Rain Dance

A long-planned visit from friend Michael who was shown on a recent Blip, and his mother Angelika could not be stopped by the horrible cold wet weather. We did, however, light the wood fire at lunchtime shortly before they arrived.

It's always a delight to have them both, to hear all of the comings and goings of their farm life and his work as manager of the Memmingen Animal rescue. You might think he has enough at work but they have a farm and yard full of animals of all sorts, shapes and sizes, from a wild marten they can call and feed by hand, dozens of chickens of all sorts, deer, border collies, cats, peacocks ..... beef cattle ........

BUT they are not vegan or vegetarian. They also slaughter, butcher and eat some of those "farm" food animals, however ensuring that the animals were reared and lived in the best possible conditions. I would find this extremely difficult but at the same time, one should live by the maxim of not eating animal meat if you aren't prepared at least to watch them being slaughtered and processed and certainly not if you keep and sell on those animals. Last December I was faced with the dilemma with our geese. I took the plunge and even helped in the process. I didn't enjoy it one minute but strangely afterwards, I felt much better equipped to deal with the issue.

Perhaps Michael has inherited his Mum's North American Indian blood. She was born in the USA but all the connections are blurred in the mists of time. I think one can see the Indian DNA in the photo. Another photo of a side view of her head highlights this even more.

As always Angelika, although the guest, brings piles of homemade food for the afternoon coffee and cake, one of her specialities being puff pastry. Here she is decorating the differently filled goodies with icing sugar.

A lovely afternoon and evening despite the weather but we did need the campfire. Hopefully, it won't be long - Angelika refused to take home the tray she had used to transport the goodies as there were a few leftovers and hoped we would thus be forced to visit her soon.