A breather (32 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

A peek in the greenhouse would confirm it. We’ve arrived at another of those watershed moments in the peasant’s gardening calendar.

The kales, cabbages, brussels and cauliflowers are either planted out in the field or are waiting impatiently on the hardening off shelves. Also evicted from those hot confines, to grow on in cooler spaces, are the herbs, chards, spring onions, leeks and so on. Hours of sowing, potting on and plant-particular pampering has culminated in an end-of-April flurry of movement.

With those old work horses out of the way, the decrepit tables that act as staging in the greenhouse are now home to a more foppish array: tomatoes, peppers, chillies, aubergines, cucumbers, melons and courgettes, all at various stages of development.  And this weather doesn’t fool me. I’ll get les Saints de Glaces well out of the way before moving that lot anywhere else.

The polytunnel is loaded up with quick-growing edibles, mainly salad and oriental thingies, in an effort to give me something to eat come June if all else fails.

Which it won’t! Rain is promised by the big thunderhead clouds towering above the field. A downpour would revive the potato trenches, and our ten-year old will finally get his bedroom floor back after I shift all the seed potatoes out of there.

The animals have new pasture which should reach as far as Summer too. Quite a moment this: the piglets’ new enclosure defines the final area which I’ll be bringing into cultivation on the field. That’s not the same as saying the job is nearly done, but it’s very encouraging to see what the final shape of things might be…

So the big push that started at the beginning of February to dovetail with Nature’s awakening  is over. And I have to say I’m glad. It’s been an exhausting process. My hands are rougher and blacker than ever, and I could number the parts of me that don’t ache on the fingers of just one of them! The drought has made things very laborious in many ways, but – I concede – has kept the mowing and weeding to a minimum. So far.

I’ve no problem with busy times. But for a bit of joy to creep in there have to be quiet times too. So, before the next phase begins – beans, pumpkins et al – I’m taking a breather. I’m going to let the rain come down and the grass and weeds come up. The family deserve attention undivided by cabbages. Until next week, anyway…

Stop gap solution (36 days to go..)

by Max Akroyd

Sometimes it feels like water, time and cash are the same substance. They all flow (generally in one direction – away!). They’re easy to take for granted, until scarcity requires you to be more resourceful. And a severe deficit in any defeats self-sufficiency.

Even the farmer from down the road looked worried. His normally keen and shrewd presence seemed dulled by a painful realisation: if there’s no rain within the next fortnight his farming year is effectively over, he declared. The recently-sown crops on his vast acres would wither and die, beyond the reach of irrigation, and his dairy herd would have to be scaled back accordingly.

On my small-scale, there’s still some hope. I’ve just spent 100€ I didn’t have on hose pipe and various other bits and pieces. I thus cobbled together the delivery end of an irrigation system comprising a couple of hoses that sweat water attached to very long, regular hoses. I can just about manouevre this two-headed, serpentine monster across my hillside without it uprooting all my raspberry bushes. After a couple of hours of snaking over a dusty bed, a track of moisture can be detected, sufficient to plant something into… Then I drag it on to the next bed… and the next…

Of course this expenditure of time and money represents only a fraction of the whole. The supply-side of this ‘solution’ equals a metered outside tap, open all night. Not sustainable: I’ll be in no rush to open that bill when it arrives! Clearly, if the new weather pattern means it only rains in winter we’ll have to recover rainwater then, store it and pump it around the same shoddy network of hoses. A much more significant capital investment!

But almost anything is worth it to avoid the debacle of last year when most things died in their pots. The backbone of the year’s planting is getting rolled out, albeit painfully slowly. Even yet, I’m not exempt from comprehensive failure. Half of my potato trenches still lack that vital ingredient – seed potatoes – as they remain open to receive rain that never comes. The baby roots I anticipated eating come June 1st - beetroot, turnips, carrots, kohl rabi – are still at the embryo stage. My peas and broad beans are a sparse shadow of even last year’s efforts.

