Which is the better measure: customary or metric?

Should we have customary measures, or metric ones? What would make one better than the other? A remarkable thing to observe is how hot people get under the collar over measurements.  At one level it seems like the same sort of issue as whether you call something a swede or a turnip or a rutabaga. I mean, it might be confusing, but who cares? Different strokes, different folks. Why would you legally preference one over the other, as happened with metric over customary measures in Britain? Why would you be outraged at not being allowed to sell solely in pounds and ounces, or at the Government putting customary measures back on a level pegging with metric? Yet many people are, and furiously so – read opinions columns, read Twitter. These great emotional geysers must necessarily tap deep wells.
 
We can more or less take people at their word, I think. Here are the most typical explanations I hear, just in common conversation: “metric is more rational, it’s easier to use” vs “customary is familiar and well-worn, it feels human”. Let’s boil these down, or extrapolate them, or something.
 
The strengths of metric are that it is more “rational”, and easier to use. The latter can be summed up by saying that base 10 is a wholly regular for multiplication and division, and that using it across different areas of measurement (length, weight, volume, etc) is easier to learn than a mixture of base 12, 14, and 16. Well, base 12 and base 16 are both pretty good – arguably more useful than 10 – but I think we can allow the general point.
 
“Rational”, of course, is actually a word meaning something else, here. It’s aspirational, not simply rational. The metre was the result of a French Revolutionary project, based on a fraction of the earth’s radius, or at least on an estimate of that – now known to be inaccurate. Yet the symbol remains – even the flaw might be seen as an eloquent testament to the ongoing process of scientific refinement, of rationality, of the humility of pure reason. The metric system – metre, metric, from Greek metreo, I measure, Greek the language of reason and science – declares the total comprehensibility of the world, of the prospect of human mastery over it, of progress.
 
Those who prefer customary measures will often think of them as like a well-worn stairpost in a family home, smoothed by generations; like family photographs so familiar as to be impressed into memory. The pint is the shape of a particular glass (since 1913!), the particular measure, the pub or bar, the chain of memory linking back to every “Royal Oak” founded in thanks to God after 1660, every “Marquess of Granby” after 1770. Every old soldier sitting in his pub, endowed by the bald-headed old soldier, drank and served this measure; the rum measures served to the victorious survivors of Trafalgar were measured in the same (well, actually, in quarter-pint measures, gills, but you get the point).
 
Indeed, many of the measures feel measured not in terms of universal absolutes, human mastery over nature, but rather in terms of smaller, humbler measures. How far is the human stride? What is the length between thumb and forefinger? How much ale fits into a round-handled drinking jar? (Okay, that last one is speculative! But probably right. These things stretch back into the mist.) These are, in the general sense, actually quite easy to teach and learn; these connect physically, they resemble something (your grandfather’s hand, the comfortable glazed jars on the shelf). They are not consistent of themselves, of course – they have to be codified to be consistent, as we in fact have codified them – and they will vary throughout the world, but what matters is that they work in the place they exist to measure. This task they accomplish.
 
One might consider this all easily resolvable. Metric can serve as a measure in science, if it suits scientists – they say it does – and it can be a universal translator for measures, a Rosetta Stone to turn lakhs into shillings, an instrument of international trade. Customary measures can be happily used at home, uninterfered with by any Weights and Measures Acts.
 
Yet this simply does not satisfy some. One or other must totally triumph – and in our day, the side comfortably most aggressive on this point are those who do not simply prefer metric, but who are devoted to its propagation. To put customary and metric measures on level pegging, we are told, is to throw the UK back to the 1970s; it is “weaponising nostalgia” (blasting shillings from a shotgun, launching lbs from a bombard); it is crypto-imperialism. This is all ridiculous, of course, and the vast majority of metric supporters would not adopt it, but why is it used by prominent public figures? What causes this moral spasm?
 
How we measure the world is how we see the world, and for the diehards, there is only one window in the whole stately home through which to view things. What is at stake – why such rhetoric seems justified to the arch-metrician – is that the Revolutionary measure represents the Revolutionary spirit, the Revolutionary achievement, the conquest of superstition and tradition and the triumph of the human spirit. Why would you not fight for that? Of course any attempt to undermine or reverse that progress must be halted, crushed, obliterated. The pint in the pub, the measurement in ounces, the similar but flawed yard over the metre, all must be seen as counterrevolutionary, as enemies of the people.
 
It is ultimately existential, as ridiculous as that might seem. That it is existential actually, I think, the puzzled indifference of the typical conservative. You say to the philosophical conservative that this measurement helps the scientist, or that translation into it serves the purpose of trade – very well then, that is a prudential and wise purpose. The origin of the measurement is of little concern. Variety is a conservative value, the fitting of different tools to different tasks. The progressive believes that the most elegant of field tools, the Dutch hoe, is for digging holes and removing branches; the conservative turns to the clumsier spade and the fault-prone lopper for these tasks, because they actually do the job. Thus the conservative can reconcile to the use of metric as the progressive cannot to customary measures.
 
