It’s been quite a good day. There was a light coating of frozen snow in Nottingham this morning, following on from several short, sporadic falls of snow interspersed with rain. However, as we left the city behind, things seemed to warm up and there was no evidence of snow as we drove to the farm. I would have expected it to be the other way round as you always expect towns to be warmer, but I wasn’t complaining.
We saw lapwings by the roadside this morning, now returned from wherever they go in winter. I know they go to Ireland from the north of England the ones from the south go to France and Iberia. I’m not sure where ours go from the Midlands, though they do seem to come back at this time of the year. There are actually large flocks of plovers in the pits at Netherfield, so they may only nip down the road. You can never tell.
The group did the measurements for the Woodland Trust this morning and I did some of the pruning on the apple trees in the agroforestry project. I was originally booked to do it all, but they have since decided that it was cheaper to get me to teach the farm apprentice to do it. For definitions of cheapskate, click this link.
When the group was doing the trees they heard, and saw, a pair of buzzards circling. I wasn’t close enough to hear them, but actually saw three wheeling in the sky above a plantation on the property next door.
To warm everyone up at lunchtime we used the new soup-maker Julia bought me for Christmas. I’m always suspicious of gadgetry and it’s take me a while to get it out of the box. To be fair, I threw in a half-bag of slightly mouldy carrots, two onions, some potatoes and a stick cube (chopped small) with four cups of water and produced a half-reasonable smooth vegetable soup. Considering the ingredients I actually used I think that was a good result.
It’s also easier to wash up afterwards as I always seem to get soup on the wall when using my normal hand blender method.
I’m now converted.
If only they did one with an automated veg chopper…
Am sure there are still some plovers on the coast near here. Maybe they’ll travel further north soon to see you!
Even the name has a cheery sound, so the more the merrier!
An automatic chopper would be nice. Never heard of soup makers before. I guess they are handy if you’re out of the kitchen but want to have access to food?
It was very handy just to be able to throw a soup together in the tea making area of the office without having to open the kitchen up. And it saves getting soup on the walls. Time will tell – do I put it next to the slow cooker on the work top or hide it away with the bread maker?
I have no room to hide anything so I’m not one to ask!
If all else fails I stack things on top of one another. You can tell the last time something was used from its depth!
🙂
Amusing as ever. Looks cold, though
It was definitely nippy. Fortunately I am built like a walrus so the blubber came in handy today. 😉
My husband loves his soup maker – Morphy-Richards like yours. He finds it seems to do better smooth soups than chunky ones.
It was a better smooth soup than the ones I make with the hand blender, which always seem to have a few lumps left.