Last week Lucy, Sam, Felicity and Vanessa took a trip out to Northern Poland to have a look at the Senga Sengana strawberries we use in our smoothies. This was a very well timed trip as Senga Sengana strawberries are currently in harvest right now (plus it's quite hot in Poland at the minute so the girls could break in their summer wardrobes at last).

Here they are trying to track down some strawberries.

It wasn't too hard to find some thankfully...

Senga Sengana strawberries are the very finest strawberries we can find, deliciously tasty, extremely fruity & juicy with a unique deep red colour.

Lucy (our chief cherry picker) definitely approves.

If you'd like to try the delicious properties of Senga Sengana strawberries yourself then a great place to start would be our current smoothie of the month, or the old favourite strawberries and bananas. Happy tasting.

This weekend I visited the Bagnall village fete near Stoke, with Helen, Gayle, Dan and Hannah. The fete is held every fathers day and helps raise money for their lovely Moorlands village hall in Bagnall. To start the day off, Morgaine Blake was crowned Chestnut queen. From what I gathered the role is largely ceremonial and unfortunately doesn’t include any real powers. We thought it best to keep the Chestnut queen onside anyway and shared a few smoothies with Morgaine and her retinue. We had a good look round the fete to see if there were any ideas we could use for our own fete. On our tour we met the two Sue’s who were selling their Dead Rat Preserves. They have a great range of all sorts of jarred goodies without any deceased rodents or artificial preservatives. But if you try them you’ll have to search them out at fetes around the local area as they’re not yet available in the shops. Despite the memorable brand name, our Helen bought some apple and roast garlic chutney for our next cheese club. We also met Carol (above with her stall) who runs Fruits of the Earth. She delivers fresh baskets of seasonal organic vegetables within about 25 miles of Bagnall. Carol also sells bags of organic, fair-trade nuts and pulses, and I got some South American Quinoa because the back of the pack suggested they were quick to cook. Neither Carol or I knew exactly what I was supposed to eat them with, so if you’ve any ideas, please let me know. We had a go at the various fete activities. Whilst I was regretably ‘too old’ for the bouncy castle, I did have a go at splat the rat. Whilst the rat escaped largely unscathed, the bat did not and the game closed shortly after my enthusiastic but unsuccessful strikes split the bat in two. Our own game, ‘ball in the bucket’ went down well, especially when punters discovered it was free. Faith was our top scorer winning a record 5 smoothies. Even then Faith continued to play with the understanding that we didn’t have enough smoothies to give her anymore prizes. Faith told us she enjoys all sports that involved a ball and I suspect she’s quite good at all of them. Fete game owners beware. We had a great time and I’d like to say thanks to the organisers for making us so welcome to this lovely community event. And a special thank you to the lads from the bouncy castle, for helping us push our Dancing Grassy Van out of the wet field at the end of the day. Jan

We're all about earplugs

Jacob and his bells

Tonight we had the second practice of Drum Club 2007, ready for the village fete. More instruments were introduced (big drums and bells), we learnt a few more notes, and Barak was more honest with his feedback. So far we know that Ben is a natural, JD is good at keeping the pace, and Jacob needs to concentrate. Next week we're going to learn a reggae beat, then briefly cover throwing our drumsticks in the air and how many types of sushi should be on our rider.

A few of us went to a little conference called interesting 2007 organised by our friend Russell Davies on Saturday (Russell's blog was one of the first things we added to the 'stuff we like' bit in the right hand column of this blog) . Interesting 2007 did exactly what it said on the tin, it was interesting, very interesting. One of the highlights included another friend of ours, Ade from howies (who make our t-shirts) discussing how best to cut up a log.

our Meera talking to howies' Ade about something interesting (maybe his own pink t-shirt?), Rhodri in the background worrying about acoustics, and some good bunting.

And a man called Rhodri playing a remarkable rendition of Wichita Lineman on a saw...

We provided some smoothies for the thirsty.

We're very much looking forward to interesting 2008.

It's not a Corby trouser press. But we like it.

Someone very kindly left this ironing board at the end of our drive today.

Not only does it have a snazzy cow print cover, that very kind person also set it up for us. Which was good of them.

After a short tussle, Lautje let Raz take it home.

Hopefully his shirts will now be as smooth as his image.