In Bloom

It would be easy to imagine that when you spend the whole of your waking life outdoors on the same patch of land that things would get to be a little, well, routine. Thankfully I've found this not to be the case. Unlike in, say, an office where the surroundings rarely change except perhaps some lame bunting at Christmas, here there is always something new to observe. This is especially so in spring of course.

This dandelion flower only lasted one day

Right now the crab apple tree is in full white blossom. Bluebells stand in clumps in the long grass looking splendid. The elder tree by the entrance is on the verge of producing its clusters of tiny white flowers in upended-umbrella formation. Next to it the hawthorn is also about to flower, each one still a tightly-fastened ball on short stalks reaching for the sky.

Elderflowers about to go for it

Hawthorn about to bloom

Even more exciting are the four blueberry plants that I planted two years ago. For the first time ever they have flowers on them, beautiful delicate pale-pink cups, that can mean only one thing - delicious purple globes of goodness! That's if the birds don't get to them first.

Then there are the out-of-the-ordinary events that happen from time to time as I toil amongst the cabbages. An owl hooting in the late afternoon. Aren't they supposed to wait till night-time? Must be an early riser. A mousetrap vanishing - it wasn't there in the morning. Something must have been caught but not killed, and ran off with it. The sound of a chainsaw nearby. I went to investigate, climbed up the bank towards the road, in time to see a large tree being felled on the other side. The smell of smoke but no sign of any. I ran to check my caravan wasn't on fire. I found out later it was my neighbour, a good 200m away, burning some hay that had unfortunately got wet and rotten.

Crab apple blossom

Fighter jets roaring past are an almost every day occurrence here as the pilots skim over the tops of the mountains and down low through valleys. Are they equipped with missiles? If not they certainly will be when sent to other more unfortunate parts of this world, and the same pilots no doubt will fire them. Here they are content with attempting to burst our eardrums but at least they only do so during the daytime, Monday to Friday. Which is why I was a bit shocked when one thundered overhead in the deep twilight after 9pm, its lights blinking, leaving me waving my fist pathetically after it shouting “What about the little asleep children?” Yes, that should give the MoD something to think about.

A baby lettuce with some of its friends

The Red Hot Chilli Pepper

Market day at Machynlleth on a sunny day in May. Crowds squeeze through the narrow gaps on the pavements left by the stalls. People browse old books, linger by tempting cakes, feel the quality of a pair of thermal underpants. A long queue forms at the Indian vegetarian curry stall. A giant chilli pepper wanders past.

Wild garlic as far as the eye can see, on the Torrent Walk near Dolgellau

Huh? Was this some dream triggered by spending too much time amongst vegetables? No. This was last Wednesday and I was that giant chilli pepper. I had adverts stapled to my front and back which announced the imminent commencement of the veg box scheme, inviting all and sundry to SIGN UP! I was being led through the busy streets by Katie who, not wearing a giant vegetable costume, did not have her peripheral vision restricted. We hoped that the sight of a tasty pepper, albeit with legs, might nudge some undecided souls into agreeing to buy a weekly bag of local veg for the next six months.

This photo comes from Facebook

To be fair Katie took her turn in wearing the chilli pepper, as did two others, all in the cause of getting enough customers to make our scheme viable. We need about fifty. Our efforts also included having a stall, with some nursery plants for sale to attract punters, and even tried playing some Red Hot Chilli Pepper songs on my wireless speaker. It did all pay off with several new customers, and others saying they would sign up later.

Our scheme begins bang on the 1st of June, a very early date for harvesting most types of veg. It'll be the salad leaves, chard, spring onions, radishes, rhubarb and whatever we can supplement from our organic wholesaler in Pembrokeshire. Thankfully these last few days the temperature has rocketed up (both day and night time), and we've had both sun and rain in copious quantities - my seedlings are responding as you might hope.

The abandoned slate mines above Dinas Mawddwy

So if you live in the vicinity of Machynlleth and feel like giving the scheme a try, or if you have been a customer and haven't yet got round to signing up again, now's the time to contact Sabrina on 01654 700115 (or email vegbox.greenislegrowers@gmail.com) who will be extremely happy to talk to you! Even if you're out in Corris or Dinas Mawddwy, someone will bring the bags up to you each Wednesday. We aim to please.

