Tractor Time

Gotta love the Kubota tractor & 5ft rotovator: it may only be a small tractor with something like 22hp, but it does such a great job when it comes to getting my fields ready for action. Wednesday saw me walking several miles with the pedestrian Honda Izy lawnmower (also brilliant) cutting down the remnants of last year’s herbs, spinach, fennel plus inevitable grasses and other weeds that had started to perk up; to prepare the way for a session on Friday afternoon on the tractor. As windy and cold as ever (it takes a while to stop shivering after several hours in the cold wind without a cab for protection), I just managed to beat the incoming rain after a 3-hour session of shallow rotovating. The field will sit there and wait for a couple of weeks, then we’ll go over it again, knocking back any missed or re-growing weeds; before a final pass a couple of weeks after that which will give it a lovely friable tilth ready for sowing and planting into. I can only try and imagine how long this job of ground preparation would take by hand…

Leek Cam

The wildlife camera picked up several late-night hungry and inquisitive visitors around the leek patch earlier this week: a couple of roe deer (one mid-moult) and at least one badger, apparently on a very important mission…

Second Coming

The good thing (actually, one of the many good things of course) about early spring is that those winter crops that were pretty much picked out have magically put on another flush of growth, just when you took your eye off them for a few weeks. Those mustards, lettuces and claytonia mixes in the tunnels have suddenly sprouted a whole new flush of fresh leaves; and the kales out in the field are also growing on again strongly. On a sunny still early March day, they whisper promises of further bountiful veg to come from their just-sown relatives, in summer and autumn: brilliant!