Yet the conservative can never be drawn away from the worn stairpost and the old pint tankard. These may not seem rational to Robespierre, but they are totally reasonable; they are useful things and loved things, and one never throws away either. The conservative looks at the yard and thinks: why is my stride something like a millionth of the earth’s radius? What order and what plan has designed my body like that? How do I, mere clay, fit into this enormous cosmic order that is so measurable, so reasonable? And so the conservative finds a little treasure in the French Revolution, in the monstrosity that set the world to an inferno not yet quenched. The conservative values the yard more for the metre, not less.
 
The question of which of metric or customary measures is better is one that cuts beyond the first responses to the bifurcation rending Western civilization. No simple formula can conclude the debate; in the final accounting, it ties to the ultimate issue of existence, whether man exists in a cold, indifferent nature, aiming to conquer and subdue it – or whether man takes part in an ancient and orderly dance, a minor but privileged participant in the great work of creation.

"Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism" by Juan Donoso Cortes – Book 1, Chapter 1 Reflections

"Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism" by Juan Donoso Cortes – Book 1, Chapter 1 Reflections

I don’t pretend to go into reading Donoso Cortes’ magnum opus with any expertise – I know virtually no Hispanophone literature of the time, with my knowledge of “conservative reaction” being defiantly Anglophone. But I got a POD photocopy of McDonald’s translation, so here we are.
 
I’m going to write a summary of each chapter as I understood it, plus some notes on specific points. I think these will be useful in cementing my learning, at least. God willing this’ll be of use to others!
 
Book 1, Chapter 1 Summary
Donoso quickly establishes that this work is polemical, in the sense that it is polemos, war; rhetorical war, but war, and therefore direct and aimed at “destroying obstacles” (2 Corinthians 10.5). This first chapter, I take it, has two rhetorical aims: to establish theological truth as grounding any other truth; and to establish the Roman Church as the receptacle of ultimate theological truth. The obstacles he immediately sets himself up as seeking to destroy are any sort of indifferentism and, consequently, any opposition to the Roman Church. This presumably will form a strong subject of the book as a whole.
 
Donoso does not seek to establish some other first principle and from that infer that theology “embraces all things”, as he puts it. His chapter summary is “How a great question is always involved in every political question”, and he seeks to establish this in the very first paragraph. He wryly quotes Proudhon discovering that theology is involved in politics, before simply frankly stating that theology, as “the science of God”, “embraces all things”. This is a statement of pure necessity – if theology is the science of God, then ipso facto it embraces all things.
 
This is not beggaring the question. Any presuppositionalist argument necessarily states as fact its first principle, because without the first principle nothing else can be comprehensible. Van Til put it this way: “we reason from the impossibility of the contrary”. As the self-evident only explanation for the universe is God (thus, say, St Paul in Romans 1), there is no need to prove this beyond the statement of its self-evidence. This Donoso goes on to state in a hymn of praise of (in this translation at least) real beauty.
 
All truth is in God and apprehended through God. Donoso infers from this that where faith diminishes, so does truth. There is not a separate autonomous mode (perhaps given by God, perhaps not) where someone can simply know truth. Yes, Donoso says, God does by common grace preserve some portion of truth to those who do not believe; but even here there is necessarily “the extravagance of the human intellect” in the sense of decadence, of autoolatry, of self-deception precisely through great knowledge. Ages of great knowledge without God are “less luminous than inflamed”. Ultimately, these great ages of wisdom are greatly deceived, greatly lacking in truth.
 
This plainly applies to political questions, too. Political and social science, Donoso says, are not independent things; they are at best descriptions of theological functions. “Man in his weakness distinguishes what is united in God in the simplest unity.” Secularism – including the secularism of many sincere Christians – is ultimately a category error. There is no realm of “the world” opposed to the realm of God (no Non-Overlapping Magisterium). The secular priests of the medieval church, one might say, were in the world (saeculum) on behalf of God; the secularist priests (philosophers, mock-scientists, political thinkers) of the modern age are of the world and against God.
 
“Theology, in its most general acceptation, is the perpetual subject of all sciences, as God is the perpetual subject of all human speculations.” Everything is ultimately theological. Politics, as Proudhon was perplexed to discover, is always theological.
 
With this established Donoso turns to the second of his summary arguments – that the highest receptacle of theological truth is the Roman Church. He does this, intriguingly, not by mere statement, but by a sort of theory of religions. He draws out – in high rhetorical style – the chief features of what he sees as “Eastern” and “Western” religion. Eastern religion is austere, wise, meditative, transcendent, silent; Western religion is heroic, earthy, immanent, harmonic.
 
Pre-Christian Rome is where the two meet, via the Etruscan religions – it has gods, but it has austerity. Pagan Rome is where the true insights of pagan religions meet; it is already the centre of the world, even though it never conquered India or China, because it has approached closest to true understanding. “From Sparta  she has severity; from Athens, culture; from  Memphis, pomp; and grandeur from Babylon and Nineveh. In a word, the East is the thesis, the West its antithesis, and Rome the synthesis.”
 