Grow little cabbages, grow!

Mary Mary Quite Contrary, How Does Your Garden Grow?

The young pine plantation on my land

Two months in. It's time for a status update on the progress of my efforts to turn seeds into food.

Let me preface this with a reminder that the weather has not been kind. We were fooled by a brief but beautiful hot dry spell in mid-April before winter came crashing down on us again with sleet, hail, and sub-zero temperatures. As I type there is hope that we are climbing out and up into a more clement late Spring, but the soil is still cold and will take a while to warm up.

Lettuce ready to be planted out

So right now I have a greenhouse jam-packed full of leafy brassicas in pots - two types of kale, two types of cabbage, and kohl rabi - all at different stages of growth. None of them have been planted out yet, but the time is coming, oh yes, very soon.

The polytunnel. A place of refuge from the driving rain and wind. I have many seedlings in modules and pots, most still in their infancy but with some near ready to get planted outside. The runner beans are itching to get their roots into my soil. The lucky lettuce has already begun to take that rite of passage, moving from cosseted indoor plantling to grown-up outdoor plant. Well, some of them were not so lucky - I planted a couple of hundred bare-rooted lettuce-seedlings out just before the terrible weather hit us. Sadly some didn't make it.

What else is growing in the modules? Healthy-looking brussel sprouts, very young cauliflower, swiss chard, beetroot, more kale and more cabbage, cucumber, calendula, sweetcorn; the latter is fortunate enough to be remaining in the polytunnel - I've started planting some of them inside already. Then there are the seeds in pots that I'm still waiting for some sign of life - butternut squash, french beans, courgettes, achocha, patty pan squash. They need warmth to germinate but there's been precious little of that recently.

Lettuce planted out

Elsewhere in the polytunnel I have stuff growing in the ground - rows of mange-tout peas putting on a recent spurt, a little squadron of broad beans who are looking strangely pale, and more lettuce that I've stuck in two long rows. Two more rows of chard seed I sowed direct seems very reluctant to come up, and a line of radish between them. At the far end is the anarchy of the self-seeding flowers - nasturtiums and borage. I need do nothing but water them occasionally.

Outside it's a bit of a sad story. I've sown a lot of seed but most of it is extremely slow to germinate, if it ever comes. Carrot, beetroot, chard - I peer at the beds each morning wondering if each little shoot I spot could be what I sowed, or just another importunate weed.

The broad beans have at least on the whole started growing although their cousins the field beans have not, apart from a few. The turnips are visible, with the first batch even large enough to “thin” (remove the unwanted ones). The mange tout are surfacing, as are two or three tentative asparagus spears. Radish is growing too, it's supposed to grow fast, but I'm wondering if they'll grow fast enough for the first delivery to the veg box scheme on June 1st. I somehow doubt it.

Thankfully if ever I'm tempted to be a little despondent I can turn to the rhubarb bed and admire the nine plants, some of them huge, vigorous and prolific. Of course it's the one vegetable I've done absolutely no work for this year, and it's the one vegetable that's already brought in some cash. There's a lesson in there somewhere. Convert the entire garden to rhubarb, perhaps?

Play the Pipes of Peace

A reed organ at Llanbrynmair church

Deep in the heart of the imposing National Library in Aberystwyth there is a small dimly lit room that contains the most priceless collection of Welsh ancient manuscripts in existence. Most of them had originally been brought together about four hundred years ago by Robert Vaughan, helped by his friend and fellow scholar Dr John Davies. This latter gentleman, whose name will most likely make no register on English ears, looms large in the history of the Welsh language. And he lived just down the road from me.

Dr John Davies was the vicar of my local church in Mallwyd back in the early 1600s. Even in his day the church was old. He lived next door in the vicarage where the present incumbent lives today. He was also a linguist, theologian, justice of the peace, Canon of St Asaph's cathedral, and saviour of the Welsh language - at least according to some. He put together the first Welsh-Latin dictionary. His bishop, and brother-in-law, Richard Parry brought out a revised Welsh bible in 1620 which many now believe was actually the work of Dr Davies, and was apparently easier reading than the 1588 "Bishop Morgan" one (which he also helped with). It become the de facto Welsh bible.

