It has been a foody end to the week here at The Larches and the weather has been outstanding.
Friday was a gastro-nom-nom-nom treat, strolling around the Ludlow Food Festival nibbling cheese and sipping cider tasters. I met up with Jane Hayes, Ed of Shropshire Life Magazine to discuss my new column with the magazine and was interested to note that she, like me, favours the savoury side of life over the sweet. Funny how our taste buds are. What do you favour?
At 6pm, the children and I arrived back at The Larches at the same time as The Hubby, a very unusual occurrence. The sun was still blazing so we packed up a crate with some wood, some seasoned pork loin chops, local sausages and salad from the garden and cooked our dinner at the firepit in the field.
The sun disappears quick at this time of year, the lovely heat suddenly snatched away, walking back to the house I could feel the damp of the grass on my flip-flopped feet. In place of the sun rises a gorgeous harvest moon and with no artificial light around the property, the twinkling sky is truly awesome.
Saturday morning and a mad panic to deliver The Archer family entries for the Village Show. Everything needed to be brought into the village hall and staged by 10.30am so that top secret judging could commence. I wasn't hopeful, we've had a mixed crop this year. I couldn't enter half the categories I entered last year; I had no tomatoes, the runner beans are only just emerging and The Borrowers would do well to pop over and borrow a few potatoes. Still, some of my attempts were more successful so the Hubby and I prepped these for show: We finally found 3 onions that looked decent. The rhubarb was ok'ish and the beets acceptable.
I had just one big cucumber (having eaten all the other big ones! Doh!!)
The courgettes were woeful, but I still entered them along with some roses, sweet pea and seed grown dahlias.
The sproglets had entries too: The 9yo made 3 glittery fairy cakes and wrote out 20 lines of a favourite story 'A Kitten Called Moonlight' by Martin Waddel. She'd also made a Jubilee card with a secret envelope inside containing a fold out crown. Jolly handy for those sudden Royal duties.
The 7yo had entered the seed tray category where the theme was 'A Woodland Shelter.' I'd encouraged him to make this weeks ago, on one of the days we were trapped at home with the builders. I don't believe in giving much help to the children for these activities, surely the taking part is much more important than winning and I'm not so keen on seeing perfect work from children, unless they are very little where Mummy has worked for hours, besides, I'm too lazy. This year I was very surprsed at the work both children put into their entries. The 7yo spent hours cutting little twigs and asking which plants he could have from my garden and the 9yo agonised about her card.
Returning for the Village Show opening later that day, we were delighted to find that the 9yo had a 1st for her card and a 1st for her handwriting, while the 7yo had a 1st for his seed tray.
I had a 1st for my onions (2nd year running!) a 1st for my cucumber and a highly commended for my roses.
And with the sun still belting down and roast chicken for tea, this is turning out to be a bloomin' brilliant weekend.