But this is all upset by a revolting blasphemy, a bizarre inversion, a Child born in a Stable. Jesus may have been acceptable if merely “political”, promising liberation for Israel, but He was also ethical, calling for the toppling of proud hypocrites. And so Caiaphas – the high priest of true religion – and Pilate – the representative of lawful authority, the representative of the centre of the world – came together in judgement. Donoso argues that Pilate’s propensity to mercy is actually an action out of ignorance – he thinks Jesus merely “religious”, where Caiaphas rightly understands that Jesus is ultimately political, will ultimately doom the political settlement of Rome and Judea and everywhere else. Indeed, this finds some backing in the Johannine telling of the Passion, and Caiaphas’ true prophecy there. Pilate – open to exercising mercy, but ultimately “immortal type of corrupt judges” – goes along with this. Jesus is crucified, and “everything as at rest for a moment”.
 
But then signs and wonders multiplied, Jerusalem fell, disasters struck Rome, Kings paid obeisance to the Cross – this is how Donoso ends the chapter. But what happened to produce this? “Nothing . . . only some new theologians  are going about the world announcing a new theology.”
 
Book 1, Chapter 1 Quotes and Miscellany
“Theology, inasmuch as it is the science of God, is the ocean which contains and embraces all sciences, as God is the ocean which contains and embraces all things.” – Theology, the Queen of the Sciences!
 
“This explains why, in proportion to the diminution of faith, truths diminish in the world . . . The diminution of faith, which produces the diminution of truth, does not necessarily carry with it the diminution, but rather, the extravagance, of the human intellect.” – Not a contradiction in logical terms, but this seems a rhetorical weakening – except that Donoso wants to point out that earthly wisdom does not equate to ultimate truth or a virtuous mind. The extravagance is what produces the diminution.
 
“The adorer of the infinite substance is condemned to a perpetual slavery and an infinite indolence; the desert will be for him something more sublime than the city, because it is more silent, more solitary, more grand; and yet he will not adore it as his god, because the desert is not infinite.” – Of “Eastern religion”. We may niggle at the traditional cliché of Oriental indolence, but the identification of the flaw of any pure expression of the Vedic religions is precise. The concept of the transcendent is magnificent, but alone it lacks two things: actual infinity, and sociability. The Triune God is actually infinite, Creator not created; not a concept but three Persons; adorable as God, not idea. Yet the Triune God is also sociable, sociable in Godself but also by the Son’s Immanence as Christ.
 
“[Of Western religion:] In this multitude of cities and of gods all will be disorder and confusion. Men will have in them something heroic and divine, and the gods, something terrestrial and human. The gods will give to men the comprehension and instinct of the great and the beautiful, and men will give to the gods their discords and their vices. There will be men of lofty fame and virtue, and incestuous and adulterous gods.” – The Eastern religion, in this sketch, is magnificently static and silent; the Western religion is music and dance, but only that, and so all falls to confusion. The Western religion desacralizes the gods, as the Presocratics, Socrates, and Plato all lamented. Yet it undeniably affirms the sociability necessary to virtuous life, and endows human life with something holy, something heroic.
 
Donoso calls those who judged Jesus’ fate “the unprejudiced and enlightened people of that age”, who would have forgiven Him a message of vague spirituality with a hint of political liberation, but could not forgive Him His message of spiritual liberation by penance, seeing as it made an existential demand upon them. Here he obviously and openly targets contemporaries. (Spanish Liberals, perhaps? Amongst many others.) The self-titled Enlightened, the self-titled unprejudiced, are those who “suppress the truth” (Romans 1.18) to hide their prejudices and their own obscurantism.
 
“ ‘Give to God what belongs to God, and to Caesar what belongs to Caesar’ – which was the same as – ‘I leave you your Caesar, and I robe you of your Jupiter’” – A lovely exposition, and a powerful insight. This concerns the Roman tribute, and whilst Jesus did not rob any Law-abiding Jew of Jupiter – they did not know him – His division of spheres necessarily topples Jupiter. Though it was the Jews who saw Jesus as a blasphemer, it was the Roman gods He truly blasphemed, if one can blaspheme a fiction.

A Smallholder's Diary, Weeks 9-11 (17th August-4th September 2021): Sick Chickens and Holiday

Week 9
17^th August 2021
Brief trip to put chickens to bed. No egg from the Gingernut Ranger hen for over a week, now. Production in general is down, so it may be a hormonal issue related to it being so cloudy (chickens are stimulated to lay by light), or it may be something else.
 
5 eggs

18^th August 2021
Helen reports (somehow unsurprising) the Gingernut Ranger hen is ill – sluggish, uninterested in doing much. I visit twice through the day, and watch her actively seek out water to drink – so I make sure there is apple cider vinegar in our water containers, to help stimulate her immune system. Hard to judge the problems – chickens just have problems sometimes, and they usually die. The cost of healthcare is so disproportionate to the market value of a layer that it’s not viable for a working animal.
 
