Busy as a stump-tailed cow in fly time (367)

by Max Akroyd

So many sayings are applicable to gardening you could probably give up growing plants and just cultivate annoying dictums instead.

That one about having too many pots on the boil is on my mind at the moment. With a poorly wife, four kids to entertain and a big pig with a limp it’s tempting to give up on gardening and write country and western songs instead!

A whistling woman and a crowing hen never comes to a very good end… Clearly, you can’t have it all and some projects will not come to fruition. Before today, the Perennial Beds were starting to look a bit like this year’s losers. I’ve advocated the perennial vegetable to self-sufficient types before and I’m still convinced of all this. But an aspect of their wild and unreformed nature is the difficulty getting the seeds to germinate: good king Henry, patience dock and Turkish Rocket have all failed to materialise. I’m presently awaiting results of sorrel, Witloof and seakale sowings. Hopefully they will join the rhubarb and Welsh onions which have made it through the drought and keep the theme of this area alive.

 

Unproductive.

 

But after giving the area a good haircut with the strimmer and the mower this morning it’s apparent there will be plenty of vacant bed space – some of it even cultivated – to accommodate non-perennial things. Enter stage left the host of May sowings which are sprouting within hours of hitting that nice warm compost. Just goes to show even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then.

This afternoon I have to explain to my nine year old that he can’t watch the England friendly but has to help me shift rocks instead. That will not be as easy as sliding off a greasy log backward.

A dark stranger returns (368)

by Max Akroyd

 

Apparently it rained here while I was in England. And thanks to this contribution we cut our first outdoor lettuce of the season yesterday and pulled our first radishes too. The latter were very small – just thinnings really – but very welcome. However, the soil itself was unchanged from the dusty state I left it in. 

 

 

 

The actual sight of rain as I opened the shutters this morning caused me to stop and ponder how strange this season has been. The pigs and goats and I have all grown accustomed to day after day in the field under more or less clear skies. For months. To see, hear, smell grey skies and rain was like stumbling across a familiar scene in a strange landscape.

The main effect of the drought garden-wise has been to delay the big outdoor sowings. Namely, main crop peas, carrots and beetroot. It simply wasn’t rational to put this expensive seed into lunar-dry soil. The return of the rain will enable this to happen before the longest day and I want every bed full by the end of June. Equally important is the fillip provided to the parched plants already in the field. Hopefully this intervention will swell the autumn-sown broad beans and peas – a harvest which becomes more appealing every day. 

The final benefit of the rain is to allow me to soft-peddle for another day. Incipient old age and rustic tendencies means the journey takes a day or two to get over, mentally and physically. I did complete May’s indoor sowings this morning though, an unprecedented achievement hereabouts, which I’m very pleased about. Now I’m going to make like big pig and sleep this cloud off.  

Back home (369 days to go)

by Max Akroyd

 

I’ve just returned from a trip to the UK. The almost instant transition from field to civilisation – from tying-in sweet peas to sitting out a three-hour delay in an airport departure lounge – is always a challenge. Before setting off, I try and scrub off the ingrained muck from my rough hands and put a thin veneer of polish on my old shoes, but I have to accept that I’m now irrevocably changed by living and working as I do.

These days, being in a plane seems a reckless and precarious position to be in.  Spending £5 on a magazine an absurdity when there’s chicken wire to buy.  

Conversely, having listened attentively to fellow passengers’ life histories, there don’t seem too many human problems that couldn’t be alleviated by proximity to soil and pigs. I got off the plane late yesterday and within an hour was feeding the pigs and asking Big Pig if she’d missed me. She seemed to be saying “Oh shut up and give me that food” and I couldn’t help but envy her big, vacant acceptance of her world. 

My lettuces have doubled in size thanks to some decent rain, but this has also caused the weed bomb to go off… which means I will spend this day of recuperation weeding and hoeing. Which is ok.

(And I found some fruit!)

 

A non-wordy Wednesday

by Max Akroyd

Instead of wittering on today I thought I’d offer up a few pictures of nice things growing in the field right now and – just for the heck of it – a nice song to listen to. Have a good Wednesday.

 

First sweet peas (373)

by Max Akroyd

No gardening today by order of the family. But a bit of emergency tying-in of sweet peas was permissable this morning, and I harvested the first blooms while I was at it. These sweet pea plants on the field have been pretty dismal-looking of late, somehow managing to get attacked by slugs and withered by drought simultaneously. There are signs, though, that some of the plants are reasserting themselves, which makes these first flowers even more precious.

I gave the mini-bouquet to the ninety-year old lady who is staying in the gite. This is partly because old age is venerable in itself, but also because her son-in-law has very kindly given me some blight-beating Sarpo potato seed. He also appreciated some of our pork for his barbecue, so everyone’s happy! 

Just mowing (374)

by Max Akroyd

 

Today is La Pentecôte, one of a few jours fériés – bank holdays – in May. And what a day for it – wall to wall hot sun and blue skies. There isn’t a half term holiday in May here, so this is a good option for a rest before the long haul to the long summer holiday.

Unfortunately for a gardener with a sore everything, tomorrow’s forecast gets more extreme every time I look at it. Storms automatically mean that any mowing which needs doing in the next two days needs to be done today instead, not least because tomorrow might be a bad day to be a tall object on a hillside. Which means a bit of time off tomorrow hopefully celebrating some rain at last. And I’ll be finally excused from watering everything all the time – including the animals.

Right, I’m off to mow a bit more of a meadow…

Been busy (375)

by Max Akroyd

 

First thing this morning I let the dogs out. Outside was pretty much the same temperature as inside. It was impossible not to spend a moment listening to the birds and breathing in the sweet-scented air. There’s a lot of grind keeping this place ticking over, but moments like that are the reward.

They also help enthuse me sufficiently to tackle the deluge of tasks. The impression that any sowing project would succeed right now is irresistable. Be it the polytunnel, the greenhouse or the herb garden, I’m possessed with an urge to plant stuff.

