Livestock and deadstock

During our week in Devon we tweeted horses, cows, sheep, ducks and chickens. No pigs or turkeys.

Plenty of song birds in the bushes, mostly unseen, although we did tweet the odd wagtail, both grey and normal varieties. Plenty of hawks, mainly buzzrds. Including one hawk flying along in the woods bordering the Dart between Buckfast and Dartington. Oddly, no magpies.

On the dog front we managed a huge dog in North Street in Ashburton, a dog which I think the owner said was a Molasser Mastiff, a breed which nearly vanished in the UK but was now on the up again after restocking from the US. A testimony to the love of dog fanciers for small breeds with which they can more easily excel than with a big breed. A dog which we were told could end up weighing more than I did and which consumed some huge amount of money each week, not counting vet bills. We also managed a meeting of the hounds outside the Burrator Inn at Dousland. A rather motley crew - dogs, horses and riders - compared with the hunt which met one day outside Bury Lodge in Hampshire, when we were living out back there, back in the late seventies. Both the chaps in red coats were quite young, in their twenties, not proper MFH material at all. We wondered whether out in the sticks they could actually hunt foxes, not bothered by the RSPCA people. We wondered also why the pub was shut: one might have thought it worth its while to open up. As it was, it did not open until noon, some half hour after the hunt had moved out.

We made up for the absence of live pigs by getting some sausages from the more regular of the two butchers in Ashburton to take home with us. Mostly consumed yesterday evening, baked and served with organic January King (the remains of the one from Riverford, see reference 1) and mashed potatoes. Very good they were too, no need for either gravy or brown sauce, for which see reference 2. But I may go as far as a smear of mustard to liven up the two left-overs which I shall take with breakfast.

PS: note the gift shop to the left of the butcher. One of the many such in the town, noticed at reference 3.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/john-musgrave-heritage-trail.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/on-gravy.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/gifts.html.