Backfold and a general round up

It's been a quiet week. All the excitement has died down; the delegation from Timbuktu have gone home, and the shops have been quiet. About the most exciting thing I've seen has been the parsnip harvesting machine up in the big field across the river! Instead of the pickers pulling the parsnips by hand, there's now a long machine that digs them up, moves them up to a following wagon where the pickers are sitting, so they can sort them, and then a conveyor belt takes the acceptable parsnips sideways into big wooden boxes on the back of a trailer being pulled by a tractor along the next row.
Meanwhile, I was in Backfold last night, doing the evening walk with Islay, when I saw something moving near the China Tea Rooms at the end. It was about the size of a chicken - then it took off, and I could see it was a large brown owl!
This morning I was back there, to give Malachi at the Sandwich Cellar my deposit for the Stitch n Bitch Christmas Party. There are going to be around 21 of us, and we're descending on the Black Lion for the evening.
Pat Johnson was in charge of the Wool and Willow shop, and she was busy making felt in the middle of the shop. She said she liked to get people talking to her. Normally, she would do it outside, but it's been damp and drizzly all day.
Meanwhile in the market square, a nice young lady from Trading Standards was going round, checking that stall holders' scales were accurate and so on.