I Want To Hypnotise You Baby On The Telephone

Riding a fossil-fuel-powered fossil

I am even more off grid than usual. Off the phone grid, for over a week now. Orange's antiquated 2G network that is usually the best this Welsh valley can offer has without warning simply vanished. Zero signal on my land or anywhere nearby, although if I cycle a mile westwards I can sometimes pick up a fade-in fade-out signal.

I can't even call Orange up because I'm not their customer – my contract is with 3 who never bothered to put their 3G network here but just hand me over to Orange instead. I cycled three miles to get within range of 3's network and logged a complaint on their mobile website, ticking the “call me back” option. Fortunately they called me back the next day when I happened to be out and about and with signal, so I was able to explain the problem to first one chap and then another. Having batted away the standard offer of a broadband-linked “booster” to provide mobile coverage indoors (he seemed startled by my lack of broadband) he eventually agreed to contact Orange and get back to me, within seven days. Orange must be pretty tricky to get hold of. Anticipating them having difficulty in contacting me back, we agreed that he would leave me a voicemail and I would call him back when I could.

My first cucumber - it got less spiky as it got bigger

Perhaps more than most I am reliant on my phone in case of accident, there being no one else here to call an ambulance or flag down a passing car. It is true that emergency calls are supposed to use any available network if the usual one is missing, though I'm not sure if the other networks are available either. Certainly Vodafone isn't but I think O2 might be, or certainly used to be.

So it's a case of being extra careful of not falling in the river while I wait for Orange to fix the glitch, and mobilising other hapless local Orange customers to raise the issue with them as well. If they realise that people do actually live in these remote hilly parts and occasionally want to contact each other by phone, perhaps something will be done.

The last of the new potatoes

I am having to come to terms with the extra isolation of having no texts or calls from anyone. If I didn't venture out I would see or hear from no one, with the sole exception of the gamekeeper who still drops by once or twice a day to feed the young pheasants. There is something primally restful about embarking on a task in the knowledge that the only interruption possible is someone physically turning up. The number of times that's happened without prior warning can be counted on the toes of a pheasant.

I make a communications trip each morning to the petrol station where I can normally get a bit of signal and conduct my affairs by text message for a few minutes. I am probably at my most unreachable since 1997 when I got my first mobile, a hefty but at the time thrilling Nokia 3110, and that includes times living in the savannah in South Africa and trekking in Patagonia.

Another pheasant died, I found it still warm by the entrance to my garden with no obvious attack marks. Perhaps it was hit on the road and found its way down here to lay down and die. Perhaps it had a disease, but the gamekeeper reckoned if so it wouldn't affect humans. Or maybe it just died of longing to get into my bountiful garden of delights. As I type this I am anticipating another protein hit of fresh game meat.



The garden as of yesterday

Earwig Go, Earwig Go, Earwig Go!

 

I am only one of the many creatures who inhabit these six acres, all the rest of whom no doubt regard me as a dangerous interloper rather than the rightful owner.  The vast majority are of course too small to see, the bacteria in the soil, water and air. The insects, the next most numerous, are particularly abundant at the moment; bumble bees and other less bumbly bees sniff inside my nasturtium flowers; hoverflies, butterflies, mayflies, horse flies and house flies, and all the rest of the winged establishment flit about in an endless polka (I think that's what they're doing although I can't quite hear the music). The burrowing and crawling things, the worms, the ants, the beetles go about their business, mostly uninterrupted by me.  Birds of many kinds swoop, sing, fight, eat and sleep. Young pheasants are everywhere, having been brought in by the gamekeepers. Frogs patrol the polytunnel. Slugs, both large and tiny, still keep on having a go at my crops despite my nightly raids. I saw a rabbit dash past, the first time I've seen one here – a bad omen as they love to eat our crops.

Tomatoes are growing but not yet ripening

The two beasts though that are currently topping my list of worst offenders, those which are perhaps inadvertently causing the most damage to my plants, are the mouse and the earwig.