Having spent the brief morning cool planting more herbs out, I was determined to increase the pressure on myself of even more new plants – by setting up a sowing production line: outdoors! No use having wife and children sitting around enjoying themselves in the sun when they could be press-ganged into a horticultural sweat shop. 

Never mind that the polytunnel was approximately the temperature of Venus this afternoon, I was going to dig 21 holes to plant my tomatoes in… quick! pass me those courgette and cucumber plants… Pak choi will certainly bolt at these temperatures. Not a problem, we’ll eat the flowers.

 

The sauna

 

Previously, I’d tried everything  to get the polytunnel properly watered. I even filled it full of snow in that other dimension commonly known as January. Later, backwards and forwards with watering cans full from the water butt keeping the salad crops going.  All to no avail, it was still bone dry in there. So this week I weakened and bought a sprinkler. Two days with that baby running and the soil has been transformed into a yielding, vital thing. I could also experiment with working in the polytunnnel with the sprinkler on – surely guaranteed to keep me pleasantly cooled? No, I was just still hot, just lashed occasionally with a freezing-cold whip of cold water. 

After much ferrying to and fro of pots and compost, plus not a little chatting in the shade as we worked, the family managed to get the sowing schedule almost up to date. Hundreds of beans and pumpkins done and dusted. Very satisfactory, but there’s always someone busier than you are…

 

Building a herb garden (376 days to go)

by Max Akroyd

Summer can be a bit over-rated – appearance-wise it’s the gone-over time. The reward for those long winter months spent trying to kindle spring’s awakening is this. Warm, warm sun and cool sea-breeze by day, evenings full of colour but defined by deep shadow. Being inside feels like an offence against your mud-caked winter self.

Since I’m not allowed to just sit in the long grass on the field all day contemplating the view, the next best thing I can think of to honour the season is construction of our herb garden. Until today this area was merely a large ‘L’ shape of plastic mulch punctuated by the ten lavender plants I got in yesterday. There also a fork, with a broken tine, lying in the grass.

Today saw the introduction of some more herbs grown from seed. Dill and valerian found places behind the lavender and chives and chamomile in front. It still looks terrible, but there’s borage, hyssop, parsley, rosemary, summer savory, achillea and foxgloves in the offing – so one day, maybe next spring, a fragrant but eminently usable scene will be set. Once the plants are established we intend to edge the area with some old roof slates and cover the plastic with gravel.

In the meantime, it’s always nice to stand back from your work in the garden and see how you’ve improved things. Unfortunately, right now my herb garden looks like an explosion at a bargain-basement garden centre. Fortunately there were some other interesting things around the place to post here instead.

 

"Look at that strange looking human"

 

On days like this even the mowing – which will occupy much of the afternoon – seems purposeful; a useful enhancement of a fine picture of Spring.

From here to the solstice (377)

by Max Akroyd

 

May and June are the beautiful months. It would be much better and healthier to just go with the flow of time and just enjoy things for what they are, man.

Not me. I come from a long line of folk who like to see order in things: teachers and engineers. For fear of drowning, I can’t help putting markers in that big sea of time, and the next one on the horizon is the summer solstice. My first reaction to this statement is disbelief that the longest day is only a few weeks away. The long reach of cold into spring has made that slightly improbable: not helped by the lack of variation in the texture of the weather, dry for weeks now, which makes it feel like a year in a trance.

My second reaction is a mild panic attack! The solstice is the point by which most edible things should be in their ‘final position’… a lot of mine are still tucked up in their seed packets.The lunar quality of the soil in the field is still prohibiting extensive outdoor sowings, which doesn’t help the schedule. But even I can accept that drought is beyond my control, so carrots, turnips and more peas and beetroot will just have to wait.

Focus, then, is on the stuff I can sow under glass – where it would have to be watered anyway – or things I can plant out either through the plastic mulch on the field or in the plastic world of the polytunnel. A bit foolishly, in retrospect, I spent the cool of the early morning working through my seed box picking out the most urgent sowings for the next seven days.

Then it was time to unblock the log jam of things massing on the hardening off tables. I’ve bemoaned my inability to ensure a smooth transition of seedlings from greenhouse to field before and clearly nothing’s changed. For example, a yellowing tangle of sweet peas awaited me there. At least they were in better shape than the ones on the field which have really struggled in the absence of any rain. With Emma’s help,  I picked out the hopeless losers from the field planting and replaced them with the merely unhealthy from pots. This is clearly not going to be my proudest year sweat-pea wise. 

After this florid detour I could fill the gaps on the tables with artichokes and slightly jaundiced-looking courgettes. The arrival of the yellow ‘La Poste’ van, though, meant a new floral challenge:

 

 

Fifty little lavender plants to form the backbone of the herb garden. I set about getting them in the ground as soon as possible. By the time I’d mixed gravel and lime into each planting hole I only managed ten. Then this happened:

 

 

I can take a hint. Time for a lunch break.

Some hope, cardoons – and thank you Sophie Grigson (378)

by Max Akroyd

Losing all my potatoes recently was the kind of setback that you just have to get used to in this line of work. I’d witnessed a bit of frost damage on potato leaves in the past, but this looked like wholesale destruction. All that remained of this cornerstone crop was two hundred hopeless, blackened stumps. Gardening life has continued, but with a joyless gait.

You can imagine my delight yesterday evening when Emma spotted signs of life on the deadened haulms here, there and everywhere. Little emerald leaves appearing in the wreckage. Just to see a defiant fight back is invigorating.

 

 

Similarly, the sight of a fully-recovered goat was a shot in the (other) arm. Despite her misguided experiment in eating azalea, Handa is now back to her usual annoying self: standing on the hens and butting her neurotic goathousemate.

It seems unlikely that, after their recent experiences, the potatoes will produce a decent crop – and impossible that Handa will become any cleverer  – but I was inspired by the change in fortunes to finally get those cardoons in.