4 eggs, 1 large Black Beauty courgette, 1 small Black Beauty courgette, misc onions, 5.82oz blackberries

19^th August 2021
Ginger continues to stick around, and if anything by my evening visit is more mobile – I chivvy her out from a corner where she’s sheltering and she almost runs! She probably has an infection of some kind – she is thirsty but not doing much else – and has, perhaps, a 20% chance of survival. We can’t do much more than we can, but I’m rooting for her.

4 eggs, 1 large Black Beauty courgette, 2oz blackberries, 1 small strawberry
 
20^th August 2021
I start harvesting Main crop potatoes, as some are showing above the surface. Mostly red, only a few of great size. Most of the plants are dead, too. May just need to pull them all before we leave on holiday.
 
4 eggs, 2 small strawberries, 1lb 2.65oz Main potatoes, 16.8oz blackberries
 
21^st August 2021
Big final harvest before we go, most notably finishing off the Main crop potatoes. The plants are basically all dead above ground, and the issues with shallow and compacted soil mean that erosion will likely expose all that’s left before we’re home, turning it green.
 
The Main crop is, really, disappointing – about 16 potatoes went in and about 30-40 decent ones came out, or something like that. I think they lost their best growth to the poor middle summer, where the Earlies – despite having the strange spring to cope with – just had more time to get going.
 
4 eggs, 3 small strawberries (0.1oz), 2 blackberries (0.2oz), 6 French Breakfast radishes, 3lb 7.25oz Main potatoes, 2oz Early potatoes, 1 Golden Zucchini
 
22^nd August 2021
A hurricane of preparation as head off to see family for a fortnight. This is really too long in most circumstances to leave even such a small patch as ours – produce scales, but time does not. The chickens still need daily care, the plants still need watering (at this time of year), and so forth.
 
With a little difficulty we arrange “farm”-sitting, leaving the chickens with extra food, watering whatever needs watering now, and so forth. Then we’re off.
 
5 eggs
 
Holiday (Weeks 10 and 11) – 23^rd August-4^th September 2021
Our farmsitters keep collecting eggs and courgettes whilst we’re gone (all the crops listed below were harvested in August and will go into that set of accounts; eggs will be split between months per day of collection).
 
The Ginger hen dies. She had rallied a little, and was initially fine whilst we were away, but a week on she faded and then within a day had died. This didn’t surprise us, nor – frankly – upset us. It’s a stressor removed. We were not as ruthless as many smallholders would have been with a sick, non-laying bird, but ultimately, our chickens are there to produce for us, not to be pets. We looked after her; it’s a shame she died; but we move on.
 
At my in-laws, I am left in charge of harvesting from the vegetable patch at the end of the garden. There are a few Aquadulce broad beans left, as well as plenty of Scarlet Emperor runner beans (in fact, they’re only really hitting their crest at this point). I even salvage discarded, overlarge runner bean pods from the compost. I shell them, and we blanch and freeze them alongside the broad beans – they can be cooked together as a bean mix, even though the pods were past eating.
 
We get back at dusk on the Saturday, and I check in on the chickens, who are a little (but not desperately) hungry. Probably they’ve struggled for food on and off since we’ve been away, due to the vagaries of visit timing – they have been looked after well, but both greater experience with them and skin in the game mean you get there more often and judge more quickly what they need.
 
46 eggs, 1 large Black Beauty courgette, 2 large Di Nizza squashes, 1 large Golden Zucchini courgette, ~900g blackberries 

A Smallholder's Diary, Week 8: 10th-16th August 2021

10^th August 2021
A visiting friend comes down to see the allotment. He has just moved house, and grew strawberries and vegetables in his old garden; the landlady’s “gardeners” had destroyed the last of his harvest as he left by dumping cut grass and branches on the strawberries, and had cut down growing potato plants. There is something strongly metaphoric here – a man rents a patch, improves it, grows a harvest, but ultimately is not allowed to have ownership over the land he improves. Loss of the commons and enclosure come to mind.
5 eggs, 2 large Golden Zucchinis, 2 French Breakfast radishes, 1.75oz Ruby Lights chard

11^th August 2021
The tomatoes have had a late surge in pollination – suddenly dozens of extra fruit have appeared! Despite being in a north-facing yard, they are doing reasonably – the warmth of the adjacent house helps. My estimates of how many fruits we’ll end up with have gone from more, say, 30-40, up to 60 or so – from disappointing (but breaking even) to beginning to profit on seeds sown, even if only by a little.
 
6 eggs, 1 large Golden Zucchini, 1 small De Nizza courgette

12^th August 2021
Twilight working, with the harvest continuing to roll in. The Golden Ranger hen is very broody, and often sitting on the eggs – that is, she gathers them and sits on them in the middle of the coop, not even in the nestbox! We may have to deal with this, as broody hens can cause problems for the other hens laying.
 
