Vegetables in mind (66 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

This gardening monster delight I’ve created relies upon the smooth operation of three distinct parts. During the spring rush, the greenhouse, the polytunnel and the field together should form a production line which smoothly and efficiently takes seeds in at one end and, some time later, gobs out perfect vegetables at the other.

I’ve thought about little else for the last three years and I now feel to understand most of this process and, more importantly, how to pre-empt any messy snarl-ups. From bitter experience, I know it only takes one un-dug bed on the field to cause a horrible pile up of all sorts of potted things in the greenhouse. Orchestrating all these different plants, moving them from greenhouse to hardening-off table and on to to field or polytunnel at just the right moment is a fascinating but exacting business. Too soon and things wither during a frosty March night; too late and nice green things turn yellow and sour – either way the thread gets lost and the plan unravels.

If you could open my brain and peer inside, it would probably look a bit like this:

The myriad needs of all these potential edibles nag at me constantly, a bit like my sciatic nerve! Mainly because, where possible, I’m attempting to grow each vegetable all year round. With onions, for example, you could just grow one huge crop and store it. That could be alliums sorted for a whole year. Not for me, I prefer to diversify into shallots, salad onions, bunching onions, welsh onions: I have all the seeds and I’m not afraid to use them! Similarly, I want to grow a different variety of cabbage and cauliflower for each month of the year, not embalm their spring incarnations in pots of vinegar, or bury them in the freezer. I want to find out first hand what makes a lettuce crisphead, looseleaf, cos or even Batavian.

There are probably good gastronomic and nutritional reasons for this ‘fresh from the garden, all year round’ approach. It probably also insures a bit against total crop failure too. Although these are important considerations, I can’t claim any of them as my main motivation. Instead, I confess that I just love the complex patterning of it all. It’s a giant puzzle, a lost map rediscovered and re-read. Unlike, say, the French tax system and many other things supposedly essential to civilised existence, I’ll die happier having mastered it. And it might take that long..!

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In contrast to the world under cover, the field seems a lot simpler, for now. Big beds and long trenches being dug in dry soil. I must be retaining some semblance of control out there because a fair amount of time is being spent readying ground for things I won’t even eat, unless I get really desperate. Mangels, Jerusalem artichokes and lucerne all have substantial areas ready for them now just waiting for a bit of rain to trigger a mass sowing/planting.

Between starting and finishing this post the rain has finally come. For the first time in ages, the slugs are out and the goats are in. And I’m looking for that piece of paper that told me where precisely to plant that kohl rabi…

“…and then the grass turned into soil!” (70 days to go)

by Max Akroyd

It’s been all quiet busyness at Kervéguen this week. Just plodding progress constrained by the limitations of one slightly old, slightly fat and ever-so-weary man.

The stasis caused by all this spring sunshine has extended the period available to try and get control of things. If this carries on all year I might ascend to the nirvana only known by the slightly competent gardener. What a slog though! Making a living was never this hard. But the exertion of recent years seems to be accumulating into something coherent – at last. Although the last 300 metres of raised beds still to be weeded might provide evidence to the contrary.

Even the uncultivated areas in the upper part of the big field are now parcelled neatly into large squares, each bordered by a closely mown path. These areas are ear-marked for porcine intervention later in the season. Above them, a swathe of what might become grass, recovered from the tangle of last year’s overgrowth. It’ll make a great football pitch for the kids and we can sit in the shade of the chestnut tree and look at the view.

Out of sight from that vantage point, and notably absent from my plans thus far, has been the large area the pigs dug over last autumn. I meant to put it down to green manure – I really did – but somehow that never happened and it naturally reverted to a dreary tract of nothing much. Except where big pig’s toilet used to be – where now supercharged weeds sway in the breeze. My plan bears the gentle euphemism ‘hay’ for this neglected set up…

Now look at it!!

