From foreign!

Ms Tagalong was in an even greater state of agitation than normal as she waited for this month's FoodiePenpals parcel. The lovely Nicole had promised a selection of goodies from far and wide as she had been travelling for work.

Ms Travelong's travels to see all things sustainable within her grasp had sent her to the far reaches of North Wales.

No, that's simply not true. The little princess and Ms Pollo Piccolo from Market Day in Calitri fame had decided to get married and celebrate the little princess's birthday all in the same weekend. So the full box of surprises was waiting for me in Glan Conwy.

In between the wonderful wedding celebration weekend at Caer Rhun Hall Ms Tagalong managed to sneak a peek and just loved how personalised Nicole had made her parcel!

Everything was neatly numbered and elucidated in a long letter. There was a recipe card from Nice and a postcard from Poland showing Oscypek, a smoked mountain cheese which Nicole was lucky enough to sample...and that's before Ms Tagalong got to the 'good stuff.'

A pot of cherry compote which although Ms Tagalong and Mr Ideasman sampled on some caramel tasting pain d'epices is just begging Ms T to make some more of those tasty quark pancakes for which it was designed. A mildly sweet concoction to contrast with the cheese.

The delicious lozenge-shaped marzipan cookies were a great accompaniment to fresh coffee brewed at the back of the Bongo as we stopped after a scramble up a hill on the edge of Snowdonia. Mr Ideasman was panting. It was hot and sunny, 'Just like home,' he said. Maybe Summer had come.

p.s. Ms Tagalong had said she liked anything with almonds, she thinks she will amend that to say anything with marzipan or just marzipan!

A pot of tapenade came in very useful to add that distinctive olive taste to some pedestrian cheese sandwiches and the sweeter concoction of olives and nuts, a speciality of the region, could be consumed by Ms Tagalong until the cows come home! Better move out of a rural region!

A mini bottle of apple aperitif is cooling in the fridge ready to be poured on ice for a special occasion and a pack of French herbs for fish is also awaiting the next fish meal.

Ms Tagalong would love to thank Nicole for her lovely box and as she does not have a blog she may later write something to put on this one.

If you wish to see the items Ms Tagalong sent to her penpal. Click here.  

http://www.misadventuresofmub.blogspot.co.uk/

It's great to have some feedback, so please leave me some comments.

Muddy Carrot for muddy carrots?

Absolutely. Ms Tagalong recently paid a visit to the brains behind this website purchasing initiative for ethically sourced and raised items in deepest darkest Dorset, Muddy Carrot.

“It's a bit like Amazon,' said James,'the transactions are between the producers and the customers.'

We are facilitators, explained Tracy, who has been hatching this idea for several years with a year of frustrating red tape and paperwork to bring it to recent fruition.

This passionate couple are providing a marketing online outlet set to rival Waitrose and Tesco. Shop online? Then give this a go. Travelling to another part of the country and want to purchase well-sourced goods? Give it a try. Tracy went on to explain how the many small farmers of produce down narrow lanes, like the hedgerow foraged jams Ms Tagalong was eying up or the upcycled copper wire welcome signs perfect for a special friend's B & B, simply do not have the time to market and promote their goods or perhaps even have the digital expertise. And the ability to market nationally seems insurmountable.

Not to this team, who have been nurturing their endearingly named Beaminster Bottom Farm for 13 years. Lamenting the loss of carpet making skills in Britain when Tracy was designing rugs utilising her angora goats' hair, she became aware that farming is deeper than food and that is why all products on their online site exhibit a strong link to the land, display a green ethos and produce a low footprint.

As if this is not enough to get on with, the couple have built a fabulous passive solar eco house about which Ms Tagalong tried to appear so knowledgeable. Mr Ideasman would have loved the plywood ceilings and asked far more pertinent questions.

Their children are soon to be launched video stars in a film for their website. Watch this muddy carrot who is sure she is local!

It's great to have some feedback, so please leave me some comments.

Apple Tree Cafe and Bosavern Community Farm

Working their way through the mist near Land's End the Apple Tree Cafe and Bakery loomed up. Ms Tagalong spotted the word 'community' and they parked.

A privately run community cafe owned by a local lady, Helen, who wished to provide a focal point for the area. Not only walkers and cyclists drop into this well-hidden cafe on the B road from Porthcurno to Land's End.

Besides great locally blended coffee and Clipper Teas there was a very healthy looking breakfast menu tucked into by a couple who had passed the place three times having been distracted by the posters about a deaf cat living nearby. Ms Tagalong enjoys spending the bank's money at places like this! Smiling she bit into the locally made biscotti and for a moment thought she was back in Italy! Mr Ideasman wanted more sustenance and the blueberry and almond cake with ice-cream fitted the bill nicely. It disappeared so quickly while Ms Tagalong was writing that she didn't even taste a morsel. The speed of its consumption attested to its goodness.

