Broome Park Farm, Farmhouse Bed & Breakfast Accommodation Cleobury Mortimer, Shropshire

Severn Valley Railway

Yesterday the Band played at Arley Station, entertaining passengers of the Santa Specials as they waited to see Santa. It is certainly a festive occasion and yesterday was a beautiful frosty morning - although fingers and toes get a bit cold when playing for 3 hours.

Our next outing is Cleobury High Street next Saturday when we will be collecting for this year’s charity ‘Help for Heroes’ - why not come along between 10.30 and 12.30 and get in the Christmas spirit!

Advent Calender

Christmas seems to be approaching fast! As Becky is not coming home I decided to make her an Advent calender for her room - she was thrilled to receive it!

This Saturday the Band are playing at the Church Christmas Fair and switching on the Christmas lights so that will really feel Christmassy. Every weekend from now until Christmas there is at least one concert - lots of lovely mulled wine and mince pies!

I have cured 2 hams ready for Christmas - they are now hanging in the Outhouse ready to be cooked for Boxing Day. I use a cider and brown suger brine cure, they have soaked for a month so should keep fine as long as the weather stays cold.

Brown Clee from Titterstone Clee

We had a young American friend staying for the weekend and decided to show her the views from the top of Clee Hill. It had been a while since we’d been and I had forgotten how spectacular they are. From the top of the hill you get an almost 360 degree view over Shropshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Wales and beyond - it is truly breathtaking - especially when it is as windy as it was on Sunday! This is the view looking from Titterstone Clee towards Brown Clee.

Giants Causeway

We have just returned from a long weekend in Northern Ireland, visiting my sister and her husband. We spent the weekend on the North Antrim coast which has some of the most dramatic and unspoilt coastline of the UK.

We arrived home to the news that the bacon was ready for collection - I was pleasantly surprised at the amount and quality from 2 loins and will definitely be opting for more home grown bacon in the future. The perry is bubbling away by the woodburner and I aim to rack it off and add some sugar this weekend.

Pallets for the bonfire

Tonight is the Cleobury Chamber of Trade Annual Bonfire and Firework event. We have been storing pallets from the local Box Factory for the last few weeks to keep them dry ready for the fire. This morning John loaded them up and the firemen have kindly built the bonfire in a field in the village.

The Chamber organise the event in part to promote fire safety and safe handling of fireworks at this time of year so the local Fire Brigade come along, give out leaflets and advice. Our Chairman is able to buy fireworks direct from a local manufacturer and I am told last years display was fabulous! I am looking forward to tonights event - which starts at 6.30pm.

Apple pressing

We had a great day yesterday pressing apples and pears ready for cidermaking. Once again with 2 presses in use we struggled to keep up them - the scratter (that pulps the apples before pressing) is quite temperamental and doesn’t like being over filled - Annette is busy bodging the apples down with a custom made tool! This years innovation was to use a colander to get the apples out of the washing barrel.

It is definitely a social activity with even my guests having a go! And a great time to catch up with old friends who always come to join in - Dick was very proud of his speciality cider apples - blagged from a farmer near his home - until he looked at those John had picked locally and saw they were just the same!

Next Sunday we are planning our Annual Cider Making day and John has decided he would like to try and make perry as well; so this morning we headed off to a neighbour’s farm where there are several old perry trees. Unfortunately since John had spotted the pears and gained permission to pick them most had dropped and been eaten by the sheep - lucky them - not so lucky for us! However we did find 1/2 a bag of small yellow pears and 1 bag of hard green fruit - this tree was absolutely dripping with fruit - so we shall see how much juice we can extract next week.

You may remember seeing fields of plastic in the spring - that was maize being planted! Maize needs a long growing season to maximise the nutritional value of the crop so the current trend is to plant the seed under bio-degradeable plastic. This allows the seed to be sown up to 2 weeks earlier and hopefully yields a bumper crop. This year we have planted fields using the new method and by traditional drilling but as the Autumn has been warm and dry there has probably been little advantage to the new method.

Whilst the crop has the appearance of corn on the cob it is not really intended to be eaten as such - it is still under ripe and will be turned into silage to feed the cattle through the winter. The earlier sown crop has already been silaged and the remaining fields will be harvested this week - we use contractors with specialist equipment so have to wait for their arrival!

Since we went back to school at the beginning of September the weather has been glorious and yesterday was no exception, so I persuaded John to abandon clearing out his new workshop and come for a walk. We headed for what is one of my favourite spots on the farm - Titford Bridge. The bridge crosses the River Rea between Stepple Hall and Detton Hall and is on the Simon Evans Way - the route he took as the village postman, after being gassed in the 1st World War. It is such a peaceful spot - we have seen kingfishers skimming up stream in the past, but unfortunately not this time!

To make the sloe gin the fruit must be pricked to allow the juice through the skin without clouding the gin if the fruit were crushed - we use the Hobin Sloe Pricker, a wonderful tool made many years ago by our friend Jeremy. This is a handle with several pins set in the end, speeding up the pricking process! The sloes are then placed in a demi john (bulk production) or wide necked bottle and layered with sugar until the container is full. Once full add the gin - any cheap stuff is fine - and fill to the top, leaving enough room for a bung. This must then be kept and shaken regularly until all the sugar has disolved. After which the finished sloe gin can be bottled and stored - at least until Christmas, longer if you can bear to wait!

Here at Broome Park we are lucky enough to have some ancient hedgerows criss crossing the grass field in front of the house. They are made up of native trees - hawthorn, holly, beech, hazel and blackthorn. This time of the year all the fruits are at their best and this afternoon I have been collecting sloes. Sloes are the fruit of the blackthorn - small and bitter they cannot be eaten on their own but soaked in gin and sugar make fabulous sloe gin. Sloes bottled now will just about be ready for Christmas although I am trying to cultivate a vintage collection, storing for a year or more - I have just discovered a demi john of bullace gin in the cellar from 2006! Bullace are wild damsons - a sort of cross between damson and sloe!

To be continued…….

Even a busy farmer gets time to relax with his friends! John and Jet are enjoying the late summer sunshine, sitting on the garden bench. It has been another busy weekend with Ludlow Food Festival a major draw and The Borders Bike Show on at Lacon Childe School.

I was able to visit the Food Festival on Friday - an excellent day out - it is wonderful to see how many different local food businesses there are, many of whom I use for the B&B. This afternoon I was helping out at the Bike Show, serving homemade cakes and refreshments to appreciative bikers of all ages!

I have also restocked the freezer with our own beef - enough to keep us fed for the next 12 months hopefully!

The latest enhancement for the benefit of guests is a small fridge located on the upstairs landing. This will allow me to leave fresh milk and chilled water for guests to help themselves. I often think guests are reluctant to bother me for milk in the evenings or befoer breakfast so now they will be able to make themselves a cup of milky tea at any time of the day or night!

Thanks go to Richard for making the custom built table on which the fridge sits. This is Mark 2 - the first was rejected (by him) as too unstable and the design of this one had to be modified after John demanded full access to the fusebox below!

When I went to feed the pigs last night I found a field mouse in the bag! It must have got in when I filled the sack from the bulk bag in the morning - I don’t know who was most surprised! After taking its photo it climbed up the side of the bag, leapt over Jet’s head (he didn’t even notice!) and disappeared down a hole in the floor. Richard thought I was mad to let it go but it was too cute to kill!