Hitherto, I’ve been proud of the absence of mechanical interference on my field. Won it by the sweat of my brow, I did. In fact, after a rotavator almost wrecked things, I was positively averse to anything which couldn’t be swung by the human arm, or didn’t form part of the front end of a farm animal.

Funny though how such principles were nowhere to be seen when a friendly local farmer showed up out of the blue in a big, blue tractor. He wondered if there was anything he could plough for me while he had the thing attached to his machine.

Fortunately, I didn’t know the French for ” Are you kidding? Plough the bloody lot, mate!” Instead I pointed out the aforementioned area and ten minutes later it was done. Ten minutes to do 1000 square metres! It had taken me since Christmas to trench an adjacent area half-the-size. The wonder in my five-year old’s eyes as the noisy monster/tractor folded the turf into neat brown ridges of soil: c’est incroyable! He now mentions it at every mealtime.

In retrospect, I’m glad there was only this peripheral area to offer up to the tractor’s might. I saw the world/my field bend and twist under it’s huge tyres in a way that would never happen under a pig’s trotter, or even my big boots. And the suddenness of the change has left me struggling to comprehend what to with all that soil…

But that was yesterday. Today I picked up my azada, walked down the far end and started trenching.

Spring forward? (73 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

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By any measure, spring has arrived. Typically, the demarcation “on the ground” is less certain. Beautiful, but frosty, mornings give way to sunny, but dry, day times and none of that is particularly conducive to rampant growth. Underneath a dusty exterior, the soil retains its winter stock of moisture for now – but we definitely need rain soon…

Oh well, it keeps the weeds in abeyance. And the working conditions are nothing short of glorious. Unimpeded by soggy ground, the days uncover a repetitive formula: a couple of hours digging, a couple of hours maintenance (mowing and/or strimming), an hour’s potting on or sowing in the greenhouse… add in an hour tending the animals, plus a bit of daydreaming – and that’s what a day’s work looks like. A steady cadence pervades every activity. You could be lulled into just going through these motions all year and not planting a single thing in the ground!

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I didn’t fancy my beer and chocolate budget disappearing on something as dull as bamboo canes. My present stock is all bleached and brittle from being stuck in a field in Brittany. But some of my scattered thoughts are already turning to planting out sweet peas and, later, climbing beans. If that seems a bit premature it’s only because I’m conscious that the season for cutting bean poles and pea sticks from our hedgerow is coming to an end. Instead of a defined silhouette of poles in the low spring sunshine, the coppiced hazel will soon be an amorphous, leafy mass.

It’s not just the money-saving aspect that makes this particular job a pleasure. Hazel seems designed for the purpose of supporting beany things. Having cut down a decent size pole, I cut off the side branches to make pea sticks and then all but one of the bits where it divides at the top – here I preserve the one that curves in a way that will help form the top of my bean structure. I then sharpen the other, thick end by hacking at it with a billhook. If you’re lucky you even end up with a the vestige of a side shoot in just the right place to assist in forming the apex of the edifice, and another one further down the pole that you can stand on to drive the thing into the ground.

When I do remember to put something potentially edible in the soil, it’s usually a potato. All tucked up snugly in a bed of grass cuttings. I’m tentatively filling the trenches thus, mindful of the wreckage that the May frost caused last year. Back-filling said trenches proved there’s heat in the sun alright – it was the first hot work of the year – but the wind is still too cold and withering to chance transplanted seedlings…

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The calm can’t last much longer. Soon the assault will begin. The tinpot plans of the gardening dictator will be flattened by nature’s show of overwhelming force. An inexorable tide of weeds and other shock troops of the wilderness will flow in and all we can do is hang on the best we can.

But hanging out the washing very early yesterday and I’m still believing it’s a beautiful world, despite everything. After all, the mean and dismaying plans of politicians and the like are slight and ineffective when compared to the seasonal change taking place right now.