So here they were sat on comfortable sofas with apple-green throws admiring the art displayed by the Land's End guild of artists. A notice displayed offers Knit and Natter, art classes, dining clubs and an Archer's Addicts Sunday morning. Would that Ms Tagalong were there on a Sunday. A veritable hub for meetings and socials for tourists and locals alike. A great alternative to the grossly commercial Land's End Theme Park just down the road.

With glee Ms Tagalong spots a brochure on a share offer for a Community Farm at nearby Bosavern. In fact they supply the cafe with produce.

Ms Tagalong needs to investigate!

Down a few misty, wiggly lanes they pull up at the produce shed for the farm. A knock on the farmhouse door finds two Woofers having their morning cuppa. Both American they are there for a few weeks volunteering their time. Weeding onions in the rain obviously wasn't proving fun and they sat and chatted until Hugh turned up from St Just where he had been to do some shopping. Not vegetables Ms Tagalong hastens to add. Two fields of veg and several polytunnels of produce made sure of that.

Hugh explained that their mission was to stay local, to increase their veg box orders from 15 to 30 or 40 just in the neighbourhood of St Just and Pendeen. The Apple Tree Cafe was the only commercial venture they supplied but all boxes are picked up from the farm itself.

Local volunteers help keep the farm running but Hugh is the powerhouse, running the organic farm, manning the internet and blogging. Read on his website ways to try to raise money. Ms Tagalong was particularly taken with the 'Sponsor a Chicken,' initiative for a poultry six pounds. Ouch! and you get invited to an egg-stravaganza! Great idea. 

Their share offer has gone global but some ex-Cornwallians in New Zealand don't seem to have taken up the cudgel and they are still short of the amount needed to buy the farm they are using. Ms Tagalong and Mr Ideasman took a toddle to see the veggies, the chickens in one field and the pigs in two. So anyone out there reading, with Cornwall connections or not, log onto their website and buy some shares in this very worthwhile venture.

It's great to have some feedback, so please leave me some comments.

Foodie Penpals and the Scottish selection

Funny how things happen. Ms Tagalong was reading a foodie blog written by her second cousin, or is she her first cousin once removed or even a third cousin? Seems we're supposed to share the same great-grandparents but that can't be right as she is a different generation...anyway...

Great restaurant blog about the Northwest and an interesting initiative called Foodie Penpals caught Ms Tagalong's eye. Send a box of food, receive a box of food. Sounds good. Collecting bits and bobs for my penpal from Two Weddings, onebride, was fun and the anticipation waiting for the box from Jen'sPlace was palpable.

Mr Ideasman asked why Ms Tagalong jumped up so quickly when the postman came to call. Her writing was faltering as she drifted off into a daydream of delicious delights from faraway Scotland. Does Miss Jen know Ms Tagalong is not too keen on haggis?

Near disaster when Miss Jen misses the post and has to send the parcel first class so that Ms Tagalong receives it before she zips off to Cornwall. The Royal Mail did their stuff and the anticipation was over.

Miss Jen's delights were a pack of oatcakes, (great with cheese advises Miss Jen) a pot of local chilli jam, a pot of onion marmalade, sweeties reminiscent of a Scottish childhood. Very sweet, warns Ms Jen, they will probably find Ms Tagalong's fillings and a jar of rock. Another childhood confection!

Scooping up the products into her camping box Ms Tagalong vows to try them at the earliest opportunity.

Sitting outside Cotehele a lunch camp was made, some ripe avocado spread on the oatcakes topped with some Dorset blue cheese and a blob of chilli jam. Delicious! Ms Tagalong loved the onion marmalade ,'Bit too much like Branston,' said Mr Ideasman. What does he know? The chilli jam was a tad too sweet for Ms Tagalong's taste, she the one liking a bit more oomph to her chilli.

As for the oatcakes..Ms Tagalong could eat them until the cows come home, digestive biscuits having been an all time favourite, the extra oaty texture in these was sublime. Such a shame they are all gone!

Read all about what I sent to the lovely Sonja on her blog or read more about Foodie Penpals on either this link for the UK or this one if you are in the US. What, not one in Australia, ah well, there's a project for me on my return? 

It's great to have some feedback, so please leave me some comments.

Littlebredy – in an English Country Garden

Not strictly a community garden says Ms Tagalong but as this once derelict walled garden is now run as a not-for-profit venture manned by volunteers it is certainly one for the community. 'Not far now,' Ms Tagalong encouraged Mr Ideasman as they cycled past the cricket pavilion in completely the wrong direction. A chance encounter with the laird pointed them in the right direction and they sailed back down the hill.

