Happy Friday! Another week of not much..too tired to read…

1) Britain has a farming crisis. Surely if we can bail out the bankers, we can work something out for the people who produce our food? I can’t be the only one that thinks that importing more of our food is a bad thing.

British farming is in the midst of a very deep crisis. After a drought in its first months, 2012 went on to become England’s wettest year on record, and the second wettest in the UK as a whole. Early summer was a deluge. High summer was sunless, resulting in silage that was as much as 40% lower in all-important sugars. The rains came again for the heart of the growing season. “This crisis compares to both BSE and foot and mouth,” says the farmer and agriculture expert, Donald Curry, who chaired the government inquiry into food and farming after the foot-and-mouth outbreak in 2001, and who now sits in the Lords as a crossbench peer. “The weather has affected the entire country and some have had the double whammy of bovine TB and Schmallenberg in sheep.” There are also price pressures on both inputs – feed and fuel – and the amount retailers are prepared to pay. “We know it’s going to affect farmers for this year and next year. For the farming help charities this has become a very serious issue.”

2) Who hasn’t done this?

As regular readers of this blog will know, I am no slackard in the kitchen, but this was insanity. The fury of generations of Italian women before me welled up. (No wonder women didn’t have bingo wings back then. Stirring polenta for ninety minutes is a serious work out.)

3) I wish it felt like spring here…this will have to do for now.