I’m going to keep plodding on, not least because the effort laid down in previous months requires it. And I’m getting a great tan out there! But the chances of success seem a little slim right now…

Bean pole challenge (40 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

Brought to you with the help of Ben Short, frequent commenter on this blog – who has been staying in the gite with his lovely family this week – I humbly present our interpretation of the patented McCarthy™ Bean Structure:

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Although I’ll be using it for runner beans too, the main attraction for me is for the production of French beans for drying. I’m thinking that the way this construction encourages pods to hang away from the foliage will encourage thorough drying of this key winter ingredient for the hungry peasant. Thanks Joy!

3 things to do in the garden when it’s dry (41 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

There’s no time to stand around inside:

1. Dig a trench or three. In recent days I easily shifted 100 metres-worth of dusty soil thus. (I asked Emma to capture this scene of impressive toil on camera, but in these conditions it just looked like a fat bloke digging on the moon).

And then promise yourself that’s it. No more potato trenches… it’s time to finish the bean trenches instead! Talking of which, there’s an engineer on site at the moment so tomorrow we’re going to build one of these genius things - the beans hang away from the foliage for ease of collection. An idea (and picture) stolen from an excellent blog, here.

2. Enjoy the flowers. I realise that – close up – I prefer the look of just about every wild flower to just about every garden flower. This probably makes me a Philistine:

3. Look forward to the fruit – it looks like it could be a year of abundance in this respect. But I keep telling myself it’s only April. The ice saints could still pay us a visit next month:

4. Try and forget about those withered early sowings. Leave the garden behind and go for a nice, quiet, meditative walk.

Maybe one day.

Things preserved (42 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

Most of this process is spread over months. Sometimes you sow a seed and have to wait until the following year to enjoy the harvest. Which reminds me, it’s broccoli sowing time isn’t it?

But preserving is a much more compact process. A posse of reluctant children or other underemployed outlaws can be dispatched to collect unpromising eatables, the whole lot can be processed, a thousand pots and pans washed up and your feet can get a bit sore from standing in front of the hob: all in the space of a day…

And we are devoting a lot of waking hours to this ritual now. The house – perhaps the whole commune – is permeated with vinegary vapours. Strange things are packed into containers and buried away to to be discovered by that mysterious (and probably hungry) entity which is the future you. I suppose that kind of kindness to yourself unites preserving with growing your own fruit and vegetables. It’s certainly not a connection based on healthy eating! So much sugar goes into those preserves I reckon I could make a palatable lawn chutney or maybe a molehill pickle?

But whatever the wretched dentist or the wretched sugar plantation worker might say, I say long-live the W.I.!

Rhubarb & co. also giveth most generously when your turnips are scorched and and peas are wilting in the August April sun. Sunday bottled comprised: Rhubarb and Sultana chutney, Pickled Rhubarb, Rhubarb and Orange jam, Leftover chutney and Wild Garlic pesto.

The relative gloom of the kitchen provided a relief from the unrelentingly cheerful sunniness of the field. I won’t go on about it. It’s not right to crave dreary weather.

But we need rain.

With just a few weeks left before I start eating my field, it’s flatter than flat out here on the farm. By the end of the day, my old brain feels as parched and concrete-like as the field. Therefore, I’m reverting to shorter – but almost daily – posts for a little while. 

Best laid plans (54 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

Cruising at 18000 feet, you could almost believe in a solution. It’s not like being in a proper jet aeroplane where you’re so high up you get lost in a dreamscape of clouds, or any visible land is so far away as to be slightly ridiculous. From the windows of this little propeller-powered plane, England is mainly green.

Seen from up here the villages and towns are diminished, almost trivial in scale. Commerce, work and other hustle is silenced. Equally unhindered by the reality of peoples’ present lives and expectations, you are able to imagine that when cars and planes and supermarkets are defunct, things could carry on. Look at all that productive land! From this height there’s no sense that the soil has been crushed by tractors or tortured by man-made chemicals. Instead, like a benign, cloud-dwelling despot, you can re-apportion the fields to the people in the nucleated villages and towns and, somehow, shuttle them out to work the land.