A cloudless blue sky, rare in this wettest of Summers, showed this Summer garden at its best. A real English garden with flourishes of roses, foxgloves, lavender, and clematis filling every corner. Old fashioned blossoms sweetened the air with their scent and made Ms Tagalong want to wend her way down every small path.

'Why is it walled,' asked Mr Ideasman? Not wanting to remind him of the vagaries of English climate Ms Tagalong muttered something about giving stonemasons something to do and changed the subject! Well tended vegetables with ripening blackcurrants and other soft fruit made Ms Tagalong want to volunteer too. Perhaps she could make a willow crown as well to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee, or having a Republican husband, maybe not!

Bridehead Estate founded these gardens in 1796 and they supplied food not only to the 'big house' but to the surrounding population. Many gardeners toiled to grow vegetables for all. Ms Tagalong meandered her way through the orchard to the lake with Mr Ideasman in tow. 'I should be called Mr Tagalong,' he grumbled as they sat and ate their picnic in this exquisite location.

The Waterfall by the lake

The Jubilee Crown and old implements

Scarecrows are Us

Especially for those of you who have been enjoying the posts on country life in Dorset I have managed to persuade the lovely Maddie Grigg from The World from my Window to guest blog and this is what she wrote:

Behold the humble scarecrow.

In The Enchanted Village, various weird and wonderful figures come out once a year to compete in our annual scarecrow competition.

We’ve had monks and kings, cartoon characters, clowns and corgis. We’ve had cowboys and Indians, Cavaliers and Roundheads. We’ve had all sorts.

And occasionally, some stay in situ, scaring off the birds and becoming a permanent fixture until they rot away into oblivion. This one was on our allotments for some time.

Our scarecrow competition is a relatively new fixture on the village calendar. However, the keeper of our village history, the late Leonard Studley, who was born in 1909, tells us in his book, My Story, (ISBN 0 9514849 0 7) it’s nothing new:

As soon as the corn was sown in spring (or autumn) my father would construct a ‘mommett’ to keep the rooks off. Mother would have to supply a hat, preferably a straw one, ladies or gents didn’t matter, an old jacket, and if it was to be a posh ‘mommett’ a shirt, and a linen flour bag which would be stuffed with hay or straw to form a head.

The eyes, nose and mouth would be put in using the wet cork of the ink jar. He would then cut two sticks about 6ft long, one would have to be sharpened at the bottom end to enable it to be driven into the ground, the other would be tied across it to form the arms, and the clothes would be draped over the form.

Sometimes his nakedness would be hidden under a pair of trousers, sometimes not.

Leonard Studley says in the ‘earlier days’, boys were employed to scare off the birds and were known as bird starvers. This is the bird-scarers’ song his grandmother told him:

Heigh Ho Old Jack and Jennie Crow,
Let’s lie down and have a rest.
‘Spose my master was to come,
Thee must fly and I must run.

Sow four grains in a row,
One fer the rook, one fer the crow,
One fer to rot and one fer to grow.

It’s lucky for our children the practice has fallen into disuse. Or, if you’re inundated with birds on your patch of ground, maybe it’s something worth reviving…

That’s about it

Love Maddie x

Jubilee allotments!

All lanes lead to the Enchanted Village. As Ms Tagalong begins her fifth month in the old country she is gradually feeling that she is being allowed back into her former life. Villagers don't suffer 'strangers' gladly and it takes time to ease one's way into the antics and goings on of this very special place. 

All thoughts of local produce and gardening had taken second place to the fervour and fevered run-up to the Diamond Jubilee weekend.

Ms Tagalong felt very honoured to attend a local book club evening this week where the highly-spirited conversation about 'Made in Britain,' developed into conversations about allotments and stuffed corgis.

Unlike most other villages, allotments here seem to be available but not readily allotted (excuse the pun).

'Well, when I asked I was told there were none available,' one disgruntled member commented while another recounted how difficult it was to garden on the steeply-sloping site and yet another that they be sold as a building site and a more suitable location found.

'I just couldn't find a stuffed corgi anywhere,' floated down from the end of the table as Ms Tagalong's ears pricked up. A plethora of royal scarecrows with accompanying corgis had caused this unprecedented dearth.

But back to allotments and the Jubilee. Did you know that produce from allotments is not allowed to be sold commercially (cover your ears NNUTS) and that of course organic status cannot be certified due to possible drift from other plots?

That said, the allotments dressed themselves up in tidy rows and flags; one of the vacant plots became the venue for the lighting of the Queen's Beacon. ' Good job the nation's security doesn't depend on it', muttered a bystander and later for the startling firework display. Certainly startled one or two of the youngsters as a catherine wheel look-alike careened down the furrowed rows before exploding around them.

With stars in their eyes the villagers made their way back to the square checking that the allotment stall had sold all their produce and seedlings. For charity not profit of course!