Earlier in the day, Joe (4) picks his first radish from the pot of radish and lettuce he and Zeb (2) sowed last month.
 
7 eggs, 1 French Breakfast radish, 2.1oz Welsh onions, 1 small Golden Zucchini, 1 large Golden Zucchini, misc onions, 1.8oz Meteor peas (0.6oz shelled), 1.2oz blackberries
 
13^th August 2021
The blackberries continue to beg to be picked, and the branches lie heavy on the bushes. We have several that overhang only our patch, which are therefore solely our crop – shared with the birds, of course. Given the relative value of soft fruit, this is an incredibly efficient activity. A few minutes for an ounce, say – 28g. 150g costs £2 at Tesco. 15 minutes for £2 – pretty much minimum wage, but of course this is all off your own back, with the food going directly to your table or freezer.
 
I also spot some uncovered Earlies, and set straight to – leaving them till tomorrow means losing more to green weight.
 
4 eggs, 5lbs8.375oz Early potatoes, 1.64oz blackberries, 0.25oz raspberries
 
14^th August 2021
A few poor condition courgettes come home – every chance they’ll both end up going to the chickens – but one is our first of whatever the Scallop variety we grew. I also pick a very small but ripe strawberry from the plants at the allotment – the ones at home have both struggled from drouth but also, as far as I can tell, pollinated very poorly, so even where fruit developed there were basically no seed-cells to grow to fruit. Exciting to think that next year we should have a healthy crop of fruit.
 
5 eggs, 1lbs11.5oz Early potatoes, 1 small Golden Zucchini, 1 very small Scallop courgette, 1.375oz blackberries, 1 small strawberry
 
15^th August 2021
A second hen (the bantam) has started to brood on the eggs. We really need to dip their bottoms in water and discourage this.
 
4 eggs, 0.63oz blackberries
 
16^th August 2021
Our 4-year-old comes down with me after dinner and works with me for an hour and a half. Some of this is self-directed – he starts to fill a hole in the perennial bed (a job that needed doing, actually), he uses some grass shears to cut weeds – whilst some is under direct instruction (he sows radish seeds with me; he helps herd the chickens to bed; he cuts chard under my direction). Why shouldn’t he both contribute to the household now and gain competencies and confidence?
 
In time we want to give the kids their own chance at “businesses” – next year, perhaps, we’ll set up a quail shed and work on it with our 4-year-old, at first – he can collect eggs and help with feeding and cleaning, and in time (when he’s 6 or 7, say) take it over fully. We can then sell the eggs, and he (and any siblings who join him) can split the profits with us.
 
We drop off a food box to the family who sometimes work the allotment with us: 15 eggs, 2 courgettes, half a bag of chard, 5 radishes, a couple of heads of lettuce. Abundance.
 
5 eggs, 4.5 Beauregard lettuce heads, 1 large De Nizza courgette, 1 large Golden Zucchini, 5 French Breakfast radishes, 1 bag of Ruby chard, 0.77oz Meteor peas (0.28oz shelled), 1lbs1oz Early potatoes, 3.84oz blackberries, 1.5oz Welsh onions

A Smallholder's Diary, Week 7: 3rd-9th August 2021

 3^rd August 2021
Twilight working (and darker than that by the end!). Even when facing challenges, working outside is usually so therapeutic. The feedback loops on the land are direct and comprehensible; some are slow, yes, but none are utterly abstruse, as so many human interactions can be. The seed goes in to the ground, and grows or fails to grow. You can narrow it down to a few possible causes – next time, you can mitigate against them, if imperfectly.
 
Weeds grow because the soil is fertile and the crop does not totally dominate it – so you must act as a browser (feeding your compost or your chickens) to preserve your harvest.
 
Insects and birds and moulds attack in fairly predictable ways and at fairly predictable times (though the wild seasons of 2021 have been their own challenge). You cannot prevent their partial success, but you can work symbiotically with your gardens to further your joint existence – food for you, space for the crops.
 
And the result of this travail is, by the grace of God, harvest. Tonight was a harvest night. A De Nizza courgette, really turned to marrow; several smaller cucurbits; all the remaining small lettuce plants (with the remaining heads being larger than a shop-bought one!); and a basket full of radishes, some as big as a cricket ball.
 
Some, like the radishes, have taken virtually no effort or care – sow, weed, water, repeat. The lettuce needs protecting from slugs too. The courgettes have gone from seed tray to bigger pots to beds here, and need ongoing aid beyond the usual – management of damaged stems, keeping fruit off the ground, and so forth. But of course, it’s fair to say the general value of the harvest goes up alongside – radishes are very tasty fresh, but are chiefly really a chop-in vegetable for stir frys or roast veg trays thereafter; lettuce is fresh and tasty but light; courgettes, on the other hand, can provide real bulk to a meal, all whilst tasting rich and luxurious.
 