Before too long, though, we lose the perspective of height and descend back to ground level. The fields are out of sight and the confusion of normality returns.

*

Back home and there’s been a development. The white duck has hatched a chick!

Don’t worry, she’s confused too! Since my hens don’t know how to roost, eat corn or go broody like everybody else’s chickens, I had the bright(ish) idea of putting a couple of hens eggs under our sitting duck.

As usual, nature doesn’t welcome improvisation unreservedly. One of the hens’ eggs hatched before the duck’s own and now Mummy duck shares her precarious nest in the top of the haystack with a puzzling and slightly mischievous impostor. The chick climbs all over the duck’s back, pecks her nostrils and puts little holes in the other eggs. (The one’s that haven’t already rolled off the haystack thanks to the duck’s big, scrobbly feet).

In the old cow shed below, the goose has also been busy nesting and laying. Unfortunately the new gander only arrived yesterday – after she had laid six eggs. So it’s extra-nice cakes and quiche for us today and back to the drawing board for her tomorrow. Scant reward for a building a perfect nest, but at least she’s got a big, ungainly partner to help make perfect sense of it all next time.

A paradox (60 days to go…)

by Max Akroyd

Most weeks this life is good. Very good. Bird song, trees bedecked with blossom, the play of sunlight on the hillside and all the other things that make spring an illuminating place to be. However, although I’ve still been dimly aware of these things, this particular week has been more mundane: a robotic plod through a task list which, against all the rules of fair play, is longer at the end of each day than at the start of it!

I’m not yet familiar with the territory of a successful year of subsistence. Maybe these tight contours of unceasing activity are confined to, say, April and May? And by June I’ll be sitting at the top of the hill drinking elderflower wine in the shade of the chestnut tree. I’ll watch the children doing the weeding, the goats hanging out the washing and the pigs flying by…

I want this to be a paean to rural contentment. I don’t want to pee on anybody’s fire of enthusiasm. But right now it’s wall-to-wall grind on the farm. It seems if you want a semblance of unsophisticated man-made order – won from the natural sort – it unavoidably requires ten hours of physical labour. Each and every day, at this time of year. If we’d inherited our patch from soil-toiling ancestors it might have meant a lighter burden, but this back to the land generation has to break theirs on marginal ground. By midweek, for example, I was so tired I even forgot my PIN number. I was parked outside the bank needing cash for grain and … nothing!

Perhaps aware of my slow-witted state the animals have been full of mischief. I’ve had goats in the hen house and a goose in the pig house and then goats in the hen house again. Moving the Daddy pigs to their spring pasture turned into an eight hour face-off. It might have been the coffee grounds I accidentally tipped into their leftovers bucket, but they were tireless and cunning adversaries. Or that’s how it seemed. It was only upon completion of the task that I realised they are now down-wind of the (female) piglets. Uncharacteristically for their gender, they look less than impressed by their new, clean and tidy environs and just stand around gawping in the direction of the girl pigs instead.

In the greenhouse I’ve sown kale, calabrese, broccoli, brussel sprouts, bush tomatoes, chillies, peppers, basil, hyssop, lovage, chervil, parsley, beetroot, okra, spring onions, leeks, cucumbers, gherkins, lettuces, chicories and courgettes. In the soil, I’ve planted out: parsnips, collards, kales, cabbages, parsley, burdock, mitsuba, broad beans, peas, turnips, beetroot and spinach. The first potatoes have appeared and I’m planting more daily. I’m down to my last 50 unplanted Jerusalem artichoke tubers and might just throw them to the pigs tomorrow so I can at least tick one thing off the list for this year. I’ve also renovated the polytunnel beds and sown some catch crops in them. I even got a big patch of lucerne raked in. The rest of the time I dig, mow, strim, hoe and weed things. The rest of the rest of the time I spend with the family, either complaining or asleep!

To be honest, the sheer scale of the commitment to growing most of your own food has a spiritually deadening effect. It’s like being a dreary fundamentalist adhering only to the word and accepting no intermediary. It means I’m a slave to the garden. But that’s ok. After all, it’s the only road to freedom I know.