A rather spiky cucumber

It is very likely that these particular mice have been living here for generations and I have quite rudely come and dug up their home and rearranged it into long straight mounds. Why should they move off and fight for new territory elsewhere? No, they just keep on burrowing through the earth, but unfortunately now the vegetable seedlings above are knocked sideways and their roots are left dangling in the tunnels unable to find nutrients whilst the plant above withers. I expect they are eating some roots too, I certainly would if I were them.

"Crown Prince" pumpkin

So being unable to reason with them I have unfortunately had to resort to extreme measures and laid a death trap baited with cheese and jam. (I know there are such things as live capture traps but I would have to then take the captured mouse a long way away and release it, possibly several times as there are definitely more than one. My compassion doesn't extend that far.)  I did catch one back in June while I was away at Pilsdon but have had no luck since, despite numerous new tunnels being made, until yesterday morning when I discovered a second limp mouse within its jaws.  The tide of the battle is turning.

Runner beans growing. You can see the snipped-off stems on this branch

Earwigs on the other hand I have only just realised I have to regard as my enemy due to their preference for climbing up runner beans at night and snipping off the flowers, just for the sheer malicious joy of it as far as I can tell. My suspicions had been hovering over the slugs or possibly birds until I discovered these nasty critters hiding in the runner bean flowers, and a friend with an internet connection filled me in. The ground is littered with never-to-be-realised runner bean flowers; luckily there are lots of them still on the plants but I have taken to combining my nightly slug patrol with earwig patrol. The other way to get them apparently is to build lots of earwig hotels in the shape of straw-filled pots and hope to catch them there asleep in the morning. When you have just a few bean plants this is probably a good idea, but to make enough hotels to cover a twenty metre section of bed containing two hundred plants and then check them all each morning seems a tad wearisome to me, especially if they may choose to sleep elsewhere anyway.

French bean

I am typing this after a delicious meal of grilled pheasant breast. This one had somehow got into my garden enclosure, as others occasionally have. My tactic is to corner them, wait till they've stopped flapping, pick them up and take them out. So I did exactly the same with this male bird, which was repeatedly flying against the plastic fencing and bouncing off, but I think it must have died of fright, or shame. I put it out and it just collapsed. A few minutes later I found it had crawled into the undergrowth and died. Sad, but I had been thinking recently it's been a while since I've had any meat. 



Dinner

 

Dinner



This Little Swanny Went To Market

Common hogweed flowers reach for the sky

If there's any question over whether Napoleon was right when he remarked that Britain is a nation of shopkeepers, then I have just helped to tip the balance of the argument in his favour. On Sunday I moved into the hallowed realm of the producer-seller. I met the public face-to-face with only a market stall to separate us. Anyone could have walked into the village hall and bought my mange tout. It conjured up an odd mixture of feelings; of pride in my good-looking produce, of nervousness that no-one would buy it, of disappointment when people passed their gaze over my table and walked on, and of joy when people uttered the magic words “I'll take that please”.

The farmer's market was due to open at 10am. I got to the hall at 9, the car full of vegetables and my brand new six foot banner emblazoned with the “New Leaf” logo, and began to set up, as were others around me. Although I had been worried I'd have nothing to sell, I had managed to scrape together the following: five salad bags, two packs of broad beans, two portions of mange tout, three small bags of leaf coriander, one even smaller bag of lemon basil, and twelve courgettes. Fortunately Joe*, the guy who runs the market had sourced some additional things for me to sell (potatoes, carrots and bread – the latter I paid for upfront, the rest was his), so I was able to fill my table up and then some.

Just before 10am I was outside the entrance when a camper van drew up and a heavily-accented voice haltingly enquired “Can I sell bread here?”  I was somewhat taken aback, wondering how to explain politely that I would rather that I was the only bread-seller at this market. Fortunately before I had done so, the Austrian woman corrected herself with a laugh, “Ah, can I buy bread here?” This was a much more welcome question and I was able to say that I did indeed sell bread, so she and her companion came in and bought not only a loaf but also the first of my salad bags. Ker-ching! Let commerce commence.

Bonjour, French bean!

