Time for an alternative (96 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

At the time of writing a barrel of Brent crude would cost you $111.69.

That the product of oil and related energy sources pervades every aspect of modern life is well-known. That the economies of China and India now keep the price of oil high even when the West is in the economic doldrums is the new reality we’re just waking up to. But I’m now wondering what price level of oil kills profit stone dead. Seriously: apart from oil companies, worried oligarchs and other gangsters, who makes any money at all making things, transporting things – almost any things – when energy and fuel costs this much?

While the fig leaves of house prices, share values and pension funds remain in place, I suppose no one really notices or cares too much if they’re making less than nothing. But if those mutually-dependent fantasy assets return to their true, intrinsic values (paper, bricks, mortar) what then?

Sometimes the long, rickety bridge back to a bit of land-based certainty feels like it’s breaking right behind us…!

By comparison, potato blight might not seem a big deal. But I don’t like uncertainty about a staple crop and the blight goes with the territory around here. One hot, dry and relatively blight-free summer last year shouldn’t distract from the mouldy norm. I will be ready with the sprayer full of Bordeaux mixture, of course. But if there’s an obscure alternative route to walk then count me in.

I’d have to be pretty desperate to fight the pigs for the Jerusalem artichokes, so I’m hoping that these unusual tubers (to a Westerner) will offer a palatable alternative to the good old spud. From the left: jicama, yacon, taro and oca.

Unfortunately, I discover (after purchase) that the lovely-looking oca is susceptible to the same lurgies as the potato. Yacon is an edible dahlia. I don’t know anything about flowers so that sounds to me akin to eating an Aspidistra… And jicama claims to be a good alternative to a water chestnut – so presumably will also spoil an otherwise nice meal. I may never discover the delights of taro-eating because, I read, it requires a warm, 200 day growing season.

Can you sense my lack of optimism? Well, I might be a little less sniffy if my spuds are reduced to blackened wreckage by phytophthora infestans. So any practical experience of these or other alternative tubers would be most welcome.

More good advice (99 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

I think the last week in February is one of the turning points of the gardening calendar. These are just moments in the year when an instinctive watershed is crossed and it feels timely to sow certain things. In this instance, lots and lots of things.

Nothing is lost yet and everything remains to be gained. The greenhouse is packed to the gunwales with germinating things. And I’m turning soil for fun now, any spare minute I’m out there. Beds which were cultivated last year yield easily to the fork or spade but I don’t credit the labours of that brave but hapless last-year-me though, I just assume I’m magically much more excellent this time around. Occasionally I exhume one of last season’s plant labels, little memorials to hopes dashed… “I don’t remember eating that” I say to myself. And I shrug and put it in my pocket, ignoring the old lessons of already burgeoning grass and weeds.

I am trying to show a bit of restraint by resisting the urge to fill all my beds straight away. Instead of sowing 100 metres of early peas, I’m trying to ready the space for a succession of three or four crops – those second early, early main, and main crop harvests everyone in the books seem to achieve. Similarly against the grain of habit, the broad bean sowing is on hold: many metres of Aquadulce sown last October will suffice. For now. (I did buy a Spanish variety that you can sow in Summer, though. Just in case.)

Not for me a huge sowing of beetroot in February this year either. It only meant a listless search for ruby red leaves in a forest of weeds last time. Instead they’re in 3″ pots in the greenhouse and there’s a smug, short but nicely cultivated bed waiting for them out there. Same goes for turnips, spinach, kohl rabi and chard. There’s more bed space ready for the earliest brassicas already being potted on under cover and a home for some extra onion sets next the autumn-sown ones which are already romping away.

The mammoth strim-a-thon is almost complete too. I’ve found corners of the field I never knew existed…

If there weren’t just 99 days to go, I’d be be having a slightly self-satisfied week off this half term. Instead the feeling of urgency pervades all. I wake up thinking about which cauliflower crops in June (It’s Patriot). I’m persuading the oldest of the kids to help me on the field. We planted twelve trees today and I’ve got stacks of other tasks lined up for us, all noted down and everything. He’ll be glad to get back to school! Meanwhile, I’m peering anxiously through the thicket of early sowings and trying to see the big picture of the harvests beyond, the gardening year in the round.

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The journey just completed mainly saw me bent over a yellowing organic gardening text from 1971 and finding gems of information readily available since I was four years old. It’s there in black and white. Advice to sow less, more often. And to sow less in Spring to leave room, and some of the gardener’s energy, for the later sowings which fill the winter table. How come I can only accept advice once I’ve already learnt the lesson the hard way?

Late winter scenes (102 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

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Hyperstagflation and pork pies (104 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

The latest article on peasanty productivity is here. Includes a photo seemingly taken from the author’s Interpol file..?

New arrivals – an animal update (105 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

Sunday was a sneak preview of Spring. Doors of barns and other animal accommodation were thrown wide-open to let the warmish air reach into their foisty interiors. Working on the field, I felt humble and (even after the rigours of winter) a bit unworthy in the presence of the aching vernal beauty all around.

Yesterday was different. If you’ve ever spent time in the Lake District you develop a dread of rain setting in. I fed the pigs and, by the doleful look in their gentle eyes, it seemed like they were reluctantly planning a day indoors too. I opened their doors a bit – just in case – and happily a watery sun emerged and we could all set off for work in the field after all. While I planted trees and prepared the beetroot bed, they worked dutifully, turning the new turf in their enclosure.