By electric light I continue work at home in the yard, trying to help our tomatoes along. Despite poor pollination – widely reported by other growers this year – I think we are still on course to turn a comfortable, if not large, profit on our seeds. Tomatoes are hard, but given they can grow to maturity in the North-East of England, they can’t be that hard! We’ve avoided blight this year, too, which ruined our crop last year. However, we need some sun now to ripen the harvest. I help by trimming dying branches and leaves, and I even pot up some small but fruitful plants (very late in the season, I know!) to help them with their nitrogen needs. The mini-greenhouse plants have grown vigorously, but have struggled even more with pollination than the main crop; I identify only one sizable fruit on any of the ten or so plants, though I imagine a couple more will come through in time.
 
6 eggs, 2 cherry Tomatoes (0.4oz), 1 very large De Nizza squash, 2 small De Nizza squash, 1 small Golden Zucchini, 4 Beauregard lettuce heads (equivalent), 15 French Breakfast radishes
 
4^th August 2021
I spend another therapeutic time at the allotment, though shorter this time. I shuffle the Golden Ranger – and this time find an egg! So she is not eggbound, just slow in production. Partly the weather will be a factor, but I really rather suspect her historic injury has left her less vigorous.
 
I also find a miracle bean! Low on one of the (mostly dead) plants I find a rusted bean pod with a very thick centre. At home, sure enough, the outer beans are tiny and shrivelled from infection, but the central pod has grown an absolutely enormous bean. I’ll count it as a little redemption.
 
The potatoes today are mostly brown, but need picking as the earth erodes round the dying plant.
 
6 eggs, 17 raspberries (42.5g), 14oz potatoes (green weight included), 0.56oz Aquadulce broad beans (0.1oz shelled)
 
5^th August 2021
Helen brings in a healthy harvest today, including another very large De Nizza, really a small marrow.
 
Brief trip to encourage the chickens to bed in the evening. Fewer eggs today than normal; part coincidence, perhaps, but also reflective of consistently grey weather. I also take the first blackberry of the year – still slightly sharp.
 
4 eggs, 2 large Black Beauty courgettes, 1 small Golden Zucchini, 1 very large De Nizza squash, 1 large De Nizza squash, 1 small De Nizza squash, 7 raspberries (17.5g), 1 blackberry
 
6^th August 2021
Again I go to the chickens to chivvy them to bed after finishing work in the evening. I shore up a potato ridge – I’ll need to harvest some of those tomorrow to prevent greening. With the plants having died back, the ridges are eroding, and the most exposed potatoes are no longer covered by the plant’s leaves.
 
7 eggs
 
7^th August 2021
I harvest a lot of the remaining Early potatoes, with very little green weight (the only ones really suffering are tiny nodules which had, at any rate, begun to sprout; I might even keep the biggest of these as a sample seed for next year).
 
The sheer weight – 9.6kg, 21lbs – is encouraging. Concentrated carbohydrates to bring us through the winter. But potatoes – like virtually all harvested foods – has expiry risks, so I’ve bought some hessian sacks for storage under the stairs to prevent greening and sprouting.
 
4 eggs, 21lbs 3.3oz Early potatoes
 
8^th August 2021
Aside from collecting eggs and chivvying chickens, I go and pick up most of the remaining peapods. They’re still going, though – there are even still a few flowers. Peas keep flowering as long as you crop them – it’s why sweetpeas are a “renewable” flowering plant for decorative purposes. I’m pleased with the peas this year – though we only sowed a relative few, and as a dwarf variety they don’t exactly get big and burgeoning, the way I think of it is this: if for the equivalent of pennies, and a couple of square feet, we get the equivalent of a bag or two of peas, we’ve turned a profit in an exceptionally efficient manner.
 
5 eggs, 0.9oz Meteor peas (0.28oz shelled)
 
9^th August 2021
An afternoon trip for the chickens and to make a list. So much to catch up on and to do. Final sowings (some overdue), plant out spare plantlings, weed, harvest.
 
Helen uses a pound of foraged blackberries and raspberries out of the freezer from last year, and there is plenty more where that comes from. Crazy to think of the abundance still in store – for free!
 
I head down in the evening, in rapidly failing light, and hurry through some work, including sowing some carrot seeds – over a month late. Sometimes, though, it’s worth trying something, especially if on a small scale, to see what happens. If they’ll be ready at roughly 3-4 months, we can realistically harvest them at the end of October – and our autumns are usually mild and often sunny and warm (September is often better then August).
 
I finish the evening’s work at home on the July accounts. “Income” below does not include onions, which have been drying, but does include a pro rata guess at the actual value of the Early potatoes harvested in July, bearing in mind the relatively high green content. The (*) represents using a complimentary voucher and reducing the price.
 
