So Much To Say

Finally got my chainsaw going again, with a new chain. 

Over the last seven days of my life the following have occurred:

- Won a pub quiz for the very first time.

- My passport expired.

- Read my first novel by Anthony Trollope.

- Spoke in a public forum about veg growing.

- Harvested the first runner beans of the season (three weeks later than last year).

- Witnessed a beaver eat carrots.

- Accidentally held a toad.


You can imagine how difficult it has been to decide where to place the focus of this week's posting. Do I wax lyrical about the resounding victory on Sunday night in the saloon bar of the Dovey Valley Hotel? (We won by one point. The prize, a free round of drinks, made the eight mile cycle home slightly more challenging.) Should I elaborate on the significance, if any, of the fact that I am no longer the holder of a valid passport? Would a brief book review of The Warden be instructive (drawing tenuous yet comic parallels with the Wardenship at Pilsdon Community perhaps)? Surely I should give a blow-by-blow account of the “local veg” talk at the weekly Mach Speak, as veg growing is my main thing? Or provide an update on how my runner beans and other produce are actually faring in this strange cool “summer” we're having? But as this is the internet, cute furry mammals are clearly the outright vote-winner, indeed my whole blog should probably be about them, and being a few metres from the second largest rodent cheerily munching its breakfast is worth a few paragraphs. Unless amphibians are more up your street and you're eager to hear about my brief encounter with a large toad.

The beaver pretends not to be interested in his breakfast of carrots.

Well, I did promise last week that I'd say something about the talk. It was held in a small upstairs room in Machynlleth town hall which felt crammed with about twenty people. Green Isle Growers, the cooperative veg box scheme I'm part of, was asked to fill this week's slot on the topic “Let's Fill This Valley With Veg”. Three of us spoke, with the other two covering the conventional farming system and its problems, alternatives such as local food initiatives, an overview of Via Campesina which represents 200 million small-scale farmers globally and their UK wing the Landworker's Alliance, the difficulties of accessing land for growing in the UK, and the specifics of our own veg box scheme.

My bit attempted to address the main difficulty with small-scale growing, which is economic. You just can't get much for your produce. I showed how much effort in minutes it took to produce cabbages, tomatoes and runner beans, as examples, putting an estimated time on each task and totting them up. So one cabbage head takes approx 30 minutes of effort spread across the cabbage lifecycle, and retails at about £1.40 (with an average weight of 700g). This equates to £2.80 per hour for cabbage growing, not an exceptionally lucrative endeavour I'm sure you'll agree. Runner beans pay more at £3.50 per hour, and tomatoes came top at £4.92 per hour. (Minimum wage in UK = £6.50 per hour.)

The leaves in my polytunnel : rocket at the bottom, then oriental salads, then rainbow chard.

None of these figures should be cast in stone of course, they're just based on estimates which might vary wildly between growers, and could be improved with investment in watering systems and suchlike (and tractors?) But they are indicative of a big problem facing those attempting to make a living from producing decent organic vegetables - how to survive financially. I've been doing so by living rent-free. If required to pay rent or a mortgage, the numbers don't stack up without a second paid job. Small-scale growers receive no government subsidies unlike large-scale ones, yet small-scale is by far more beneficial to the environment.

And the toad? Here (s)he is. I was digging through a bed with a garden fork and my bare hands, pulling out weed roots, and grabbed hold of something round and squishy which I immediately let go with a yelp. It was unharmed thankfully and I moved it to another corner of the garden where hopefully it will continue to eat slugs. It's certainly won't go hungry.