Quality Shopping

Dry Autumn days but very cold nights is the best way to describe the weather at the moment. October was exceptionally dry and it looks as though November will also be a very dry month.

We aren't complaining about the cold spell, it might kill of some of the nasties, namely slugs which ruined our potato crop this year.

We have had some exceptional sunsets which seem to coincide with frosty weather. Unfortunately the cold snap does not suit the hens, we are struggling to keep up our supply of eggs for our customers, still only a month to go to the shortest day, then spring will be on it's way.
Little work is being done in the garden, short days and hospital appointments seem to eat away time. We  even managed to miss 'Stir up Sunday', the day when Christmas puddings should be made, it was only listening to the 'Archers' that I realised that it was in fact last Sunday. If we had planned things better or paid more attention to the approaching festival we could have got all the dried fruit on our last trip to Sligo, just ten days previously, however that trip was to the Craft village at Rathcormac and then onto the Crafters Basket for more tapestry wool.

All it needs is a door and we could move in.

On that trip we did manage to see the recreated bronze age round houses which have been built at the craft village.
 It is very hard to find quality dried fruit in a small town so again we had  to go to Sligo to our favourite delicatessen.

Cosgroves is a small delicatessen which has been running for over a hundred years, if you like good food this is the place to go, it sells the most delicious olives amongst other things, most of  the olives got eaten on our way back home, (we can eat olives like some people eat sweets,)

  Cosgroves is also one of the very few places left where you can buy both seeded and seedless raisins and also currants,

Naturally dried apricots.

they also sell non- sulphured apricots. The colour of apricots that supermarkets sell is orange, due to the sulphur that is used to preserve them, we would prefer to not have added sulphur in our Xmas pudding. It's not a cheap place to shop, however good food should not be cheap, it should reflect the true cost of production. Tomorrow is set to be our stir up day, if we have time the cake will also get made.

Last week was the week for the duck harvest, we had five male ducklings hatched from a brood of eleven, we sold one of the females to a friend so we have an additional five females which we will keep for egg laying. Simon used the plucking machine again, it did a reasonable job but nowhere as good as it is for the broilers. The ducks all weighed in at five pounds give or take an ounce they all weighed the same. The freezers are now full again, and we have enough poultry to last us through until the next lot of birds are done, sometime around next May.

The winter vegetables are all doing well, our leeks are the best we have grown here

and the parsnips are also very good this year,

even the Brussels sprouts have done what they should do, nice firm heads and just the right size, possibly the veg all appreciated a cooler and damper summer than usual.

Freddy doing what cats do best.