Because of the drought I had to find a bed under plastic mulch. Because of the expected size of the mature cardoons it had to be a long section! In the end I chose a bed midway up the Triangle. Planting cardoons represents another, much-needed vertical enhancement to the field and in this postion also honours an old field boundary. Which seems only polite.

 

Before ...

As I planted out the eighteen cardoons, a memory of a TV programme from (I think) the early eighties came to mind. As a sullen teenager I can’t imagine why I was watching Sophie Grigson presenting a show about growing vegetables – but I can vividly recall her enthusiasm about cardoons. Resident as I was in a sooty Northern suburb, gardening at that time only meant hybrid-t’s, rhodedendrons and raking up endless quantities of my Dad’s lawn cuttings. I realised today that it was Grigson’s sunny vision of vegetable abundance that awakened something in my genetic memory which is finally finding expression over twenty years later.

So, thank you Ms Grigson. I now have my very own cardoon bed – all thanks to you.

 

... after.

The sow’s here (379)

by Max Akroyd

Money and family things are year-round competitors for my attention, but something changes in the texture of gardening days from now until October. The task list starts to tower in the mind and knowing where to begin becomes a bit elusive… However, with Emma in the last, immobile stretch of pregnancy, tasks such as business administration and keeping the boys entertained are fixing in the orbit of her increased mass. By default, I’ve been granted carte blanche to tackle the garden. With a summer of broken nights in prospect, the next four to six weeks will determine the success of this growing season.

The recent weather has confused the picture considerably. Due to prevailing cool and dry weather, seedlings in the queue to plant out are still standing small in their big pots. Similarly, it’s difficult for the gardener to unfold mentally and embrace the growing season after a series of weary setbacks and false starts. But, ready or not, the change to warm weather is about to join the party of increased light and everything worth having will happen in the next five months. The false sense of human control over nature granted by the cold and dark months is about to be extinguished. Which at least builds character and stamina, if you like that kind of thing…

Although you might not think it if you saw it, keeping the garden looking orderly is a big priority. A semblance of order imposed by the mower and the strimmer takes up a lot of time but keeping the big picture tidy stops morale caving in. Notionally, the garden area is split into six sections for this purpose and I try and mow and strim one each day. Today, for example, is the turn of the gite garden and the area ‘front of house’ to feel the teeth of my creaky machines. I suppose every area of gardening – sowing, hoeing etc –   could probably be apportioned to a rigid daily allocation like this, but I fear such a high level of organisation would cause my brain to combust. And anyway, with farm animals on the scene, nothing goes completely according to the script.

 

Behind the wire ...

    

This morning’s decision to get the Triangle area tamed before getting stuck in on the gite garden turned out a bit of a major detour. The big thistles and docks fell and the strimmer wire made dust devils appear in the bone dry soil. But when I eventually stood back to admire my work I realised I had company. One of the little piglets was out in the Triangle too: even through my sap-splattered visor I could see she was most definitely on the wrong side of her enclosure. Chasing her back in was relatively easy – after all I was armed with a noisy strimmer – but detecting the cause of the power outage, less so.

I painstakingly strimmed the weeds and grass away from under the bottom wire. It’s difficult to work tentatively with a strimmer, but the fear of acquaintance with any residual current made it possible. Job done? While putting the strimmer away I noticed the mains lead had come loose from the bottom of the energiser box. As I trudged back to the house I told myself that all that under-wire strimming was a job that needed doing anyway. (Just not today).

Getting my goats (380 days to go)

by Max Akroyd

Naughty.

Our goats have made two bids for freedom in the last twenty four hours. On the first occasion they pushed, nibbled and generally distorted the corner of their enclosure sufficiently to make a tiny opening. Big enough, seemingly, for two goats and six hens to squeeze through. By the time we discovered them all, my prized quince trees were looking worser for wear than I was, the comfrey plantation had been hard-pruned and the hens were bustling through the flower beds having a whale of a time. 

At least, fence-mending and livestock-retrieving make for an unusual birthday evening. Most smallholders know that animals time their mayhem for your lowest point of capability – maybe they smell the wine!

And goats are the hungover farmer’s nemesis. Sharp as a tack, they know exactly when to strike. And they did – again – this morning. Their tethers slipped through my slightly arthritic grasp and they were off – galloping through the garlic, crushing the kales and plundering the plums. At this point, I feared a rerun of the terrible great goat escape. But for some goaty reason, they ended up back in their barn chasing the hens around. Business as usual in other words.

However, as the morning progressed it became apparent that all was not as it should be. Handa, the young and crazy one, had clearly ingested something not to her tummy’s liking and started to look unhappy. Silly goat. A trip to vets quickly ensued, followed equally rapidly by the administration of a charcoal solution.

Do you know that scene from Alien when they chop the robot’s head off? At least there’s something about holding a goat’s face while it sneezes and snorts a load of bile-coloured medicine all over you that warms the heart. It’s a bonding thing, like staying up all night with a poorly child.

By contrast, this afternoon I have a business meeting. I know, I can’t believe it either… a suit has been dragged out of deep storage. My hair has been tamed. But as the talk goes round and round, I suspect only my head will be full of goats and the cardoons I want to plant when I get back.

Happy baking (birth)day (380)

by Max Akroyd

 

When I was little, and we went on family holidays, it made a big impression on me how my parents were transformed by a bit of sun and fresh air. Why couldn’t every day be like that, I wondered? Why did big swathes of time have to be consigned to office or school, which made them all stressed and grey? To my child mind it seemed a terrible waste of all the other non-holiday days.

Thirty-eight years later, when my own five year old asks asks me what I’m doing on my birthday, I say: “Oh, nothing special. Just the usual stuff”. And he’s alright with that.

Today is the return of Baking Day. Last week’s prototype was such a success that it will be a permanent fixture in the family’s week from now on. Nothing spectacular happened, I didn’t reinvent the cabbage or anything, but we could just keep going in the greenhouse uninterrupted by the need to prepare a meal. Stuff like that.