Last of the winter salad (78 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

This post is simply a retrospective tribute to some humble salad crops which have been significant contributors to our diet since New Year. Thanks to their existence within the weedy ranks of the polytunnel beds, the first three months of the calendar year aren’t such a fearsome prospect any more.

No one cares about lambs lettuce in July. But in February it’s a godsend. I’ve discovered a few others too, which I’d strongly recommend for sowing in October and cherishing as the Hungry Gap opens up.

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Miner’s lettuce, leaf chicory and various mustards…you couldn’t claim gourmet prizes for any of them (although Amsoi/Indian mustard is very nice indeed) – but that’s not the point. They are friendly, winter stalwarts. Like all good friends they are there when the going is tough.

After a hectic summer it’s tempting to forget about such things. But fiddling around with obscure salad seed as the days start to draw in ensures something green and healthy to eat at the start of spring – which isn’t a nettle!

Vegetables for pigs scheme (80 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

Welcome to the Mummy pigs’ field!

It’s a small, scruffy survivor: a little corner of a prairie which used to be lots of other, human-scale fields like ours. These rented two acres lie immediately below our house but, until yesterday, had been a vegetable-free zone and the exclusive domain of the Mummy pigs. While their daughters and I work the big field together over there, these bristly, barrel-shaped matriarchs have been methodically turning the clay car park of soil down there.

Their peace was disturbed yesterday when I rolled up with a barrow full of kit. They grunted disapprovingly through the electric fence as I unpacked inedibles such as plastic mulch, big staples and a mallet. Although appreciative of the new ground I’d given them access to the day before, they didn’t feel the same way about this strange plan unfolding on their old patch. He isn’t even stopping to scratch our ears, they said (maybe).

Since last October, when the animals’ grain went up to 35€ per 100 kg, I’ve been brewing a plan to restrain this overhead. Once upon a time I’d been attracted to the cosy idea that a patch of land could support entirely the animal and human population living upon it. I then read that this was not, in fact, at all desirable because it would merely amplify the deficiencies of the soil and all present would end up in a dietary spiral.

So some grain imported from somewhere else is a necessary thing. But so is the need to keep costs to a minimum. Around the same time as the grain price went up 15%, the Jerusalem artichoke harvest came in. Then throw into the mix a fuddled memory of the strip grazing I’ve seen the local farmers do with their cows hereabouts and leave to ferment for a few months…

The resulting plan which emerged from this mental soup actually only took an hour to execute.

I pegged down the plastic at one end and laid it out on the floor. I then inserted plant labels through holes I’d cut in the fabric (for last years’ cauliflowers) and rolled the plastic back up again. At each point marked by a label, I loosened the soil. I then unfurled the sheet of mulch again and secured it with some rocks and a few staples. (Don’t worry, by this point the pigs had also gone to sleep due to the tedium of it all!). I then selected 25 of my biggest, ugliest tubers from last year and planted them through the mulch.

A similarly constructed, 20 metre bed of pampered artichokes on the big field gave me 50kg of tubers last year. I’m going to plant three times as many this season. And, when the pigs have completed the cultivation of the next strip I’ll be doing the same thing again, but with mangel-wurzels instead. And so on. The pigs being followed across the field by archaic vegetables and the plastic holding back the weeds which – on this newly-turned Breton soil – could throttle even a Jerusalem artichoke at birth. It’s a lot of fuss for a fodder crop, I suppose. But the only expense is my time and that’s a small price to pay if I can dilute that grain bill by 50% using home grown rooty things…

But that’s enough time and thought devoted to growing stuff for non-humans for today… the production line of more edible vegetables seems to have seized up somewhere around the greenhouse stage. Better go and sort it out…

ADDENDUM: After the mangel-sowing season is completed, I could plant out some of those big, stalky kales you see outside the houses of old people around here. A succession of fodder crops – how exciting is that! Hello? Hello??

Something else to read, part one (84 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

My latest article for Guide 2 Brittany has appeared today. I hope you like it.