Mallwyd church

Most Sundays I join the small congregation at Mallwyd church where once Dr Davies held court. Outside above the entranceway hangs a fossilised mammoth tusk. We sit in pews beneath huge and ancient oak rafters. It is a remarkable building which has seen many centuries pass by and has been little modernised. There is a large pipe organ at the back which is kept in good condition, reached by climbing up a steep stairwell. I sometimes get to play it in services, finding myself perched way up high, facing away from and physically far away from the rest of the proceedings but a cannily-angled mirror allows me to glimpse the priest right at the front of the church, so if they're waving their hands around I'll stop.

A pair of lambs practice their dance routine

News of my keyboard-playing ability appears to have spread and I've been booked in to play for an infant baptism service at Llanbrynmair church this Sunday which will be a reed organ not a pipe organ. As this is not my regular church I even get paid a small sum! What with that and my first vegetable sale on Monday (21 sticks of rhubarb) I'm feeling pretty flush. Maybe I'll blow it all on some organic seaweed fertiliser.

Star Wars: The New Alliance

Mange tout and broad beans lucky enough to be in the cushy environs of my polytunnel

In The Grapes of Wrath a family is evicted from their forty acres of farmland in the mid-West of America in the 1930's. As we follow them westwards towards California where they have been led to believe there is plenty of work picking oranges we find that countless thousands of other rural families are doing the same. Vast swathes of land had been sold off, breaking up the small tenanted farms and creating huge ones that were to be farmed by tractor not horse. The promised work of course was scarce and paid pitifully low wages.

Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon is set in the 1910's and in north-east Scotland but its theme is similar. The tenant crofters there are all farming by horse and plough, growing corn and beet primarily. It is back-breaking toil for the farmers and their children and labourers, but they know and love the land they farm. The protagonist Chris is the bright and well-educated daughter of a farmer but on his death she chooses to stay with the soil rather than leave for the city. But these were the last of the true crofters, tractors were being introduced and farms enlarged.

Agriculture has changed beyond recognition in Scotland and the States since then, but in many other parts of the world men and women are still working the soil in much the same way, running small farms by the sweat of their brow. The food they produce is sometimes exported abroad but much also feeds the local population. In Africa for instance, small farmers feed 70% of the continent's populace. 

A little-publicised aid scheme with the Star-Wars-themed name “New Alliance” is offering aid to Africa in return for changes to the participating nations' laws on seeds, land and trade that benefit big business at the expense of the small-scale farmers. Once the legislation is in place, huge agribusinesses can buy up large tracts of land pushing off the small farming families who had been there, and growing crops for the global market. Echoes of Grapes of Wrath in the 21st century.

Last year over a hundred farmers groups and civil society organisations from African countries and elsewhere called on Western governments to stop supporting the New Alliance. The EU are currently reviewing the scheme so there's a chance for the EU to withdraw their support from it. For more info and what can be done about it, check out this summary from Global Justice Now.

P.S. Apologies for the lack of photos, I forgot to put any on my memory stick to bring to the library. Oops.

Life In The Woods

Living off grid has its merits. The lack of bills for one. Not for me the sense of aggrieved helplessness as the Big Six continue to keep their prices nicely plumped up, the better to keep their shareholders happy and their upper management in serious wealth. My electricity comes not from a coal or gas power station but from the sun's rays falling on my solar panel, connected as it is to the caravan's battery. My washing water comes from the stream via a long pipe and my drinking water is the rain, falling on my greenhouse roof and then into a water butt. My kitchen waste goes on the compost heap, sink water drains to a mulch pit, and my human waste goes in a compost toilet. 

Only the energy for my cooking and heating is paid for, when every few months I go to the local petrol station with my trailer and buy a new 47kg bottle of propane gas. Getting that back and in position by the caravan is not the easiest thing but at least it warms me up without needing to use any gas!