Today’s target is the same as last week’s: bread, sauces and chutneys. The fact that I’m only half way through this list explains the unusually concise nature of this post – all those metaphors about pots on the boil describe accurately the present scene in our kitchen! Right, must fly…

 

Soil test (381)

by Max Akroyd

I love to hoe. It’s effective, but meditative too. As the blade slices through the weeds, the focus at soil level becomes almost trance-like. With spring sunshine on my shoulders, there’s few better places to be.

Only there’s a troubling thought that won’t go away. The growing year so far has been difficult, either dry and warm or dry and cold. For a garden on a south-facing slope this has been a trial and only certain crops have acquitted themselves well. The brassicas are doing nicely, netted and planted through plastic. The garlic, shallots, early peas and broad beans – all well established before the drought – are in good form. The potatoes were doing fine before the frost took them.

 

Not bad: cauliflowers....

 

... and peas

 

But all the other outdoor sowings represent varying degrees of failure: patchy, infested with weeds and generally a bit hopeless. Some, like the parsnips, sweet peas and onions, I might have salvaged by painstakingly removing the weeds and watering them regularly. But the beetroot, second peas and the onions from seed have plain failed. And I can’t just blame the weather… excuses are inedible. Before the new week brings a big new wave of planting outs there’s a reality check to be undertaken.

 

Terrible. Onions.

 

Fact is, my soil just isn’t good enough. By nature, wind-swept and rain-soaked Breton soil only welcomes trees and weeds. For one reason and another, I squandered any small natural advantage in the soil I inherited and accordingly, particularly in the raised beds, there simply isn’t enough heart in the soil to support early sowings in adverse conditions. Even onion sets withered and died. The soil has failed the weather’s test.

With the prospect of this soil entirely supporting my diet in future, the problem can’t be ignored any longer: for anything which can’t be planted in a trench or through plastic I need a soil remedy. The fact that most of the crops in question end up in raised beds doesn’t help much either, you can’t disrupt the structure of said beds with a spot of double-digging!

Ideally, I’d buy a ton of seaweed meal and the like and liberally scatter it around. Not an option on my budget. The books would prescribe a thick mulch of compost. But I don’t do compost, I have pigs! The contents of my compost bin would be a revolting mix of the banana and onion skins which my pigs won’t touch. But I do need a fibrous, rich and spreadable substance to mulch my raised beds with… 

After a bit of thought, these are my available ingredients for this magical, life-saving compound:

• leaves
• perennial weeds
• grass cuttings and other garden waste 
• manure & straw
• cardboard and other compostable household odds and ends
• comfrey

My plan for the week ahead, then, is to create a veritable compost laboratory in the corner of the hangar. Sure it’s going to stink a bit, but the pigs are in there already… The first two things, leaves and perennial weeds will need seperate treatment, thrown into big bins, soaked and left to rot down . The other ingredients will come available when the final trench has been filled on the field. I’m going to build two large, adjacent bays to compost and process this stuff, the idea being to combine all these composted elements together at the end to produce the final mix.

Right, that’s decided. Looks like I might do compost after all. But enough pondering out loud, where did I put that hoe? 

Planting by the moon (382 days to go)

by Max Akroyd

Yesterday afternoon I collected some grain for the animals from a local farmer. We exchanged the usual pleasantries and compared notes about the challenges of the local weather. His maize had been ‘burnt’ by the frost. Agreeing that the soil was unusually cold and dry for this time of year, I went on to point out that I’d been unable to effect my main carrot sowing.

I’m a fluent French speaker. Well, fluent as a two year old French child. So such conversations are a bit frustrating for both parties. On this occasion, though, I could make out a lot of his words and they seemed to be suggesting, seriously, that I should be sowing carrots in accordance with the lunar cycle. The international language of sceptical noises ensured that the farmer knew he was dealing with a non-believer lunacy-wise!

I was ushered indoors and, after a bit of searching for scissors, was handed the following extract from the local paper:

 

 

Sorry it’s a bit crumpled. From my conversation and the table above I deduce that Sunday is the best day for sowing carrots. Before 4:30 pm, no less.

From what I’ve read, it’s the gravitational influence of the moon which can be harnessed to the advantage of certain vegetables at certain times. This has a lot of currency in France, but I was still surprised that my friend the farmer, so unlike Mystic Meg in every other respect, was so certain that the theory was true.

Moreover, my further research (well, a few minutes on Google) suggests the astrological influence spreads to animal husbandry too. Apparently April 18-19 was the best time to castrate an animal, although I suspect there would never be a good time for the animal concerned. 

At the time, I tried to express concern that gravity was a pathetically weak force in the universe and the moon could no more influence a carrot than it could me. Although I think it’s a full moon at the moment and I do have a beard… Could there be truth in this loony theory?

The farmer and I decided to do a test. I agreed to sow a line of carrots today. And then another tomorrow, before 16:30 of course! We will then compare the two. At this point we both agreed that the effect of the local slug population might be far more influential upon the outcome.

But a deal is a deal and this morning, in addition to the hoeing and mowing, I sowed the first of my long lines of carrots…

Greenhouse Day (383)

by Max Akroyd

Yesterday morning’s frost turned out to be quite an event. It obliterated all my potatoes. Every single one of the two hundred plants now resembles a limp, dark seaweed.

Surprisingly, in the intervening time, this hasn’t felt as bad as it might: because the frost wasn’t forecast I can’t claim I would have fleeced them even if I had any fleece. I’d done my best with the crop and if the weather decided to take it, what’s a man to do?  At least it wasn’t next year, if you see what I mean.

Fortunately, potatoes were the only frost-tender things out on the field, the rest were still lurking in the ‘greenshed’ in pots where the short, sharp blast of May frost missed them. Or they’re still in the seed packets. Hitherto it’s been difficult to eke out enough sensible time in a day to sow comprehensively. So I resolved to devote today entirely to greenhouse work. To sowing and potting on and generally (re)building the garden’s future.