It’s a plan (85 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

If you have Excel you might be able to see this:

GARDEN 2011

Otherwise, feel free to peer at this (clicking on it once, or even twice, might help):

Whether you’d want to is a different matter, after all it’s only my finalised cropping plan for the coming year. Just completed in time for nature to laugh her head off..!

Everything shown on there that should be in place by now generally is, including fruit trees, perennials – and piglets. Beds for things yet to be sown are somewhere between ready and completely not ready, mainly the latter. But all 145 beds exist in some form or other.

I’ve not included catch crops, green manures and other opportunist thingies because I genuinely feared my head would explode. I’m undecided if a plan makes things less or more likely to happen. But at least that’s something else to think about it as I lie down in a darkened room.

A kind of giving (87 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

The other morning I was filling a bean trench with a mixture of straw and manure. As usual the piglets came to see what I was up to and, particularly, if there might be any food on offer. After all, breakfast had taken place at least ten minutes earlier. Nothing doing, they decided and went off to have a nap or catch up on a bit of sunbathing.

Apart from one. The most intelligent-faced and hardest working of all the piggies. She assessed the situation carefully and decided to contribute to my effort by disappearing into the barn and reappearing moments later with a generous mouthful of her straw bedding.

Now I’m sure this was merely an instinctual response. She thought I must be making a nest – a very serious matter for pigs, second only to food in importance – and decided to help out. But I found this a completely disarming thing to do regardless of motivation. Due to her other attributes I’d already determined that she would be a breeding sow, but this act definitely secured her bacon!

Ok, so it missed the kids’ holiday. I concede it is freezing at night. My hands are chapped and sore from exposure to the east wind. And I’m praying it doesn’t stay parched for months like last year. But a dry and sunny spell in March is a very nice gift indeed. A blessing, almost. It feels especially poignant after the grey deficit of winter has been experienced to the full.

I’m not confusing transient control over the garden with personal merit, by the way: it’s as easy to be master of all you survey in March as to be hopelessly down and out in June. Nature determines all. But my present, paltry efforts are greatly assisted by the drying effect of the wind and these rainless days. It means I can do the first complete mowing without battling a soggy tangle of resistance. Even better, I can hoe. The long beds of shrivelled broad beans and peas have been cleared of their tiny but burgeoning foes. The hoe’s blade is also the perfect antidote to the sallow pan covering my clay soil.

I can’t offer the words or the images to capture the invigorating revelation constituted by nature waking up. That joyful energy permeates everything – and even if you’ve hard slog in a trench to do – it surfaces in happy moments. A new, gentle light on the woodland floor. Goats resting on newly-mown grass. Buds appearing on newly-planted fruit trees.

It’s probably not possible, though, to live on beauty alone. I have a very prosaic interest in what can be eaten as we head into the jaws of the Hungry Gap. Even with all the ingenuity in the world the new year’s sowings are only just being potted on. Thanks to the gift of dry weather that kept on giving last year, there’s a gap where my purple sprouting broccoli should be and my cabbage collection is distinctly on the small side. Only salsify is presenting an edible opportunity in the formal beds at present. I’m assured the leaves can be eaten like spinach, but with enough heat, salt and butter I suspect that would apply to most green things.

The polytunnel is still reliably offering up its November sown salads however. And eggs and pork aplenty keep the prospect of next March from being too daunting. But it’s the sheer abundance of wild garlic and nettles pushing through everywhere all around the field that give a welcome foretaste of the generous abundance to come. Hopefully.

A night time (90 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

It’s just before midnight. Everybody in this house is sleeping apart from me.

I’m listening to that strange east wind scouring the darkness. When we first arrived here the space was so big it felt like we were simply cast adrift. Even now, at night, the hinterland of the farm seems vast in my imagination. I try and compress it within the bounds of my mind’s eye but in the gloom it escapes my grasp. Instead I think of a remote, reverse world beyond the window teeming with night creatures, the boundaries of the daylight hours now porous, meaningless.

