The Idler

A Country Diary - 27

Sunday 4 September 2005

IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME since the last Country Diary. Please forgive me; I’ve been so lazy. August as a month seems particularly unsuited to any kind of labour, and we’ve just been bobbing along here, having lots of people to stay and not really doing much beyond drinking, talking, eating, sitting on the beach and putting children to bed. And the vegetable patch hasn’t demanded much work; it has just been pouring forth its produce. Firstly the peas have been a sensation; eaten raw from their pods, if caught at the right moment, ie before they get too big, are as sweet as Dairy Milk, and what’s more, kids enjoying eating them. Nature’s M&Ms, as my friend Marcel would say. The pink fir apple potatoes were fantastic although I was disappointed by the low yield. Perhaps they were planted too close together. The two courgette plants have kept up a steady supply, and they are really quite beautiful things, with those huge yellow flowers. Maybe I will grow them in the front garden next year. We’ve had quite a few carrots, although they’ve been picked by children while still small. Still, kids picking and then eating their ow carrots? You can’t really complain. Apart from rocket which grows like a weed and seems to be slug-proof, we’ve had very few lettuces. I finally got round to sowing a few three weeks ago, and have just come back from a few days away. The lovely tiny lettuce plants which I pondered with some satisfaction before I left have completely disappeared, leaving no trace and leaving me wondering whether I dreamt their presence in the first place.

“YOU CAN’T HAVE enough brussells sprouts,” is one of John Seymour’s pieces of wisdom, and I have really gone for sprouts this year. All the brassicas are doing well. The cabbages are now gone, and I have started to space out the kale, broccoli and sprouts plants. Some are over two feet tall already. My problem has been this: one of my books told me to move the young brassica plants into land vacated by early peas, but the peas didn’t vacate the land I time, leaving the brassica plants to grow too big to move. I moved them anyway, trying to lift them with as much soil as I possibly could. After a few days of wilting, they seem to have picked up again and now half the patch is covered in brassicas. This of course makes a nonsense of the idea that you can dig in the autumn, uless I am getting something very wrong. How can you dig when the groud is full of plants? Oh, the leeks, by the way, are doing fantastically. There are 38 of them out there, and although some visitors have warned me that they are planted too close together, they seem to be thriving.

THE HEDGEROWS are bursting with blackberries, thousands of blackberries, and like Flopsy and Mopsy in The Tale of Peter Rabbit, we have been eating them for tea, just raw with cream. Yum.

THERE’S BEEN NO SIGN of Mr Badger lately. We have since heard that he might be a young weak badger who has been ejected from the sett by the other badgers. That’s why he’s looking for food around domestic houses. Maybe he is just a lazy badger, who cannot be bothered to hunt food and so is using his wits to find easy nibbles.

I HAVE ORDERED a hand printing press and hope to start producing my own little leaflets and tiny books before too long. I am hoping it’s the kind of craft I will enjoy. I have to admit that the carpentry tools have lain idle for the last few months, after my early triumphs with the table, the shelves and the toy plane. Maybe it’s just not me? I sincerely hope this printing business will be me. What worries me is that supposedly you have to be quite well organised, as there will be thousands of tiny pieces of type to be kept in order. Being chaotic and disorderly by nature this aspect of the hobby gives me a slight sense of dread. We shall see. Anyway, I have found a man with a set-up to sell, an Adana Eight Five, as it is known, and I am planning to meet him in a nearby petrol station car park as he is by fantastic coincidence holidaying in Cornwall so he will be driving quite near us.