 

 

I’m noticing more and more that, even on the modest scale of this operation, the sowings and plantings out want to organise themselves into big phases. It’s a bit production line-like but this seems to be the only way my brain can organise it. The brassicas are a good example of this unmagical mental mapping in action. Starting with October sowings which get planted out in February, the next phase is the February sowings planted out in April and I’m now in the flurry of pak chois, cabbages and brocollis which comprise May’s efforts. Everything pegged, parcelled and organised. Good job the eating bit is pure abandon.

Having pricked out and potted on hundreds of brassicas the focus fell on sweet corns and pumpkins. Packet after packet. If summer ever arrives I intend to soak up those rays with a thousand sweet crops to avenge the one I lost yesterday. If those potatoes don’t recover at least I’ll have plenty of vacant bed space!

Human Daddy v. Mummy Pigs (384)

by Max Akroyd

Cunning attack pigs. Ok, not really ...

Beware the bored pig. After many weeks of happily and methodically turning over a section of their field, the signs are that the mummy pigs are getting restless.

I don’t know if it’s the wild boar in their genetic mix, but I know them well enough now to spot that beady look in their eye. The grass is starting to look a lot better on the other side of the electric fence and an escape plan will be hatched soon enough.

I’ve noticed that, by contrast, our big pig  – being more highly bred – is much more docile. And boring. If there’s something she doesn’t like she generally just grunts and goes off to sleep. I’ve occasionally found her snoring in the corner of her shed with the piglets standing on top of her.

With the mummy pigs it’s a whole different ball game. I reckon I have a week in which to expand their domain before chaos ensues. This dreadful event would, no doubt, entail them breaking out, visiting my French neighbour (they always do that), digging up one of my prize crops and – inevitably – calling in on the daddy pigs. A week may sound like a long lead-in time, but the difficulties of extending the electric fence while those two are inside it must be factored in … No paltry human gate can hold these girls for long and I don’t have any tranquiliser darts.

In fact, the only Achilles heel in their strategic armour-plating is a more-than-slight penchant for food. So incremental steps can be taken, things tweaked here and there, while their big heads are stuck in the troughs. I’ll be nervously fiddling with a section of wire awaiting the meal’s end: at this point they will come galloping and oinking down the field like small, deranged hippos to see what I’m up to… 

That’s for later in the week. This morning I strimmed the outline of the new section and marked it out with spare fence posts. Time-consuming, but easy compared to trying to refit the wires to the new position before they spot their opportunity.

Despite their propensity for chaos, I’m very grateful to these ladies. Apart from providing us with lots of healthy piglets, they have tamed a lot of the field which seriously heavy machinery would have baulked at. The large area they’ve cleared so far will be put down to forage crops once the fence has been moved. Mangel-wurzels and lucerne being the first I’m going to attempt. Once the whole field has been turned over the pigs will be relocated – somehow – and the field put to grass. Ready for a nice, friendly, biddable cow.

This afternoon will be dedicated to those typical May things:  hoeing, mowing and sowing. This will be attempted with my eyes shut so I don’t have to see the frost damage on my potatoes.

UPDATE: While the mummy pigs were enjoying their siesta, I seized the opportunity to extend the electric fence. A reckless act of cunning which I just about got away with, the pigs only detecting me as I fixed the uppermost wire. Here they are surveying the new territory:

 

A good recipe (385)

by Max Akroyd

This work has many perks. From seeing a beautiful May dawn to the weary but happy dusk-end of another day spent outside, it can be a real privilege.

The best bit is the ability to get priorities in the right order: family, animals, then fruit and vegetable growing. Sometimes they get into conflict, a hen escapes and unmulches your raspberry beds, the kids’ idea of planting delicate seedlings maybe on the heavy-handed side … but generally everything falls into place in a natural and strangely familiar arrangement.

Sometimes the animals provide an education to their human keepers, particularly when it comes to parenting. You can only be impressed by the dedication of a mother pig to her piglets.  A goose lacking thermal insulation for her nest plucks out a few of her own feathers to make it just so. In this way, the animals enhance understanding of ourselves.

So, despite misgivings about the work I’ll be overloading the rest of the week with, I’m taking the day off. Our youngest is four today and I’m lucky enough to share this time with him. Follow him around on his new bike in that uncomfortable crooked way, and try and soothe him when it all gets a bit much later on!

 

 

In the absence of any gardening news, I thought I’d share this recipe instead. It’s nothing glamourous but it captures the same alchemy which occurs when you take some simple ingredients and apply a little care and attention.

This, then, is Rhubarb and Raisin chutney:

900 g rhubarb, cut into 5cm chunks (important detail, to retain texture)

450 g onions, chopped

115 g raisins

300 ml water

300 ml cider vinegar

450 g demerara sugar

1 tablespoon ginger

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (more if want to make a mango chutney substitute)

Just chuck all that in a pan and simmer it down until there’s no liquid obvious. That makes just over two 0.5 litre jars-full.

We’re enjoying it so much that any suggestion of letting it mature for a month or two would be absurd. And I’m going to make to double quantaties on the next baking day.

Fair weather … and fowl (385 days to go)

by Max Akroyd

My polytunnel is a bit like a space ship – something strange but interesting which landed in the garden ten months ago.

I’ve happily harvested salad in there for weeks, but now that’s all going to seed and being stared at longingly by the goats and the hens. Meanwhile, the tomatoes and cucumbers are almost big enough to suggest that they should move in there soon. But I’m guessing. Whereas I have a fair idea about what planting strategies will succeed and fail in the open garden, or even in a greenhouse, I’m a polytunnelling virgin. Basically, I don’t know what I’m doing and it always feels a bit weird to be in there.

Talking about weird, this odd weather continues. It’s neither good nor bad, it just goes on being mainly dry. What happened to the weeks full of rain we’re accustomed to at this time of year? They serve as an aide-memoire to keep things up-to-date in the polytunnel. Without a good soaking to the skin outside, I tend to forget to find an excuse to shelter under the plastic and just default to milling around in the field.