The pigs are split into three teams and work three different locations. They are all one family, though, and I don’t see any prospect of introducing new blood this year. The ‘piglets’ – now strapping adolescents really – will keep us in pork all year and when they’re gone the other two teams will be reunited and Mummy pigs and Daddy pigs can live up to their names again!

It’s all change on the fowl front. I acquired six new ducks last week. They are presently encamped with my surviving goose, all learning to love their fox-proof home. I’m going to buy a drake and a gander very soon so the farm’s reputation for feathered fecundity can be restored – and the record for longevity improved!

No such luck for the goats, sadly. They will remain as maidens until their next season arrives in the autumn. They are going to be re-housed, though, to make way for a much-postponed influx of meat hens and some additional layers. I can only face the prospect of a year of self-sufficiency with equanimity because plenty of eggs means lots of cakes!

Oh, and I’m going to get some more guinea fowl too. If nothing else, this will ensure that the average I.Q. of the farm animals will be dragged down below my own again…

It’s comforting to realise that the animal aspect of this project will amount to just more of the same really. A good continuation. As opposed to the fruit and vegetable production which always feels like starting from scratch. Again. I’ll be recording progress so far in these areas in my next post.

Old habits die hard (110 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

After leaving the supermarket yesterday, I found myself behind an old guy who was driving a very battered and very ancient Renault van. It was so dented that it looked like a pig had been trying to fight its way out. Or in. Or both.

He signalled left and turned right. Such things are not unusual on the highways and byways of Carhaix-Plouguer. Everyone around gave him a wide berth, including me. It was when he entered a roundabout that his driving became downright bizarre. Until, that is, I realised he was giving way to the right – on a roundabout! I don’t think priorities on roundabouts have worked like that for decades in France, but he was going to stick to the old way of doing things regardless.

I can identify with the old man’s attitude. Moving out of your comfort zone even in the face of new rules is an uncomfortable business. I’m presently trying to reform my gardening habits. I’m taking a new broom to the field (metaphorically): sowing in straight lines, strimming away untidiness, keeping bang up to speed with bed preparation. I’ve even started hoe-ing off the weeds before they become all-conquering giants.

It’s sensible and very grown up. And it hurts! When confronted with the ten precision-engineered potato trenches I’ve joylessly created, I feel a bit wistful for the sagging lines of last year. My brain aches as much as my upper-body. But reality has changed, and that’s that.

Sometimes, I’m not even sure where my mind ends and the garden begins. The scene out there always reflects my mental state. If I’m distracted and lax, there’s weeds everywhere. If I’m focussed and determined, everything horticultural is ship-shape and orderly. Those statements could just as well be reversed. The untamed bits are like a niggling conscience. It’s almost like we’re made of the same substance, the field and I.

Later the same day and I was hurrying to plant out some broad beans. I looked back at the row I’d hastily created and noticed its striking resemblance to a dog’s hind leg. I shrugged and walked away.

Tatty (112 days to go)

by Max Akroyd

That was the week that wasn’t really. Baby got la grippe and his sunny nature was sunk in a sea of gunk. When not worrying about him getting ill-er in doctors’ waiting rooms, we observed his symptoms and listened to his tugging breath in the dark, small hours.

That was clearly that for long working days and short, but restful, nights. Mundane things loomed up in stature and came down hard on authentic progress, which became a fractured, ad hoc affair.

But there’s a rumour going around. Just subtle hints, the merest suggestion that the growing season is about to commence. A flurry of birds disrupts the library-quiet winter air. Their song is more ambitious now and adorns the bare trees with spring’s allure. And affirms conclusively that light always means hope.

Been poorly (119 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

I’m writing in the fog of a cold. It came rolling in on Thursday and is still hanging around glumly at the start of the new month. I read somewhere that the difference between a cold and the ‘flu is the ability to chase a £50 note wafting in the breeze. Since – as a Yorkshireman – I would have to be clinically dead not to chase a bank note of any denomination, I will only ever have colds according to this definition!

Funny how the moment the propagators were full, the trenches dug and the wind turned all easterly and bitter that the opportunity to be poorly was taken. On a reluctant trip to town last week, I swung gracefully into a parking place between two other cars and hit one of them fair and square on the back end. What with all the fresh air and exercise, I hardly ever get ill these days so it took a few hours (and a few hundred euros) to work out that I had a fever.

As it is with many other ordinary things, my attitude to being poorly has changed somewhat since becoming a peasant. After a bit of token fretting about a beetroot bed I was meant to be preparing, I didn’t attempt to work through it. Recognising the privilege of my position, I surrendered. Like a poorly dog, I curled up and waited for the thing to pass. Emma fed the animals and I listened to the boys read their French library books. During the colder months I don’t see my school-going sons much more than any old 9 to 5-er, so this was fun for all of us. I noticed a change in the texture of their character not just arising from their fluency in the language. Two of my boys have turned French! And this means what once could have been done in other places, can now probably only be done here.

This small reconnection more than compensated for the small disconnection from nature caused by my absence over the last few days. For, when finally I emerged from under my stone yesterday evening, blinking eyes fixed on the ground, I noticed the turf was thicker. It’s a bit like losing your place in a good novel and finding yourself reading the wrong paragraph.

I could do with the announcement of a new month to intervene between January and February. I’m not quite ready for a real gardening month, one which isn’t largely an exercise in wishful thinking. It’s light here to 6:30 pm and everyone has one packet in their seed box which reads “sow from February…” Thus the side stream reaches the mainstream and we’ll flow out into the sea of the new season together. Well, once I get rid of this damn cold!