Snow

The snow arrived last night and it still snowing now. The alpacas seem OK, eating lots of hay as no grass visible, luckily Bernard brought another load in on Tuesday so stocked up for the time being.

Thomas is here and was supposed to be doing a presentation on Fair Trade to teachers at Exford but sadly called off because of the snow. The same thing happened to one in Lincoln earlier in the week whenThomas had reached Grantham on the train. Still it meant we had a pre-snow day out yesterday. First stop was the traditional beach walk at Charmouth. There is a big rock quite a way along the beach where a stream flows over it on to the beach. We could see it shimmering in the distance and when we got there it was covered in ice and icicles with the water bubbling underneath the ice. It looked fantastic. We were alone on the beach apart from a rather sluggish cormorant. When ever I see one that nonsense rhyme plays in my head.

The common cormorant or shag lays eggs inside a paper bag. The reason you can see no doubt is to keep the lightning out. But what these unboservant birds fail to notice is that hordes of wandering bears may come with buns and steal the bags to hold their crumbs.

With frozen faces we set off for River Cottage in Axminster for a bowl of soup, then the marvellous farm shop at Kilmington, then Martock in Somerset and the craft place followed by the Temperley cider place at Burrow Hump. They were crushing great heaps of apples, all the machinery was at full pelt, I’ve never seen it in action before. We had a tour of the disillery and learnt all about the bonded warehouse. Had to buy lots of their marvellous Morello Cherry eau de vie made eith my brother’s cherries, some cider from one of the huge barrels for Tom to take back to London, cider vinegar, perry etc. My brother’s farm is just around the corner so we tipped up for tea and a warm up in front of the woodburner.

Of course if we did get snowed in, rather unlikely, we could just sit in front of the fire, gorgeous morello cherry eau de vie in hand, can’t be bad.