I think the realisation that a healthy looking clump of dandelions had already managed to complete its life cycle in the polytunnel finally pushed me to act. I’ve spent the morning carefully thinning out the gone-over salad, but keeping things like Red Deer Tongue lettuce, spring onions and coriander which are still going strong. The prospect of some cold nights ahead stayed my hand when it came to planting out the cucumbers and tomatoes; but I got their planting positions ready – just in case it ever warms up. I had hoped to form proper-looking beds with wooden boards this year but, as ever, there seems to be more urgent priorities.

Like duckling food. And – I’m pleased to report – the goose is finally sitting. Suddenly a nest has appeared, in a ridiculously exposed corner of her domain, and there appears to be about six eggs inside. Sitting on top of it, night and day, rain or shine, is Queen Goose. Who isn’t exactly cuddly at the best of times, but now hisses at you and looks ugly if you get within twenty foot of her. Somehow this afternoon I’ve got to top up their little pond and generally tidy up a bit without getting pecked. Could be a challenge.

New arrivals (386)

by Max Akroyd

The prospects for today might seem a bit glum. With the next flurry of guests for the gite arriving soon, today will dedicated to that tricky task of trying to get the outside looking presentable.

It’s difficult to keep things tidy. The ‘to do’ list is on an epic scale at this time of year and the appearance of the place suffers. Buckets and tools get left lying around at the fag end of tiring days. Weeds grow in front of the house. The dogs leave bones and sticks lying around and the pigs dig up strange items. Not a good look. All the pots front of house need emptying of their tulips and replacing with the next batch of flowers from the greenhouse. Not a burning priority for me normally, especially when there’s potatoes still to plant and a thousand other jobs to be done in the field. Which is why having a gite is good for us: it stops us subsiding completely into rural idiocy!

But I will be mucking out, mowing, strimming and sweeping with a spring in my step today. For yesterday saw the long awaited arrival of some ducklings!

 

 

They’re little fluffy bundles of optimism to my mind. And if I was looking for a dedicated role model it would be mother duck. She has been so attentive to her eggs and ignored all temptations to bob about on the pond instead.  She’s now absolutely starving and funnels up all the wheat and corn I throw her way. Dad is strutting about proudly, but at a slight distance, accepting that he’s no longer the centre of her world.

Baking day (387)

by Max Akroyd

 

Get to work for 9 am, finish at 5:30 pm. Make meal. Slump on settee for a few hours’ television. Let’s call it the Industrial Day. There’s been variations of course, but generally that’s the framework I’ve been subject to… well, since birth.

Maybe it’s a man thing, maybe it’s a me thing, but it took almost 43 years for me to realise that this timetable is completely unsuited to the peasant life. There’s been hints along the way. I’ve commented before on how the weather is my new boss and defines what I do to a great extent. The animals want to be up and about at first light, not some arbitary fixed point on a clock. Seeds are best sown in the evening, leaving daylight hours for field work. But the timetable of the industrial day has been a difficult habit to break. Yesterday, I resolved to dissolve it.

 

 

The trigger was an enduring problem, where to find time in the gardening day to process crops and preserve things? It’s not often that you return from the field at 5 pm and feel inspired to create a meal, let alone start a marathon preserving session. The supermarket beckons at this point; with its array of pumped up preparations and potions, the spell is difficult for a weary manual worker to break.

So this is a tiny war declared upon the sickly regime of the supermarket, a battle against having my already shallow pocket emptied by their shareholders.

Somehow, in consultation with Emma, I got from this realisation to the notion of a baking day. One day a week, probably the rainiest, we’ll set about filling the freezer with cakes, bread and basic soups and sauces to liberate time and save money later. It’s not a real baking day, more a processing day: but necessary to protect us from being led astray by the supermarket. We’re comforted to know that our oldest relative has always done this and her memory extends back before consumer society. 

Undeterred by a house with very few ingredients in it, we all got stuck in this morning . Immediately the good sense of the venture was apparent: the oven only needed heating once, the dough was three times bigger than usual but only took the same effort to knead, chopping twenty onions is almost as easy as chopping three… almost. So far we’ve made six loaves, a big pot of tomato sauce and enough vegetable curry for three meals. Emma has made cakes sufficient for a few normal person’s days – or one of mine – and  is presently creating a range of biscuits…

This afternoon I’m going to attack the rhubarb patch and bring home enough stalks for rhubarb chutney and rhubarb juice. Emma will be tied to a production line of cake creation that Henry Ford would have been proud of!

The ties of the supermarket will only be finally cut when cropping is perfected. (Unless the money markets sever them prematurely, like next week…). But at least we’ll be ready to receive the harvest.

A bit of a reckoning (388 days to go)

by Max Akroyd

The correct response is to shrug, hoe off the weeds and try again.

Distill out the dubious benefits derived from a failed 20 metre sowing of expensive beetroot seeds – exercise, meditative calm – and learn any lessons. In this case, I’ve learned that early sowings of anything less than super-rubust into a wintry, famished soil are misguided.

Next year, my early sowing of beetroot will be in modules in February for transplanting now.

Next no show: late February-sown peas. That dry spell, and some voracious voles, have meant very patchy results. It’s unfair, our six year old helped me sow all those. The injustice of it all! Never mind, he enjoyed that sunny afternoon and forgot about the peas since. Shut up and sow some more.

The parsnips are patchy, I’ve chitted some more and sowed them in the gaps. In microcosm the pragmatic approach imposed on an unruly mind by the need to be self-sufficient.

This morning was reluctantly sacrificed to the past: making good and patching up. Forgiving and moving on.

Then I stood back and I admired the crab apple blossom.

 

Money matters (392)

by Max Akroyd

 

With grumpy hens, and seeds unsown, I couldn’t hold it off any longer. A trip to the farm shop was required this morning.

Or was it? A look at the items on my receipt reveals some unremarkable things : potting composts, hen food and dog food. But these items, upon closer inspection, are a bit odd. Mysterious composites of stuff, provenance unknown, bought to replace two obvious and naturally occurring things, soil and food.  

