No jam tommorrow

We have, for the last year, been serving jams and marmalade made by a nice couple from St Bees. Skip and Jonni have been making conserves for around 14 years. We had met them several times at shows and liked what they did but never actually bought much. They then stayed with us for over a week last year.

We were so impressed with them and their attitude that we felt we had to buy their jams and marmalade. Jonni's ginger marmalade is especially good and has been very popular with residents. It has been nice to have their products on our breakfast table and always a joy to visit their little house in St Bees to empty their shelves of goodies.

It is with great sadness we must mark the passing of Skip after a very long and interesting life. But it is such a great joy to have known such an interesting person and to know that he lived his life to the full.

As Kipling, I believe wrote:

"If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!"

This means we will have to find a preserve maker who makes jams and marmalade to the high degree of authenticity as Jonni and Skip. The quality is probably hard to match at the price they achieved from a very modest kitchen and they definitely and defiantly helped us in our quest to avoid all those big brand products.

Spring is on the way - the Daffodils (more poetry?) and Crocuses are coming out. But it's still putting down snow on the tops sometimes (see pic above). But no, the main road out of here is almost never impassable due to snow. In fact it's harder to get up and down the valley during August....