ROBBIE BEARS NIGHT

<<< In case some of you don't know this is a painting of the famous Robert Burns painted by the famous artist Alexander Nasmyth in 1828.

The reason for this on Dafafd's blog is that though not born in Scotland, I spent some of my early years on a Scottish farm in Argyllshire, where no doubt my interest in sheep was seeded into my psyche. Last night we celebrated Burns Night with friends, one being the only true Scot and ... gaelic speaker. Basically a good excuse to eat proper "haggis, bashit neeps and tatties  " accompanied by good wine & some single malt whiskey, read some of Burns poetry and basically just have a good time. Which we most certainly did, it was a lovely evening during which the wonderful Burns poem "To A Mouse" was beautifully recited by our native Scot.

During the afternoon I had gone shopping for ingredients and found a rather intriguing looking swede, more on that later. Purchases safely home I took the dog out for a run in the slowly melting fenland only to find that a local farmer had been late harvesting beet.

The field above has only been half harvested and we are now nearing the end of January, normally this crop would have been in by end of October /November last year and judging  by the quality of the sugar beet today it is so poor I doubt that it will be going into making sugar, sadly this years crop will more likely end up as being turned into pellets for animal feed. Yesterday evening when I looked around the fields here, where first flooding and then a sharp hard frost made harvesting almost  impossible for acre after acre, there were tractors grabbing the chance in the almost dark, because more snow was forecast.
The quality of the sugar beet was looking pretty bad, the best lone example I could find ...

 Anyway ... I've digressed from Burns to beet ... back to last night and the saving of the swede. We had between us bought two haggis, one was a vegetarian haggis for our non meat eater. When I ordered it from a trusted famous supplier (MacSweens) I was a bit dubious (being a carnivorian haggis enthusiast) but one in four that they sell are vegetarian so I was hoping it would be fairly tasty. (It was indeed flavoursome). We also had four swedes (no not Scandinavians but root vegetables). One was so amusing we couldn't bring ourselves to cook it.  Today I took it out for a walk with the dog ... 

Well not exactly for a walk, as >>>
it has as you can see, no legs, nor upper body but it was looking considerably more athletic than the sugar beets on the clamp that were awaiting transport to whichever factory they were headed for.
A single Brassica amongst a pile of Beta Vulgaris ... hmm, methinks the swede is more a cheeky vulgaris!  Having done the rather cold photo shoot it had to come home with me.
So back in the car it went whilst the mad mutt and I went further exploring between a muddy and snowy stubble field and a mud churned beet field and found two of last nights "wee guesties."

As I said ... a good night was had by all and some went further afield than others!