Living offa the fatta the lan

Last Saturday of the month, must go to the Porthmadog local produce market; no pre-planned menu, just see what’s available. A pair of sea bass fillets and a dressed crab from Gill’s Plaice. Radicchio grown in the polytunnels at Gardd Deudraeth. Kurmang’s latest invention, a flat bread with sesame seeds.

As I drove home a Jamie Oliver recipe came to mind. Drat! I should have bought some mushrooms from the Mushroom Garden. Stopped off at my favourite wood for chanterelles but slim pickings, just a few, enough for flavour and probably the last of the season.

After lunch Sue and myself went cranberry picking up the mountain, squelching in the bog, parting the sphagnum to reveal bright red berries linked by thin vines. Growing conditions must have been good and we harvested much more than last year, an ice cream tub, enough to make some sauce for our neighbours as well.

Saturday dinner tasted great. Crab with radicchio salad and warm flat bread followed by ‘Seabass à la Tony Blair’ on a bed of oven roasted potato from the garden. 

Bird's eye view?

Getting close to the birds at Campbell’s Cottage is a favourite with most visitors with the bird table just a couple of feet from the French windows, great viewing from the kitchen table. Frequent visitors include nuthatch, greater spotted woodpecker, loads of tits, robins and if you’re lucky you may see yellowhammers. Not on this film though:

Another great sight in the autumn is the feast on the yellow berry tree. Chaffinches seem to rule this roost with blackbirds mainly on the ground picking up the fallen fruit.

Fox and the fruity scat

We see lots of foxes in the autumn, scoffing on the ripe damsons and raspberries in the garden. Here’s a film of the fox, stealing our fruit and leaving a fruity fresh scat.

Without wolves the foxes have no foes apart from Dewi and the other farmers; every now and again there is a hunt and the other weekend I think they got two. There are also some people who go ‘lamping’, shining a high powered torch at night and then firing at the eyes. Sheep eyes are very different to fox eyes but I’m not sure how different Molly’s (our dog) would be, so she stays indoors at night time.

Despite the best efforts of the hunters there are still plenty of foxes but, now that we have no chickens and ducks to protect, we’re not too bothered. The worst that can happen is Molly rolling in a fresh scat; the stink is terrible but a bit of soap and a scrubbing brush in the stream soon puts that right. She won’t tell me why does she loves fox poo so much.