Ippoippo

Another weekend gone.

Yuko and I spent most of Saturday hunting for food! Well, sort of. We actually did a bit of PYO… Pick Your Own. Recently, Metro newspaper had a thing about Pick Your Own, and mentioned two places near Cardiff. So, we thought we’d do that. It’s been about 20 years since I last did this, and Yuko had never gone Strawberry picking before.

First up, we headed out into the country to Wild Fig Farm. They only had the strawberries in season, not enough Rapsberries yet. There also was a very nice Farm Shop there too. Some of the things were the same as the farm shop where Yuko works, but there were some differences. The cafe wasn’t as good as Yuko’s (the Cafe is quite an important part of the work up there), but this place seemed to be catering to more upmarket clients with it’s selection of produce. They did have a good selection of Aberdeen Angus beef (reared in Wales), and we got some of that as well to have on the Sunday night. The strawberries we picked were destined to be consumed as dessert that Saturday night, together with cream, and chocolate.

Next up, we journeyed back into Cardiff… into the Morganstown area of Cardiff along the Taff Trail. Here, there is another fruit farm, Gelynis Farm. The strawberries here looked more appetising, full of colour etc… but after doing a taste comparison, we found the ones from Wild Fig Farm were better. No problem though, as we’ve used those strawberries to make jam. We also managed to do some berry picking… namely Tayberry and Silvenberry. The raspberry and gooseberry weren’t in season yet.

It was a rather relaxing day… which meant we were ready for some work on the Sunday, when did some more gardening. Herbs are now all planted, and veggies will be done this weekend. Obviously, due to the time of year, the stuff we are planting now will hopefully be ready by winter, as extra winter veggies. Hopefully they’ll come out OK.

I was quite shocked too see Peak Oil hit the front page of the printed news today…

Link to full size image.
Article to read here.

To quote some reaction on the PowerSwitch forum…

It would be nice if they had spelt Dr Leggett’s name right, hadn’t applied the same faulty R/P logic to coal, hadn’t described hydrogen as an energy source, hadn’t described peak oil as a theory and hadn’t said nuclear fuel fears had been allayed… but generally not a bad effort.

That’s today’s random links.

First up, we have something on some rather interesting displays at a Japanese shop, selling computer games.

It looks like NOVA has got itself into more trouble… which could end up meaning there’s going to be lots of unemployed English teachers in Japan. (Mind you, from what I’ve heard, a large proportion of them aren’t there because they have a genuine interest in teaching English).

Finally, I just love Japan and it’s pointless marketing gimmicks, titles and awards… especially when given to rather bemused non-Japanese personalities.

Yuko was working on Saturday, so I spent some of the day setting up stuff at home and getting stuff for the garden. It was a pretty hot day, so didn’t actually fancy doing any gardening though.

Ending up doing that on the Sunday, when it was a little bit cooler. Mind you, spent some time trying to mow the lawn, which was quite long when we moved in, and had naturally got longer since. Now that it’s done though, the aim is to mow every weekend. I’m probably going to get a manual push mower, which will be perfectly adequate for regular usage. The petrol mower will only be used if I end up not doing the lawn for a few weeks due to bad weather etc.

The gardening preparations continue… with composter purchased, some extra netting, and a big pile of seeds. I’ve brought some from a place called ‘Real Seeds’ that produces (and sources) non-hybrid type seeds. These are the ones you can create your own seed from, and breed a bit of genetic diversity into your own crop (booo-hiss to DNA mono-culturism). I was even happier when I found out that I can get seeds for a fair number of Japanese and Asian vegetables too. Fantastic!! If we can grow our own stuff, no need to buy stuff shipped in from Japan.

In the news

I loved this story about some DIY solar heating.

I found this site as well, which has been created for the impeding (in my humble opinion) property price crash (or decline at least).
It was interesting to see that a couple of the houses near where we are had to have their prices dropped to sell them (in fact, one of them is actually only under offer at the moment, and the sale is not complete yet).

In Japan news, there’s a lot of talk at the moment about retirement age, and measures to reduce the numbers of suicides.