A great weekend has been enjoyed at Harrop Fold, busy, busy, with many lovely guests and loads of delicious foods. Reasonable weather too – windy, but dry and warm.
Leah baked 150 cup cakes last Sunday to take to Reaseheath College for their Open Day and returned with…not one! This weekend we had to keep up to date with cakes since it was Alice’s 20th birthday and she requested blueberry cup cakes complete with candles! All the family were home for the weekend so it certainly was a full house. Alice’s uni exams are finally over and George has now completed his finals, we are looking forward to graduation – do Mothers still wear hats? Poor Edward has school exams next week and so has to revise this week – a sleepy boy today after a very exciting day at Wembley yesterday with his school friends and one lucky father, cheering on Stockport County!
I collected my smoked salmon order on Thursday from the Cheshire Smokehouse. Leah and I arrived there just after lunchtime, having missed our lunch due to pressure of bedroom changing, however, just in time for last orders in the lovely Smokehouse café. We enjoyed a delicious lunch of their famous smoked fish and decided that this is something we really must do more often – purely, you understand in order for us to recommend to our guests where to go to eat! On a serious note, we do recommend the Smokehouse as a brilliant visit to buy what we offer on our menu; we have a fridge in the Homestead for guests to store their goodies until they return home – with their souvenirs of their visit to Cheshire and Harrop Fold Farm. Big Thanks to Barbara Stephenson of the Smokehouse for the extra goodies she sent me home with to try on our breakfast menu – this morning I served the kippers and they were divine – I sneaked some on to my breakfast plate. Yes, you will be offered these on the new breakfast menu.
Over the last month my thinking has changed from blue and yellow to green – thanks in part to Dr Douglas Gyte of the NWDA. I had such a fun night sitting next to him at the Enjoy England Tourism Awards at the beautiful St George’s Hall in Liverpool – our Capital of Culture, appropriately on St George’s Day. I was bemoaning various environmental issues I imagined I had, and kind Douglas made me see the light! A tremendously sensible attitude towards our environment he has, I have never, ever, thought of myself as any form of an ‘eco warrior’, but now I see us as a snowball rolling down the field getting bigger and bigger, only not really covered in snow but really collecting more and more ideas of helping with the environment! I have always thought about the world changing especially for our children but did not think I/we could really make a difference, but now…oh boy, do I have ideas…only simple ideas…but every little helps! Take a look in the guest rooms at our suggestions – ah ha, you will have to visit to see what we have in store – no sneak previews on line!
Must go, time is approaching midday and I need to ring Northern Harvest with this week’s shopping list. The lemon curd all went over the weekend and so must order more Amalfi lemons, and as for the Cheshire Asparagus – the most delicious ever and even enough for some very, very tasty homemade soup. However, watch out Northern Harvest, our friend Simon delivered us some of his veggie plants and David spent the weekend digging out a new veggie plot (with the help of the digger!) and so who knows, maybe this year the cows will leave our baby vegetables alone and the ponies will not play ‘chase’ amongst the potato plants! Perhaps we ought to consider new fencing?
Speak soon,
Love Sue x
Tuesday, 27 May 2008
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
Wild Times at Harrop!
A number of wild happenings here at Harrop Fold…firstly our wild visitors. This weekend our golden pheasant has been spotted criss crossing the field, he lives in the woods near the brook and is certainly a spectacle to be seen. Other golden visitors returning have been the Goldfinches, last year they nested in the ivy on the barn wall, they obviously were so happy they have returned with friends. This year they are continuing to nest in their old spot and their chums are nesting in the ivy on the house outside our bathroom window! Let’s hope this year they will entertain our visitors again at breakfast time – better than a cabaret was one comment on Sunday morning!
The house martins have also returned and this morning their antics were delightful as they were diving around me as I pegged out the sheets on the line to dry. David also spotted the buzzards in the bottom meadow and on Monday morning we saw the bottom meadow resembling a scene from Monarch of the Glen as around 10 deer from neighbouring Lyme Park joined the natives for bed & breakfast. They are such grand beasts and we were able to photograph them looking up at us from the old Oak tree – hopefully we will work out soon how to add photos to our blog!