INCOME (equivalent £££ saved): £66.71 (Meteor peas 70p, Beauregard lettuce £14, eggs £34, Aquadulce beans £7.50, rhubarb £1.37, Welsh onions 4p, Cherry tomatoes 30p, French Breakfast radishes 60p, Early potatoes £2.30, Black Beauty courgettes £2.40, Golden Zucchini courgettes 20p, raspberries £1.50, De Nizza courgette 80p)
 
EXPENSES: £15.38 (2 bags Layer’s Pellets £14, cabbage mesh £1.38*)
 
£51.33 effective profit, which renders the two months so far in net profit, with 2-3 big income months still to go for the year. The plan has to be to have a good harvest, and then plan winter projects in relation to the effective profit for the summer/autumn, so that by the end of next May we’re breaking even. Then next year can be an outright profit year.
 
7 eggs, 1 French Breakfast radish, 6 heads of Beauregard lettuce, misc onions

A Smallholder's Diary, Week 6: 27th July-2nd August 2021

27^th July 2021
There are constant small victories and losses on the smallholding. Yesterday the first potatoes came up half-green in a salvage job, and the beans were rotten, but at least the radishes and lettuce were good. Today is all victory. We give some friends some eggs, radishes, and lettuce heads. It is joyful to share abundance. Why else should we grow but to give – to ourselves and others? Grace is designed to overflow.
 
We also begin to see the courgette harvest come in earnest, with two mature Black Beauties, long and glossy black-green, like a dark aubergine, and one Golden Zucchini – a small one, but fully mature, the first off its plant. Picking them regularly naturally encourages growth elsewhere. Helen reports seeing some of our scallop-shaped ones coming through, too.
 
7 eggs, 2 large Black Beauty courgettes, 1 small Golden Zucchini, 0.35oz raspberries
 
28^th July 2021
I don’t go down today.
 
7 eggs

29^th July 2021
I go down with a friend and the boys, and we bring back a basketful of courgettes and raspberries and peas! The first De Nizza – a green-grey bell-shaped squash or courgette – comes off the vine, and we take a bevy of Black Beauties, which ripen to a gloss black finish.
 
It is a blessing to share the land. Virtually no-one does not enjoy coming down to the allotment – albeit they do not share the hard days in mud – and it is plainly vivifying, to them and me. This renders it the more distressing that we simply do not share land in a general sense. I don’t mean public ownership – I mean social cooperation.
 
The drift from the land had its effects on employment and on rhythms of life at the time, of course, but the greatest long-term impact (I am convinced) is to our sense of rootedness, our connection with natural things, our sense of the rhythms of the land itself. The farming community is closed off, often both literally and metaphorically endogamous – what little public agricultural land (allotments) we have are ever under threat from the temptation of development money – our nature preserves are fragile and lopsided – our greenbelt is often largely in private hands, and sterile to boot.
 
4 eggs, 2 large Black Beauty courgettes, 2 small Black Beauty courgettes, 1 large De Nizza courgette, 30 raspberries (2.64oz), 0.5oz Meteor peas (0.25oz shelled)
 
30^th July 2021
Brief trip before bed, and I collect some potatoes!
 
5 eggs, 10 raspberries (0.88oz), 7lbs6oz Early potatoes
 
31^st July 2021
I take my dad and the boys down on the way out to play softball. There’s something glorious in generational sharing of the land, even such a small patch. My father’s father, Grandpa Joe, had an allotment – I particularly remember his potatoes and beans, tomatoes from the greenhouse. That legacy has always stayed with me very strongly. It was a bias towards allotment keeping long before I got into permaculture. It’s an inheritance in itself, as sure as the woolly jumpers passed down from him that I still wear. (He died 14 years ago, so they’re doing pretty well to get to this stage!)
 
6 eggs
 
1^st August 2021
The briefest of trips to collect eggs and sort out the chickens, after a long and busy day. The Golden Ranger is very broody, but not laying; she doesn’t seem eggbound, though, as she is mobile and happy during the day.
 
6 eggs
 
2^nd August 2021
Helen reports that we have strawberries at the allotment bed! Given our losses in the yard, this is encouraging. She’s put out straw to help with moisture and rotting issues.
 
Quick trip to put the chickens to bed. It was probably wise to let them stay out when it was around 20 Celsius overnight – but they need to be encouraged to be wise. Like children, in that respect.
 
I need to find more time to plant out remaining spare seedlings and weed the rhubarb and asparagus. The new rhubarb, particularly, is doing very well; we’ll very likely not take any this summer, as it’s late in its season, and we want the strength to be returned to the crown for next year.
 
6 eggs, 8 raspberries (0.7oz)

A Smallholder's Diary, Week 5 (20th-26th July 2021)

20^th July 2021
On the evening checkup, I take a close look at the broad beans. We knew we had one or two broken stems, and so a bit of bruised flesh was natural – but looking at the plants tonight, brown and black spots and patches are rife on several plants, even affecting some of the pods.
 
I research this – probably something called “chocolate spot”, which sounds tasty but isn’t. I harvest a number of pods – those on badly affected plants, chiefly. I suspect the plants have ended up growing too closely, which will have exacerbated fungal spread, but it’s probably more than that.
 
When we shell the beans later, aside from a few weirdly half-empty pods, there are also some spotted and unhealthy beans, which have to be discarded. I’m disappointed.
 