I fix on my farm animals and wonder what their experience of night might be like. No doubt the pigs will be oblivious, snug like broad beans in their straw nests. An enviable kind of composite, snoring warmth. I’m not sure about the goats – they are a bit tense at the best of times and I fear the long night might be a bit of an ordeal for them.

Of all the birds, I’m absolutely certain about the nocturnal status of one of them. The oldest of the female ducks will be perched upon the apex of the old barn. By day, you’ll find her in the enclosure, hanging around the drinker with the other ducks. But without fail, around dusk, she’ll use those unclipped to wings to take flight and adopt her lonely position. Not for her the questionable ratio of safety in numbers. She forgoes the proximity of her kind when the fear fox is about, just to be certain of the new dawn.

She’s up there like a living sign. The duck and I will be awake a while yet.

A strange encounter (92 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

March has arrived colder and greyer than a lot of January: a prickly customer for those of us wanting a bit of spring softness.

It’s a question of pressing on with trenching, digging, mulching – safe in the knowledge that there are gentler days ahead. The resolute monotony of these tasks was broken yesterday by the appearance – just an inch away from my spade’s edge – of this colourful character:

It’s a fire salamander, I think. Not uncommon, but not exactly expected in the bottom of a bean trench either! After a few moments of looking at each other like we were the strangest thing on earth, he went back into his hole. I resumed digging, unsure who was hosting who, but glad of his strange presence in my/his garden.

Listening (94 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

It’s the wrong end of the half term holiday and I’m sitting in the departure lounge of Manchester airport. It’s as low and grey in here as the clouds out there. Between the ranks of uncomfortable seats, and away from his Mum, there’s a toddler attempting to walk, but he’s being thwarted by the difficult angles and textures of this desolate space.

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My French magazine is trying to tell me about the findings of a Danish study. It claims a 14% increase in heart failure among the over 65′s per 10 decibels of nuisance noise.

The night before a drunken Geordie was shouting outside my hotel room door at 2 a.m. His nocturnal rant was slightly quieter than that of the teething baby I’m used to at home, so my heart barely missed a beat. But sitting here for hours is definitely not good for your health. And what is that constant humming noise in the background? Maybe, like the dreary walls and ceilings, as interminable as the hours they capture, it’s designed to drive you into the retail outlets.

Only a madman or a martyr would attempt to relate to the sea of faces washed up in the global village. Safer just to zone out, switch off to survive.

I think of home and the opposite relationship with the space we’re in. Back there the experience of the senses is the only reward: no wage, just sunrise, great food, bird song. If you couldn’t enjoy these it would be a life of poverty indeed. And, after exactly three years of field work, I find myself listening constantly, intently. Any wrinkle in the fabric of the farm’s normal sounds instantly attracts my attention. If any of the animals makes a non-ordinary noise I investigate immediately for fear of fox, stray dog or other walking calamity.

Back in the public place, I put my headphones on and sink further into a private space.

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Catching up on reading is the best aspect of the journey. I finally finished Twenty Years A-Growing. Latterly I’d had to ration my consumption of the chapters because I knew I was going to be sad when it was all over. It’s not often you can share in such a vivid experience of a pre-industrial life. I’m always sorry to leave.

More recommended reading! Our friends at Small Potatoes had linked me in to this report. I read it on the train as the weirdly unfamiliar Pennine landscape slipped by unheeded. I’d suggest that anyone else tempted to go back to the land should look at it closely.

Among the accounts of businesses based on small acreage there are some familiar names: Charles Dowding and Real Seeds are people I’ve given money to before now! Nothing in the report changed my conviction that subsistence and barter are the natural affiliates of this way of life, rather than profit. I wasn’t completely convinced that viability achieved by propping up a venture with private funds is necessarily more worthy or sensible than accepting a state handout, like Big Ag does. But until the tax man accepts payment in the form of Jerusalem artichokes, I guess it might pay to take note.