Another advantage is the peacefulness of it. I'm not rubbing shoulders with anyone here. No adjoining walls with rowdy students or violin practice. It's just me, the land, and the creatures I live amongst. I do occasionally have people visit, but it's a rare occurrence. When I want to see people I can go out and see them. I'm just a few hundred yards from my nearest neighbours, and the local shop is only a mile away. I have my phone with me at all times (helpful if I broke a leg or something) which does usually get signal, 2G only but at least I can text and call people.

It's not all rosy though. My caravan is getting older and things don't work quite as they did. The water heater stopped working about two years ago. The front door has a catch which joins its top half with the bottom half, but it broke so now I have to open both halves individually. Somehow damp has got into under one of the couches where I store stuff. The awning leaks in places onto my things I store there. The whole caravan is tilting slightly as one wheel seems to have slipped a bit off its stone rest - I will have to jack it up and reposition the stone.

The polytunnel is also a useful clothes-drying space

The lack of warm water means I don't use the caravan shower, so to stay clean I either pop into other people's showers when I'm round, pay for a shower at the Mach Leisure Centre, or give myself a bucket wash. I do have a “solar shower”, a black bag that you fill with water and let the sun warm, but if I hang it in the polytunnel the shower head is at about waist height so it's not had a lot of use. I guess I could clean my lower half at least.

Also my laptop has churlishly begun to refuse to charge up. It's a new Lenovo that my parents generously gave me for my last birthday and there is no DC adaptor available for it, so I got myself a cheap inverter which converts the 12V DC from the battery into 240V AC, and normal 3 pin plugs fit it. The inverter whirrs away keeping itself cool with a fan. It did seem to be doing the job, charging my laptop to full strength. But now, after a few seconds the laptop's “charging” light flicks off and on a bit then goes off. The problem could be the inverter, or the caravan battery, or, who knows, the laptop itself. So I'm having to type this quick before the power runs out!

Sometimes the sun shines

You Win Some You Lose Some

Let me tell you the sad story of my tomato seedlings.

They began life in late February in West Dorset when I sowed them in a small seed tray full of compost. There were two varieties, Gardener's Delight, and Red Pear - 10 of each. As I was still at Pilsdon Community I had the luxury of popping them in an electrically-warmed germination cabinet so they sprouted within just a few days. Just in time in fact as on March 1st I was off up to Wales with the seed tray carefully wedged beneath the driver's seat where hopefully nothing could fall on top of it and flatten the seedlings.

Unaccustomed as they were to road travel and despite being kept in near-darkness for six hours they seemed to survive the journey relatively well. At our destination they were brought into the polytunnel which was to be their home for the rest of their lives. Every evening I put a large plastic cover over the tray in an attempt to keep some warmth in.

My bog

However something was able to get in, as over time I noticed the leaves of several of the tiny seedlings had been nibbled back to almost nothing. Without leaves, no photosynthesis, no energy to grow.

The rest of them pluckily carried on growing, albeit very slowly. The warmth they needed simply wasn't there. The polytunnel doesn't warm up much in cool cloudy days, of which there were many.

When they were a month old I decided to re-pot a few of them, thinking that some fresh compost might give them a boost. Only seven of them were worth potting on, the rest having died or were stunted. These seven had at least grown a couple more tiny leaves. So I “pricked out” the seedlings and popped them in a pot each, keeping them watered and generally showering them with love and affection.

The frogspawn are hatching

None of this paid off. Last Wednesday night the temperature dropped to 0.1C outside, and it can't have been much warmer inside the polytunnel. All seven of them were drooping over when I went in to check on them on Thursday morning. It became a very nice warm day and I had hopes that they would recover, and some did seem to straighten up a bit. Others I propped up with little sticks.

But over the course of this week they have been slowly dying. They're all drooping despite the warmer nights, and the stems which are thin anyway are getting thinner and whiter. I don't expect they'll last another week. R.I.P tomato plants.

Fern-like fractal frost patterns on my greenhouse glass

Thankfully I did another sowing earlier in March so I do have healthier but smaller tomato seedlings in another tray. My intention to grow my own tomatoes from seed is still achievable. Yet if I had access to an airing cupboard, or just a centrally-heated room, I would have been able to keep the little blighters warm and tucked up at nights; my caravan sadly has neither. Maybe I should buy a house.

Tomato: The Next Generation