Unexpectedness

Some days pootle along with everything running smoothly and as expected. Some days bring surprises.

Today was one of the latter.

I spent the morning with G, weeding her veg beds. It’s the first time we’ve gardened together for four weeks because her whole family came down with Covid, one by one, leading to an extended isolation period. So today was a lovely opportunity to catch up and chat.

One of my bits of news was to enthuse about cheese-making. It turns out G is an expert home cheese-maker who has no time to do it now because she has three young children. All her equipment has been sitting in her pantry, unused for six years.

I drove home with it all on the front seat of my car, on loan until I decide either that more ambitious cheese-making isn’t for me, or that I need my own equipment. There’s a cheese press, Camembert rings, cheese mats, wrapping cloth and bases. She would have given me all her cultures too, but they were long out of date, so she gave me heaps of information about good places to buy cultures and rennet.

And then we got chatting about milk. G is part of a dairy farming family. She disappeared for 10 minutes and came back carrying this 5 litre pail filled to the brim with some of this morning’s milk. For me! She’s going to give me some each week in exchange for eggs, veg plants, chutney, bottled fruit and any other oddments we come up with.

Although I love supporting our local dairy which I blipped about a few days ago, I won’t turn down bartered milk.

I especially like my reflection in the pail as I took the photo: my very own fairground mirror.

A very good day.

Bean supervised and uttered plenty of encouraging noises.