Last year we lost perhaps half of our small tomato crop to late blight. Adrian Bell speaks about the gritty desperation of the smallholder, because the smallholder forges independence in incredibly precarious circumstances. That makes every loss all the more painful. Every lost bean is a step away from resilience.
 
8 eggs, 10oz Aquadulce broad beans (1.6oz shelled)
 
21^st July 2021
The boys taste the first few ripe tomatoes off our most successful planter. Some of our tomatoes are struggling for nitrogen (shallow pots), and the collection in the mini-greenhouse have definitely struggled simultaneously with being too vigorous (and therefore growing a lot but not flowering) and being intermittently dry (leading to scorching of some of the flowers that do come through). My own fault, of course; my design, my systems. Tomatoes are a bother, it has to be said. Maybe fewer next year?
 
Short evening checkup with a friend. Multiple courgettes now ready, of various colours and varieties. The repeated bird attacks have definitely killed a few strawberry and Brussels plants – but I have spares, so no despair yet.
 
6 eggs, 2 Garden Pearl cherry tomatoes (1.51oz)
 
22^nd July 2021
I work in the twilight again. Though cooler the chickens are still preferring to sleep out – I’ll probably have to work on that soon, once the weather turns.
 
Aside from watering and tidying, I fill a harvest basket. More onions, peas, beans, radishes, lettuce, and our first courgette (a black variety; we have 4 varieties out there). The corollary to the pain of losing the broad beans – and the food reserves they represent – is that true resilience spreads its bets. Last year our tomatoes were blighted; this year they’re coping much better. This year the beans have chocolate spot, but we can learn from that – in the meantime we have plenty of other things.
 
Having spotted potatoes peeking above the ground yesterday, I glimpse some more today, and head into the potato enclosure. The Earlies are beginning to die back, slowly – yellowing leaves for now, from nitrogen withdrawal – and some of them have a half dozen potatoes on the trunk above ground, as well as whatever is beneath. This may be due to the density of the clay soils here, but just as likely is just the potatoes being vigorous and cropping heavily. Good news, though bears watching.
 
6 eggs, 2.1oz Aquadulce broad beans (0.32oz shelled), 1.1oz Meteor peas (0.42oz shelled), 5 heads Beauregard lettuce, 7 French Breakfast radishes, 1 small Black Beauty courgette, 1 Garden Pearl cherry tomato/0.75oz, 2.54oz onion greens, misc onions
 
23^rd July 2021
Brief visit today with a friend. I move the cold frame from the rapidly overgrowing courgettes to cover the vulnerable strawberries that birds have been attacking (even through the netting, which they have torn!).

5 eggs, 2 Garden Pearl cherry tomatoes/1.51oz
 
24^th July 2021
No visit today, due to feeling under the weather.
 
7 eggs.

25^th July 2021
No visit today either. Helen mentions on her return that where the potato plants are withering some exposed potatoes are turning green. This is from producing chlorophyll to maximise sunlight intake, but it causes the tuber to become utterly inedible. They’ll need harvesting and then processing – either cutting out edible parts, or composting, or turning to seed potato for next year.
 
7 eggs
 
26^th July 2021
A long evening block working at the allotment and then processing. The light is falling away much more quickly than I expected – a month on from midsummer and, with any cloud at all in the sky, it’s gloomy by 10pm. There is a circadian rhythm here, though – there is something fitting about the harvest gradually fading into black.
 
Now, with the cold frame in its new place, I discard dead plants from under it and plant out a couple more strawberries. I also put a few small, quite eaten spare chards in with their brethren – given how regularly we can crop them, the more the better. Space shouldn’t be an issue.
 
I also water everything, before commencing the harvest.
 
More radishes come up – enormous ones, now, bigger than any so far this year, as big as a fingerling courgette. Another handful of bean pods, several heads of lettuce, and then finally a very respectable haul of potatoes – but many half-green.
 
I do remove one plant altogether as it is shallow and has nothing left, and crop off its neighbours heavily. However, it is only a few Early plants in the centre of the Early ridge that are growing tubers above ground; aside from slight exposure, nothing else is. After finishing harvesting these, I dig from the partner ditch and cover a few of the plants more thoroughly so that as their tubers grow, they stay covered.
 
At home, I process everything – shelling peas and the like. The potatoes go in a thick brown paper bag and under the cupboard, the darkest place in the house. The beans, alas, are all rotten – the pods themselves are intact, but the fertilised beans have shrivelled and turned black, and the pod has often grown into that space, like a tumour. I struggle to find an explanation online – they seem to have been pollinated (surely), but perhaps something went wrong there; perhaps it is the effect of the chocolate spot, but this affected even healthy-looking beans. A mystery, for now. Agriculture is a detective story.
 
5 eggs, 0.5oz Meteor peas (0.125oz shelled), 4 heads Beauregard lettuce, 10 French Breakfast radishes, 1.25oz Aquadulce beans (0oz shelled; rotten), 6lbs6.75oz early potatoes (green material inclusive)