I’m used to scouring supermarket receipts and thinking, “hey I can grow that/process that myself”. The farm shop purchases have escaped this scrutiny, until now. Generally, I’m finding the best yardstick to use in such matters is to ask whether a seventeeenth century peasant would have used or needed the thing in question. (Let’s set aside the inconvenient fact that some things – like a tetanus jab – fall foul of this strategy). 

Or, to look at it the other way, it seems the essence of progress is to buy something you could make, but shrink-wrapped in colourful plastic packaging.

You could argue that these products are time-saving. But I’ve missed a precious morning in the garden. The cost of the purchases, plus that of the petrol going to get them, represents a lot of time and effort in itself. Money is time. And I suppose I should also be mindful of all the finite energy resources inherent in manufacturing and transporting all these heavy consumer items.

If you get fancy ideas about replicating a product at home, there’s usually some expert to tell you that things will go wrong. Your chickens’ heads will fall off for sure due to the imperfect nutrition of homemade hen food. They need genetically modified soya you know – after all it’s only natural. Your seedlings will twist and die in your homely mix of seed compost. Well, I’m starting to think experts exist to obfuscate the bleedin’ obvious … for cash.

So that’s it. I’m resolved. No more soft handouts to agrochemical industry. I’m going to overlay my existing undertakings with some more: producing my own hen food, dog food and seed composts. But how? Dog food is straightforward because it was expertly covered here. The other two are slightly more testing. For the 21st century peasant, research always  starts with an internet search. So far I’ve found this for hen food and this for seed compost. I’d like to avoid having to buy one of these. And also any textbooks on hen nutrition, if possible, my insomnia isn’t that bad.

The next step is to throw the question open to the kind readers of one’s blog! If you have any answers or suggestions, please let me know. 

In the meantime, I’m off to spend the afternoon pushing an underpowered grass-cutting device round and round in circles to satisfy the perceived expectation of others that grass should look a certain way. Modern life, eh?

Bean trenching (393)

by Max Akroyd

After yesterday’s outrageous slackery, it was high time to get to grips with the bean trenches.

This was the unpromising scene awaiting me in the neglected corner of the Kitchen Garden I’d earmarked for this task:

 

Where to begin?

A morning’s weeding, digging and malleting (?) achieved, well, a half-finished war-zone type look:

 

Work in progress...

Having persuaded myself that dinner (lunch) was for wimps who lack bean trenches, I got the job done:

 

Time for a coffee break

I’ve half-heartedly put in a couple of canes to show how the thing will work. The top section is for a row of runner beans whose trenches will be completed at that future date my back has forgiven me for this morning’s endeavours…

Otherwise, all that remains is to fork over the trench and fill it with manure and grass cuttings – which is handy because there’s more mowing to do this afternoon. In an effort to retain moisture in the bean trench, old-timers used to fill their trenches with newspapers. But we don’t get a newspaper, and I find this technique doesn’t work so well with the online edition.

French Beans (394 days to go)

by Max Akroyd

Regarding most of May’s sowings and planting outs I’ve got beds prepared, or at least in a state of readiness. The realisation dawned today that, with the French beans, I’m nowhere.

Extra potatoes and the celery/celeriac have pushed their way forward in the queue and got their names on the remaining trenches. The cardoons and artichokes will get planted through some mulched sections once we’re through the Saints de Glace period. The runner beans at least have one edge of the Perennial Beds plan to themselves. Where to put the French beans? 

To clarify, these are the climbing versions. To order things in my old brain, I reserve the dwarf type as a follow on crop from the potatoes: it’s simplicity itself to rake over these beds once the spuds are out and throw in a few rows of beans. But arranging things vertically for the rest of the French bean crop maximises yield. Not sure I’ve got enough canes but I can always coppice some of the many hazels around the place. The bean seed are in to soak, just to get a root shoot off each one before bringing them on in pots.

All the plan now lacks is some growing space. And time. Today has been allocated to seeing our delightful bank manager and going to an art exhibition with Emma. Two years of servitude to the new baby will make such things nigh on impossible for us soon, so we’re seizing the chance today!

Green support (395)

by Max Akroyd

 

An advantage of the Hungry Gap is an enhanced appreciation of anything that fills it. Chances are, that thing will be green, wrongly under-appreciated during the rest of the year and will keep you regular. Exhibit A (above) is a Portuguese kale.

This robust plant has been generously giving up its outer leaves for a week or so now. Coarser and more mustard-y than the couve tronchuda, it’s an excellent addition to curries. The stem, cut into sections, is very edible too: I boil them in the water below the cut leaves, which sit in the steamer above.

Next item under consideration: rhubarb. As a sometime resident of the Rhubarb Triangle, it’s not so much a case of appreciating this harvest more but trying to find new things to do with it… 

I’d already reconciled myself to no coffee next year but the prospect of unadulterated tap water is a bit grim. The water here is ok, but not much fun. So I was pleased to discover this simple recipe and will endeavour to create my own rhubarb juice. Some time this week. When I consider everything that needs doing outside (it unfurls in my mind’s eye like a big swathe of weeds) the prospect of the requisite preserving seems a bit remote.

 

In fact, if I’d known this morning would consist of:

1. Discovering more chitted second early potatoes to be planted 
2. Digging and forking over a ten metre trench to accommodate said spuds
3. Mowing a large section of rough grass
4. Mucking out all the animals
5. Chasing round after an angry, orange-bottomed bee in an attempt to impress another blogger;

Then I’d probably have discovered I had a bad case of jogger’s nipple and retired to my bed. However, if all but 5. could be incorporated into a neat little package of a job, then: no problem! If the product of 3. & 4. can be used in the cultivation of 1. – then I’m completely sold on the concept. Hell, I might even cut the grass in a peculiar triangular pattern to reflect the shape of the vegetable beds below:

 

Yes I did climb a tree...

