The Podfather

Making a start on the new beds.  The one on the right already has the winter stuff in -
kale, cabbage and purple sprouting broccoli

 It was a Wednesday afternoon, around 4pm. The market stalls had mostly departed, a few shoppers were still around, kids in small groups drifted home from school. Then the limos began to arrive, purring up to the unmarked entrance to a side alley from which men in expensive suits and dark glasses stepped, quickly making their way up the alley to a door which opened to allow them in. Some of the men seemed to be bodyguards, thickset thugs who scanned the street and alley. Inside, the heads of the six major local-food-growing outfits met around the table for the first time. The various groups, or "families", had been at war ever since a misunderstanding over the correct size of a courgette ten years ago, and the violence was rapidly escalating. This meeting, which had taken three months to arrange, had been called by the new head of the Barlottis to attempt to iron out the differences and end the bloodshed.

The very first tomatoes to ripen. Unbelievably most of the rest are still green.

OK so perhaps I embellish a little. There has been no violence, no courgette feud, no bodyguards or limos, and the meeting only took a couple of weeks to arrange. Nevertheless it is a fact that last Wednesday at 4pm the very first meeting was held between the six main growers around Mach who provide produce for the Green Isle Grower's weekly veg bag scheme. We all knew each other to varying degrees, but this was the first time that we had sat down together. The agenda was mostly about the veg bag scheme itself and gave us all a chance to air our views on how the scheme and hear what customer feedback there had been, as well as to hear how the financials were working (or not working).

The Podfather

Maybe it was the excellent sponge cake arrange on a three tier pedestal that we began the meeting with that set the tone, but overall everyone was very positive and had many encouraging words to say to the two running it, with good reason. The scheme provides us growers with a way of selling more produce at retail prices, and we had all been accommodated very flexibly when the veg wasn't available when we had originally planned it to be. Customer feedback was very good. The scheme had reached the maximum of 45 customers fairly quickly. Logistically it was now running smoothly enough after some initial hiccups. The only major headache was the balancing of the budget, so we agreed to set up another meeting to discuss the prices we would charge for next year's veg, align them across the group so next year's budget could better reflect reality, and hopefully be able to pay the people running it!

Cabbage, carrots and courgette, all from the garden!

I look forward to that discussion as I have found it very difficult to price my veg. I've tried researching the prices of vegetables and fruit from various organic and inorganic outlets but there is often huge variation and to complicate matters it was the "per kilo" weight whereas the scheme was often asking for "portions" of certain veg, like six carrots or four beetroot, not a weight. This week's delivery to the scheme is my biggest yet – 30 portions (250g) of runner beans, 20 portions of carrots, 10 courgettes, 5 cucumbers and 10 large green heads of cabbage. Thankfully Shauna was still here to help me harvest, weigh, bag, label and then transport it all to Machynlleth. Next time I'm back on my own again!

To clear our heads and stretch our limbs a few of us went out walking the windswept hills north of Machynlleth. We were trying to get to the pub in Ceinws but as usual on walks the footpath vanished and we found ourselves having to head in roughly the right direction over wide barren hilltops. Finally we saw the hamlet in the distance but we were much higher than it and there was a wood covering the slope down ahead. Gamely we plunged on and downwards, and found ourselves in a magical oak wood entirely carpeted in edible bilberry bushes and other beautiful and purple-hued shrubs. We had never seen so many bilberries. We ate a few but had no basket to harvest them in. Katie's sandalled feet became purple with juice as we staggered through it searching for a way down which never materialised, eventually forcing us to give up on the pub and retrace our steps all the way home, tired but happy in the shared knowledge of our magical bilberry wood.

Katie's bilberry-juiced foot