'll have to read previous blog to see where I'm coming from...Read Full Story

Well, here they are, as promised 2 x blogs ago! We are mightily impressed. Well done Natalie for coming up with the idea of putting blackberries into scones. I wish I had thought of it myself years ago, and I have added many interesting things to scones in my baking history (some of them not even intended...!) here is the basic scone recipe we usually use, and you can add practically anything you like, at the dry ingredients stage. recipe for scones (sorry for the imperial measurements - it...Read Full Story