Postcard from Norfolk – Farm Shop
A few minutes' drive from the cottage is the local farm shop. One one side sits the orchards that grow the apples sold in the shop, on the other side are the Pick Your Own crops, with strawberries thoughtfully grown on tresses so one doesn't have to bend over.
The fruit and veg on sale looks good. It looks different to that sold in the supermarket for a few reasons. The first is that, like all farm shop food, there is the occasional vegetable that does not conform to the supermarket aesthetic, looking either like a prop from a sci fi film, or a prop from a porn flick.
The second reason is that the fruit and veg is authentically dirty. My tip is to make sure that you knock the larger clods of muck off of your potatoes before you get them weighed.
It was very busy, with folk pulling in and stocking up on this and that. A group of very posh looking blokes travelling in a BMW (middle class fancy gentlemen rather than gangsters one thinks) were ahead of us in the queue and the shopkeeper managed to keep a straight face when announcing that the bill for their two bags of shopping was 'three hundred pounds please'. Oh the hilarity.
The owner did, however, redeem himself with a small notice he had placed next to the RNLI Christmas cards on sale, apologising for having Christmas cards on sale in October, but explaining that it was a good cause.
On weekends, a mobile fish shop parks up in the car park of the farm shop. Naturally, I ended up purchasing quite a lot of cockles. Of course, one could purchase 'the kit' in any garden centre, a fork, some wellies and a bucket, but cockling looks like something of an art, the art being knowing where he cockles are. Moreover, my pace when walking the beaches of Norfolk is a cross between 'amble' and 'meander', what ive observed of cocklers leads me to believe that one must stride out with purpose.
Returning to the cottage, I collected some kindling for the woodburner.
I do not get on with woodburners. There is no point in having a fire that you cannot poke and, whatever safety or efficiency measures putting doors on the front of a fire might add, what they detract in terms of pokability make them more a frustration than a feature. When in Norfolk on a cottage holiday a real fire is important, when I unpack after the holiday I expect all of my clothes to smell of woodsmoke and I expect myself personally to reek like an Arbroath smokie. Woodburners are not romantic, one may as well cuddle up in front of a radiator, which produces an unfortunate, and not terribly romantic image, for anyone familiar with the Beirut hostage crisis in the eighties.
As it was, we were lucky to get the thing working at all, some genius had removed the handle that opens the front of it and it took the holiday cottage people a week to sort the issue. Luckily, last week was the week of the unexpected heat wave and so the fire wasn't needed. But it's the principle.
Kindling is, I should say,available for sale everywhere. But I balk at having to pay for the stuff when it's available for free on the ground if you can be bothered to stop, bend over and pick it up. Firewood is a little more problematic, but we do have a building site a few cottages away an I've noticed plenty of pallets stacked up. This might be an option for a dead of night pallet raid, although one has to be prepared to put up with watery eyes from the creosote burning.
The fruit and veg on sale looks good. It looks different to that sold in the supermarket for a few reasons. The first is that, like all farm shop food, there is the occasional vegetable that does not conform to the supermarket aesthetic, looking either like a prop from a sci fi film, or a prop from a porn flick.
The second reason is that the fruit and veg is authentically dirty. My tip is to make sure that you knock the larger clods of muck off of your potatoes before you get them weighed.
It was very busy, with folk pulling in and stocking up on this and that. A group of very posh looking blokes travelling in a BMW (middle class fancy gentlemen rather than gangsters one thinks) were ahead of us in the queue and the shopkeeper managed to keep a straight face when announcing that the bill for their two bags of shopping was 'three hundred pounds please'. Oh the hilarity.
The owner did, however, redeem himself with a small notice he had placed next to the RNLI Christmas cards on sale, apologising for having Christmas cards on sale in October, but explaining that it was a good cause.
On weekends, a mobile fish shop parks up in the car park of the farm shop. Naturally, I ended up purchasing quite a lot of cockles. Of course, one could purchase 'the kit' in any garden centre, a fork, some wellies and a bucket, but cockling looks like something of an art, the art being knowing where he cockles are. Moreover, my pace when walking the beaches of Norfolk is a cross between 'amble' and 'meander', what ive observed of cocklers leads me to believe that one must stride out with purpose.
Returning to the cottage, I collected some kindling for the woodburner.
I do not get on with woodburners. There is no point in having a fire that you cannot poke and, whatever safety or efficiency measures putting doors on the front of a fire might add, what they detract in terms of pokability make them more a frustration than a feature. When in Norfolk on a cottage holiday a real fire is important, when I unpack after the holiday I expect all of my clothes to smell of woodsmoke and I expect myself personally to reek like an Arbroath smokie. Woodburners are not romantic, one may as well cuddle up in front of a radiator, which produces an unfortunate, and not terribly romantic image, for anyone familiar with the Beirut hostage crisis in the eighties.
As it was, we were lucky to get the thing working at all, some genius had removed the handle that opens the front of it and it took the holiday cottage people a week to sort the issue. Luckily, last week was the week of the unexpected heat wave and so the fire wasn't needed. But it's the principle.
Kindling is, I should say,available for sale everywhere. But I balk at having to pay for the stuff when it's available for free on the ground if you can be bothered to stop, bend over and pick it up. Firewood is a little more problematic, but we do have a building site a few cottages away an I've noticed plenty of pallets stacked up. This might be an option for a dead of night pallet raid, although one has to be prepared to put up with watery eyes from the creosote burning.
Labels: Farm Shops, Food, Holidays, Norfolk, Shops
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