Preparations began early for the annual December trip to Wales. The hall gradually filled up with luggage and it’s a good job we have a van! The van was laden with luggage, games (including the ‘mystery game’ purchase from Dave), a huge box of Aktar at Home curry and quite a lot of firewood for Ben!
We made a nice early start on Friday and spent a few hours at the farm helping Ben. Our jobs this time included tincture labelling, grow kit packing, preparing punnets of fresh grey oyster mushrooms for market, packing dried cordyceps and photographing tinctures for the website.
It was nice to see Ben’s freshly painted yellow kitchen, new bedroom decor and another instrument added to his collection. As always we were accompanied by the friendly hens!!
We headed off in the afternoon for the cottage, stopping off in Chepstow to post and order for 50 bottles of tincture for Ben. It was looking very festive. We stopped in M and S for a few more lunchtime supplies – this proved very fortuitous!!
We found the cottage easily and it was warm, cosy and looking very festive. Ben arrived next at about 6.30, bagging the biggest bedroom 🤣, followed by Sam and Harriet and then Emma. We chilled after everyone’s journeys and dined on Dave’s pre-prepared makhani Dahl, lamb and aubergine curry and rice.
At about 7 we received the first very noisy and quite alarming weather warning via my (Sue) phone. (video above) These then continued hourly until after midnight. Emma’s Bristol market had already been cancelled but Ben’s indoor market in Abergavenny still seemed to be going ahead. We all went to bed with a little trepidation about what tomorrow would bring,