It would be nice to report that the floodgates were then opened and in poured a mass of eager shoppers, all bent on splashing out on my goods and those of the other eight stalls (namely, goats cheese, jewellery, cards, pork and cheese, honey and other bee-related products, arty photographs, Greek foods and ice cream).  It would also be a fib. A fairer assessment of the footfall over the next four hours would be “slow”. A blunter assessment would be “dead”. That's not to say that no one at all came in, certainly people did, but in dribs and drabs. Often there were no customers in the hall, which was when I'd listen to my next-door stall-holder hold forth very interestingly about bees.

The polytunnel is getting fuller

The lack of many customers did, on the other hand, make not having much to sell seem like a winning strategy. A good percentage of those that came in did buy something from me, and by end of play I could proudly say that all my own vegetables had been sold, bar four slightly wonky-looking courgettes, which netted me the immense sum of £23.20. And although I had quite a lot of bread left I had still made a slight profit, especially I was able to sell a few loaves at a reduced rate the next day to one of my local salad bag customers.

A four-legged inhabitant of my polytunnel

So it was a gentle step into the shallow end of the swimming pool of market trading. By next month's market I am sure my tomatoes will be ready, along with the cucumbers, and maybe even the carrots and cabbages will make an appearance, who knows. Perhaps more people will turn out next time. Food is being bought no more than two miles from where it was grown, harvested just shortly before market day, and sold by the person who grew it. This is surely how it should be.

*Not his real name, as per usual in this blog.

Bindweed Us Together Lord

The build-up is beginning, excitement is mounting and the days are being counted down. Can it be only four days to go till the moment everyone has been waiting for?  All the tension and fuss preceding the World Cup finals was as a baby's belch compared to the global pandemonium surrounding the momentous event so rapidly approaching. Matt Swan is due to make his debut appearance as a market trader.  Not the kind that shuffles trillions of dollars around in derivatives and other nefarious financial instruments, heedless of the sheer insanity of a world dependent on a gambling machine too complex for anyone to fully understand.  No, on Sunday he will be standing behind an actual market stall, under a banner proudly proclaiming his business name 'New Leaf', offering his carefully-nurtured vegetable produce to the good people of Dinas Mawddwy.

Almost my entire harvest of broad beans... not much sadly

That is, if he has any actual vegetable produce to sell by then. This must be what's causing the nervousness, the sheer agitation that can be witnessed across a million Twitter feeds as his followers share their worries about the big day in question. They know he is confident that things will turn out all right in the end but they can't help but be concerned that much of the produce originally planned for sale is no longer viable for one reason or another.  Either the foodstuff has been harvested already as it has 'bolted', i.e. flowered too early, such as the spinach, the coriander, the rocket and the mizuna, or it hasn't ripened as quickly as expected, such as the tomatoes, the cucumbers and the runner beans. Or, as in the case of the broad beans, it's just given a small harvest which has already been sold.

Golden Mange Tout and a bunch of Coriander

As much of the rest of the garden is already committed to the veg bag scheme in Machynlleth, this doesn't leave a lot to place on the market stall. However, all is not lost. The lettuces are all growing well so I can make several nice-looking salad bags, along with a sign-up sheet to attract a few more customers to my salad bag local delivery service. The twelve courgette plants are now beginning to churn out their slender stripey green fruit so I'll have several spare to sell, beyond the ten courgettes a week I'm providing to the veg bag scheme. I might be able to make a pack or two of mange tout and coriander. And every day I'm in the polytunnel urging the few small green tomatoes to turn red, at least enough to make one punnet.

The first courgettes

On top of all this nervous tension, this week also brought a few unwelcome surprises. A slug in the fridge was the least of it (I finally worked out it how it got there – hitching a ride in with a cabbage I'd bought from the “Fresh and Local” stall). On Saturday I found two pheasants within the pheasant-proof fence. Admittedly they were trying desperately to get out rather than eating my veg, but it does mean the fencing is less impregnable than I'd ideally like, i.e. completely impregnable. Unlike the slug I've yet to figure out how they got in. And the day before that I had literally unearthed a bigger problem than that – a mass of underground creeping weed roots appears to be spreading throughout my polytunnel soil. They are thin and white and break into pieces very easily. The roots seem thinner than bindweed but it might just be that at an early stage. It hasn't produced any leaves or indeed anything at all above ground. I suspect it came in with the horse manure which I've dug in everywhere. Short of tearing all my plants down in a frenzy, there's little I can do till the end of the growing season.