Continuing with a wild outdoors theme David, Edward and I were guests at the Preview of the inaugural Tatton Park Biennial on Friday evening. We enjoyed a glass of champagne and canapés in the beautiful Tenants’ Hall prior to roaming the gardens in search of the specially commissioned artworks, some hidden and some easily found. We set off exploring ourselves, led very ably by Edward who fancied rather more of an orienteering experience rather than the footpaths! The shingles sculpture is so wonderful – one could imagine spending a lovely evening overlooking the lake in this beautiful structure – I wonder if Tatton are thinking of b&b! Seriously, it is fantastic and we are looking forward to returning to see the structure erected overlooking the Japanese garden that is a particular favourite of ours. This trip will certainly be recommended to our guests.
Our wildly exciting end to the week was being visited and reviewed by Judith from Good Housekeeping – yes THE Good Housekeeping magazine! Judith stayed Thursday and Friday night and enjoyed a day of watercolour painting on Friday with Mike. Leah enjoyed cooking and serving some delicious treats – ah! Judith was a dream to share the dinner table with! Do please remember to buy the September edition to read about Judith’s visit…her comment in the visitor’s book reads…
‘The perfect family and delicious stay. Thank you!’
Along with a little picture and the words… ‘What Mike taught me’
Good Housekeeping.
Our wildly thrilling surprise has been to be announced as finalists again in the Cheshire Tourism Awards for the 3rd year running, so fingers crossed please, and let’s hope we win another award to make a hat trick!
On a final wild note, Sunday evening was so beautiful we decided that after such a busy few days we deserved a stroll up to the local inn for a beer and a viewing of the most beautiful sunset of the year. Yes, this could have been enjoyed from our gardens but I needed some rhubarb to make more jam for this week’s visitors, so stopping in the field on the way home we whiled away a few minutes pulling the beautiful spring rhubarb, having just prepared it now I must nip off as it is ready for bottling. Next on the agenda is to make a fresh batch of our lovely Amalfi lemon curd – combined with this glorious weather the smell and touch of these divine Amalfi lemons have put me in the mood for a holiday….and hopefully you too may wish for a holiday...here at Harrop Fold!
Speak again soon.
Love, Sue x
The house martins have also returned and this morning their antics were delightful as they were diving around me as I pegged out the sheets on the line to dry. David also spotted the buzzards in the bottom meadow and on Monday morning we saw the bottom meadow resembling a scene from Monarch of the Glen as around 10 deer from neighbouring Lyme Park joined the natives for bed & breakfast. They are such grand beasts and we were able to photograph them looking up at us from the old Oak tree – hopefully we will work out soon how to add photos to our blog!
Continuing with a wild outdoors theme David, Edward and I were guests at the Preview of the inaugural Tatton Park Biennial on Friday evening. We enjoyed a glass of champagne and canapés in the beautiful Tenants’ Hall prior to roaming the gardens in search of the specially commissioned artworks, some hidden and some easily found. We set off exploring ourselves, led very ably by Edward who fancied rather more of an orienteering experience rather than the footpaths! The shingles sculpture is so wonderful – one could imagine spending a lovely evening overlooking the lake in this beautiful structure – I wonder if Tatton are thinking of b&b! Seriously, it is fantastic and we are looking forward to returning to see the structure erected overlooking the Japanese garden that is a particular favourite of ours. This trip will certainly be recommended to our guests.
Our wildly exciting end to the week was being visited and reviewed by Judith from Good Housekeeping – yes THE Good Housekeeping magazine! Judith stayed Thursday and Friday night and enjoyed a day of watercolour painting on Friday with Mike. Leah enjoyed cooking and serving some delicious treats – ah! Judith was a dream to share the dinner table with! Do please remember to buy the September edition to read about Judith’s visit…her comment in the visitor’s book reads…
‘The perfect family and delicious stay. Thank you!’
Along with a little picture and the words… ‘What Mike taught me’
Good Housekeeping.
Our wildly thrilling surprise has been to be announced as finalists again in the Cheshire Tourism Awards for the 3rd year running, so fingers crossed please, and let’s hope we win another award to make a hat trick!
On a final wild note, Sunday evening was so beautiful we decided that after such a busy few days we deserved a stroll up to the local inn for a beer and a viewing of the most beautiful sunset of the year. Yes, this could have been enjoyed from our gardens but I needed some rhubarb to make more jam for this week’s visitors, so stopping in the field on the way home we whiled away a few minutes pulling the beautiful spring rhubarb, having just prepared it now I must nip off as it is ready for bottling. Next on the agenda is to make a fresh batch of our lovely Amalfi lemon curd – combined with this glorious weather the smell and touch of these divine Amalfi lemons have put me in the mood for a holiday….and hopefully you too may wish for a holiday...here at Harrop Fold!
Speak again soon.
Love, Sue x
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