 

All done and dusted. Well apart from actually putting the potatoes into their manure and grass-cutting lined rows. With the distinct possibility of a frost tonight I’ll be spending a lot of the afternoon mulching the more advanced potatoes with straw. It’s all good exercise.

Oh, and the bee. A career in wildlife photography? Glad I’ve got a day job:

 

Bombus orangus arsus

 

Just do it. Kind of.

by Max Akroyd

 

I bring you good tidings this Sunday morning. You are fitter than you thought you were.

Unless you are ridiculously young anyway or an olympian in your spare time – you know who you are – all that gardening is enough to make you passably fit. I know this because I’ve just completed my second ‘run’ of this week. And it wasn’t that bad.

Unfortunately, becoming a peasant hasn’t made me any brighter and I’ve unwisely undertaken, before my children no less, to run a half marathon next year. So first thing this morning I was up early enough to notice all the new light around the place. Collecting our two dogs, who were just as stiff in leg and uncertain in mind about a repeat of this idea, we headed off to the local forest.

How beautiful the spring morning by the river Hyère was, emerald light passing through the new-formed canopy … shame about the ungainly peasant giant lumbering through the scene with his ragged dogs, causing all the panicked local fauna to fly off or sploosh into the river. I managed to complete the three miles or so by splitting it into sections of jogging, staggering and stopping for a wheezey respite. I believe this systematic approach to running is called a fartlek among fellow professionals. 

As I sprinted lustily forward, it was gratifying to look back and see Poppy – our hound thing – miles behind, like a hairy barrel with a little pink strip of tongue stuck on the front. Less so to look down to see Lucy, our labrador, keeping up with me without even breaking into a jog. Oh well, we all made it back to the car without medical intervention, then home for coffee and a bacon butty. The Rural Idiocy fitness plan completed for another day.

Gardening today will comprise sowing seeds in the greenhouse and a bit of potting on. The fact that this means I can sit on my arse all day is purely coincidental. 

Quote

by Max Akroyd

“For all the blitheness of spirit, wise heads watch for frost in the first week in May…”

Monty Don

Slug traps and wood ash (397)

by Max Akroyd

Despite the availability of a range of excellent Breton ales, beer isn’t a commodity seen very often chez-nous. If there’s any spare money it tends to be ‘invested’ in excellent wines available at low prices – France is a cheap option if you’re a cheese-loving alcoholic, but expensive for the rest of us.

Anyway, if I did have beer I wouldn’t share it with a devious, no-good, slimy mollusc intent on depriving me of my chance of subsistence. This is in no way a reference to contenders in the forthcoming election in the UK, but to the bizarre practice of some organic gardeners of filling their slug traps with beer. It’s just not going to happen here. Having had only partial success with organic slug pellets, I’ve been on the look out for an alternative snail killer. The ducks are patrolling the polytunnel/greenhouse area very effectively but the field is largely undefended…

No more! It’s not often that someone’s been excited by a bucket of pig food accidentally left out in the rain, but I was that someone when I noticed how many slugs and snails had converged on this soggy but simple mix of wheat and water. All that was left for me to do was find enough containers to replicate this outcome on the field and to inspire the boys to engage wth me in this wild beast hunt. Not difficult. An additional benefit is the ability to pick up said receptacles and deliver them to the omniverous farm animals to fight over. I’m sure the love of snails isn’t just confined to French pigs and hens.

 

I hope you like it, it's my only one.

The rest of the morning was spent tending to my peas and broad beans. Despite the attentions of the pigeons, the peas are flourishing. Not a word I’d ascribe to the broad beans. I’ve been spraying them with seaweed solution previously and today spread wood ash among them. But, sown in October, these are rugged and ragged survivors of the deep freeze of winter and my questionable decision to plant them at the windiest point of the field. I replaced the predictable casualties with a freshly sown, small variety called ‘Greeny’.  

You may regard this as an ad hoc, overdue contingency arrangement. I’m calling it a successional planting.

 

Hanging in there... Aquadulce broad beans

May

by Max Akroyd

 

For me, May is the watershed month.

Fruit and vegetable-wise the harvest is still a bit thin as the long wait for fruition continues. But this starts to change quite rapidly by the end of the month as the rest – the leaves, roots and shoots we eat – start to come thick and fast. The opportunity to sow things is comensurately reduced though: the vast majority of seeds sown from June will be an uneasy ‘late sowing’. The foundations for every edible plan need to be laid this month or filed, improbably, under ‘maybe next year’…

Inedible things are burgeoning too. Making our cultivated food crops look like the overbred weaklings they are – weeds, grasses and everything else farm animals conveniently process for us – swamp the last vestiges of winter’s sparseness.

With that mud and drear a distant memory, this is the time of abundance for the animals. Leaves for the goats, endless vegetable peelings and trimmings for the hens and, in the case of the pigs, there’s the regular chance to take their siestas outoors in the bramble patch. It’s capturing this contentment, as much as the diversity of  their outdoor diet, which makes the end product so rich.

Hopefully this month will see the arrival of lots of ducklings – poor mother duck has certainly been sitting for long enough. And the conception of some goslings too, if the gander diverts some of the energy spent squawking and shaking his head at all and sundry into a bit of bird on bird action.

The new month will also see the (slightly delayed) arrival of the meat hens. It would be easy to stay as a pork monoculture, but instinct suggests that we need another broad supply of animal protein. Another animal-related certainty is the need to radically reduce imported grain in their diet. Forage crops are going to be mentioned quite a bit this month. Which is nice because I’ll be able to say mangel-wurzel a lot.  

It’s just as well the animals are hard at work. If the sowing train is leaving I’m definitely faced with a last-minute, undignified sprint to get on board this year! My determination to get planting spaces ready on the field has meant the absolute basics are in pots and open soil, but nothing more. And there’s a new throng of good things joining April’s ranks of the unsown: beans, sweet corn and squash.

Fortunately motivation isn’t lacking to get these wonderful, abundant crops going. Just time…