Bindweed? Whatever it is, it's evil.

Still it's always good to count your blessings as well as your curses, and I had three good blessings this week in the shape of three friends visiting me, all for their first time, and bringing food and alcohol to keep me sustained. With friends like that, no bindweed in the world can stop me.

For Peat's Sake!

From left to right: Asparagus, rhubarb, salad, leek, carrot, red cabbage and broccoli

If you happen to have a seed and want to grow a plant from it you have two basic options. You can stick it in the soil, add water, and wait with fingers crossed.  Or you can choose the de luxe option of putting it in a tray or set of modules filled with “potting compost” (normally something you've bought in a big bag) and carefully nurture it indoors, eg on a window sill or in a greenhouse. This option obviously takes more effort as you (a) have to keep it watered because the rain isn't going to reach it, and (b) once the plant is big enough you have to transplant it, ie take it outside and plant it. The more delicate plants are supposed to need “hardening off” before planting outside which requires more molly-coddling, namely taking the seedling outside during the day and bringing in again at night for a week or so to get it acclimatised to the big wide world. All this takes time, and money for the compost, but the results should be better. More of the seeds should germinate (and not be eaten by slugs or mice), and be quicker to mature into nice big plants. 

A top of the range compost bin I have recently installed

I hedged my bets and tried both options for many of my types of veg. Broad beans, french beans and runner beans all definitely welcomed the head start that module sowing provides. So did the beetroot. Some, such as leeks, cabbages, broccoli and lettuces, I only sowed in modules but found that after the seedlings had reached an inch or two, they just stopped growing. I waited for weeks for them to get big enough to be transplanted (ie a few inches) but in the end gave up and put them outside as titchy things. Thankfully most of them have recovered and are growing nicely now, but no doubt they are still smaller than what they should be at this point.

My suspicion lies with the compost I'd bought, and I've met others with similar experiences who would back me up. “New Horizons” is the culprit, supposedly the compost of choice for the environmentally-concerned. It is certified organic and peat-free, winning a Which? magazine award back in 2011. We had been using it in Pilsdon with no problems at all. However it seems this year's batch is simply bad, just not providing enough nutrients for the seedlings. 

Peat is a type of soil that's extremely rich in dead organic matter and comes from peatlands of which Britain naturally has a finite amount (2.3 million hectares to be precise*) of which only 20% remain unharmed by human activity. We carry on digging it out because plants thrive best in compost made from it. Unfortunately peat is best left where it is, because apart from the wide diversity of wildlife it supports it also acts as a massive carbon-capture sink. Unlike any other kind of soil, when it is in a healthy boggy condition it can keep pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere ad infinitum, for ever. As we all know by now, the less carbon dioxide in the air the better.

I've since discovered that Which? recently ran a comprehensive test on all peat-free composts and declared that none of them are worth buying.  Apparently they are just not reliable enough compared to peat composts. As the debate that their report sparked rages, those of us who give a damn for the planet are put in a quandary. To peat or not to peat? Having unreliable potting compost has a big impact when trying to grow sufficient produce for customers with a deadline.

My leaf mould in modules awaiting some lettuce seed

My solution is two-fold. Firstly I am sticking with peat-free compost (whilst trying out a different brand) but adding to it some organic 'blood, fish and bone' mix to boost the nitrogen and other nutrients.  Secondly I am trying out my own home-grown leaf mould which I collected last year from amongst the trees and deposited in a big enclosed pile to rot. Rather satisfyingly this latter zero-cost option, which also used no fuel to process or transport it, has so far also proved the most successful. Here's to the truly organic approach!

* Figures taken from the Zero Carbon Britain report (2013). 2.3m hectares is just under a tenth of the land area of the UK.

Lastly, for those of you for whom my flower quiz was just too easy, here's a slightly more challenging one with the latest flowers to grace my garden. Pictured below are : Courgette, borage, Cucumber, Pumpkin, two types of runner beans, mustard, komatsuna, tatsoi, french bean, pak choi. 

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K