Recipe for spicy lamb thingy

500g lamb mince
1 onion
350g squash, pumpkin or carrots (something sweet)
1tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp chilli powder
450ml stock
1tbsp yoghurt
2tbsp fresh coriander

If using squash cook first. Cook chopped onion and meat in 1tbsp oil. Stir in spices and stock and cook slowly for a couple of hours. Add squash half hour before end of cooking and yoghurt and fresh coriander just before you serve.

Time for harvest

Roger has just harvested all the rape crop. Not a bad yield in the end after a long, cold, wet spring.

These rather arthritic carrots are organic and taste delicious and are going into a spicy lamb dish

Yesterday I bottled Czar plums which are lovely in the winter. We serve them to our B&B guests for breakfast

Rupee just sits in the sun watching

Breakfast

B&B guests staying so up early to cook breakfast

One well preserved antique looking at another

Right next to me while I am writing this in the studio a spider captures and cacoons a wasp

I thought it looked like it sort of belonged......

Unusual transport

On Saturday we walked across the fields for a BBQ with Lucy and Shaun. Had great pork meat from the pigs they have been fattening, my first experience of a hot tub in their garden and a wonderful ride home in a Model A Ford which has been made road worthy by Andrew from Kessingland. We were given a lift home in this eccentric vehicle which made me feel as though I'd morphed in to a Steinbeck novel.

August morning

walk out of the yard.........

past the beehives...........

to pick the currants........

back past Dad's garden........

say hello to flossy..........

see how the goslings are getting on........

Walk to get currants from the garden

I slept in the summer house again last night, woke at 5.30 and opened the door to see unbroken blue sky. Making summer pudding for dinner tonight with Trish and Dee, so collected red and white currants to go with strawberries, raspberries and blackcurrants.

A good year for the bees

Lots of lovely honey

Hard work!

A wet day so ideal for pugging clay ready for September and I want to make a start on another lamp base for Martin and Sarah as they are moving into their new house soon and have nothing.

Just hope the phone doesn't ring when my hands are this dirty

Cowshedholidays B&B

cowshedholidays.co.ukvivienneburnsart.com
Our converted farm buildings have lent themselves very happily to 4* B&B accommodation and our studios for painting and pottery. Our evening classes will be starting again in September so I have some work to do reconditioning clay and mixing new glaze.

Managed to photograph 2 of the 10 chicks

Christmas dinner growing well

My 'Inspired by Becker' paintings of Dad cutting down dead elms at the bottom of 'seven acres'

Brilliant weather for generating

David with his smoker taking off the honey

In Cornwall we bought the kind of skittley game of Smite and played it yesterday in Dad's garden, after a delicious lunch in the farm house. This time of year most things come from the garden, but ham and tongue (which Dad cooked and pressed) came from Clarkes butchers in Bramfield. Fruity triffle using blackberries, blackcurrants and gooseberries, and a huge pavlova made by by sister Jo.
I sold two paintings at the Inspired by Becker exhibition, so was pleased. One was Dad out with his chainsaw and the other was a watercolour of David in his beesuit getting honey from the hives.

Hard to beleive we had such a cold, long winter

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A swarm of bees 'marching' into the hive

David rescued this woodpecker that got caught in a net

A Ryneck photographed from the kitchen

Me and my school friend enjoying a chat in the kitchen

Summer months in the middle of the Suffolk countryside are glorious. The B&B has been keeping me and David busy (cowshedholidays.co.uk) as our visitors are making the most of the warm weather to visit Walberswick, Southwold and Dunwich. The summer is not the best time to visit the RSPB at Minsmere to see interesting birds, but the walks round the reserve and along the heather strewn cliffs towards Dunwich is just lovely.

I've just got back from St Peters Church in Wenhaston where I and 40 others have exhibited in a show 'Inspired by Becker'. Harry Becker lived down the road for many years and this year is the centenary of his death. 

David has been getting honey off the beehives all week; selling here and in several local shops. The 16 hives he has up here on the farm are doing really well and have made a good recovery after the long wet  and cold winter which they didnt like.