6th July 2021
I get down with sunlight still bleeding on the western horizon. The same Copper Black as has been out the last two nights is on top of the coop; I shoo her off. Odd.
8 eggs
7th July 2021
Allotment Club, with two families as well as ours. Sunny, humid. Buckets of harvest, and as a side to our lunch I pick onion greens. Joe loves them; they’re spicy but luscious, fresh, ripe. The onions are nearly ready themselves – we should get enough for most of the next year. The first courgette flowers are out.
A couple of weak bean tillers are snapped off as the
children harvest; this is somewhat inevitable, but the grubby-handed
smallholder in me is really frustrated by the loss of, perhaps, 30 pods. That’s
maybe a half-pound. On the other hand, I should consider it an education cost –
the kids have to learn how to pick beans, and there were always going to be
casualties en route to their expertise.
Later, we host friends for dinner. We use up all the
home-grown lettuce left in the fridge, both Gem and Beauregard – and I think:
this stuff is just toxic roadside nonsense. We took it and tamed it, like you
break a colt, and turned it into something edible and useful...and so varied!
The Gem is crunchy, juicy, with pine-dark green leaves; the Beauregard is more
delicate, an almost papery leaf in duck-egg green, peppery to taste. The
ancient farmer was as close to a wonderworker as any modern geneticist.
I sow carrot seed in the evening (late, should have done it
last month, but the weather early in the year has knocked everything back). I
also check on the potatoes; as well as the 25 Early plants, there are now 19 or
so Maincrop plants showing above ground. We may recover the potato harvest yet!
The Copper Black goes inside normally; weird streak broken.
I hear the progress of the England-Denmark game by listening
to the village; the shouts as England score their second goal rise from
different points and join, forming a victorious chorus, like a roaring sea.
There’s a timeless element here, somehow – of course people are watching on TV,
but I am not, and hear news travel by acclamation across the silent land.
But that piece of news is trumped as I walk to get some
water: a hedgehog! First I’ve seen in years. One of our many declining animal
populations, suffering as so many from busier roads, more heavily broken up by
human development, the rest of it.
The hog watches me pass, and is gone by the time I return. A
snuffling mascot for a land-healing ministry.
6 eggs, 3oz Meteor peas, 3.75lbs Aquadulce beans (1lb shelled),
3 rhubarb stalks (other stalks were brought home but had withered by the time
they were processed)
8th July 2021
Only briefly at the allotment, but later, when walking home from a friend’s birthday BBQ, I see another hedgehog. Is this the reverse of the ravens leaving the tower?
7 eggs
9th July 2021
I enjoy a therapeutic hour in the evening working at the allotment. I spread wood shaving over the chicken yard to help with the mud; by next winter I want to have it woodchipped. This will produces us good compost, help with absorbency, and the chickens will enjoy hunting for bugs amongst the chips.
I top up their bedding – we basically “deep bed” them until
there’s not room and then clear some of the rubbish out. This is perfectly
hygienic – the new bedding covers the old waste and helps the composting
process, which also produces a little ambient heat for the chickens. Especially
good in winter.
I feed and water them. We use layers pellets, plus a little
corn and grit. Not organic – I’d rather be grazing them on grass and topping up
with minerals, but organic feed is twice the price and so as they’re static we
compromise.
There is something cleansing about being here; it is not
that one is mindless in working. Indeed, doing manual labour allows the mind to
wander and reflect more than clerical work. But there is something grounding,
reality-setting – yes, I have many worries; yes, there are burdens and
obstacles; but here, now, “at the still point of the turning world”, I am
present, and able to achieve something, no matter how small.
The chickens are fed. The young rhubarb and the cabbages are
flourishing. The bean harvest continues apace. If I die tomorrow, I will have
served my day.
7 eggs
10th July 2021
I don’t go down today, having too much other work to do; I miss it.
7 eggs, 1 head of Beauregard lettuce, 1 Meteor peapod
(0.2oz)
11th July 2021
We see a sparrowhawk take out a pigeon on the way down for Sunday School. It watches the whole crowd of us gawking. Another pigeon watches, too, seemingly more confused than distressed.
In the evening I come down and discover the chicken yard
door had been left open, and the little monsters had gone out on to the
allotment in style. The chard and cauliflowers have been thoroughly gobbled
(but hopefully can still recover), and other plants have been unearthed. Somehow
worst of all, the chickens had all then gone back in to their yard! I spend
time replanting plants and covering vulnerable specimens.
6 eggs, 1 head of Beauregard lettuce
12th July 2021
We have tomato pasta with our own broad beans and lettuce. This is satisfying, of course – but also nutritious! The broad beans are stuffed with easy calories, protein, and minerals, whilst the lettuce is very good for both vitamins and minerals. And this is all very easy to grow – both have basically grown themselves with just a bit of weeding, a single string round the beans, and slug-hunting for the lettuce. Scores of bean seeds, hundreds of lettuce seeds – they cost a pound or two each. Virtually free, easy to grow, nutritious.
7 eggs
I get down with sunlight still bleeding on the western horizon. The same Copper Black as has been out the last two nights is on top of the coop; I shoo her off. Odd.
Allotment Club, with two families as well as ours. Sunny, humid. Buckets of harvest, and as a side to our lunch I pick onion greens. Joe loves them; they’re spicy but luscious, fresh, ripe. The onions are nearly ready themselves – we should get enough for most of the next year. The first courgette flowers are out.
Only briefly at the allotment, but later, when walking home from a friend’s birthday BBQ, I see another hedgehog. Is this the reverse of the ravens leaving the tower?
I enjoy a therapeutic hour in the evening working at the allotment. I spread wood shaving over the chicken yard to help with the mud; by next winter I want to have it woodchipped. This will produces us good compost, help with absorbency, and the chickens will enjoy hunting for bugs amongst the chips.
I don’t go down today, having too much other work to do; I miss it.
We see a sparrowhawk take out a pigeon on the way down for Sunday School. It watches the whole crowd of us gawking. Another pigeon watches, too, seemingly more confused than distressed.
We have tomato pasta with our own broad beans and lettuce. This is satisfying, of course – but also nutritious! The broad beans are stuffed with easy calories, protein, and minerals, whilst the lettuce is very good for both vitamins and minerals. And this is all very easy to grow – both have basically grown themselves with just a bit of weeding, a single string round the beans, and slug-hunting for the lettuce. Scores of bean seeds, hundreds of lettuce seeds – they cost a pound or two each. Virtually free, easy to grow, nutritious.
No comments:
Post a Comment