We have 16 people coming to make pizza tonight, using the outside oven. Personally I can’t understand the need to regress by a century and feed pizza into a space full of ash and flame when we have perfectly good clean controllable electric ovens. Tonight I could be sticking 16 pizzas in and taking 16 pizzas out fifteen minutes later. Instead I’m going to spend the afternoon getting things up to temperature so that I can eventually feed a procession of individual pizzas into the baking equivalent of hell.

On the plus side, they want foraged salad, and I have just found a new stash of fat hen so I’m as happy as a pig in salad.

Fat hen

I just need to make some dressing with chive flower vinegar and the job’s a good ‘un.

In the gardens we’ve been interspersing light gardening with sitting under the cafe awning and drinking water from the fridge. One of the lads on the farm is currently off work after becoming dehydrated on Monday, so you can’t be careful. Despite that I will be ribbing him at great length as it’s a stupid thing to do and because we needed him here with a school party. Self-inflicted – no sympathy.

The outside temperature spiked at 35 degrees C for a few minutes, though by the time I’d collected my camera and taken a couple of outdoor shots it was back to 34, which is still pretty hot by my standards. Even inside it’s holding 31.

In the garden

We’ll be holding a birthday party for the farmer in a minute, though he’s late, as usual. Apart from the fact he’d be late for his own funeral, he fails to grasp that if you tell our group you’ll be here for 2.30, they start getting agitated at 2.31. Looks like we’ll have to make a few excuses.