A View From (Quite Close To) The Greenhouse; It’s All A Conspiracy…..Innit?

Winter arrives in the Northern backwaters, with a short lived but fierce reminder that the weather, when it chooses, can be the boss of us all. Cue, then, the assorted fanatics, grifters, bought and paid for “scientists”, 24hour media two-bob talking heads and corrupt politicians blaming a late autumn storm (Bert’s a great name for a storm) on the minuscule concentrations of carbon dioxide in the planets’ atmosphere. I don’t need to name the names, you all know who they are, but there’s an underlying truth. A fantasy about a trace gas, promoted by some of the most venally corrupt people who’ve ever existed, is one of the key elements behind a transfer of wealth, so eye-watering, that the numbers are almost incomprehensible. I’m beginning to think we’re being played.

There comes a time when, no matter what your diet is, or how many friends and relatives you have clamouring for a jar of sweet chilli jam (or a bag full of the essential ingredients thereof), or how much curry your local pub can put on the specials board, that you have to find alternative ways of divesting yourself of capsicum over-production. I set up a distribution hub outside the farm gate, with a handy sign, complete with a get out disclaimer, should anyone taking advantage of my largesse get a little bit too adventurous. To date there have been no complaints, although one or two people have quietly enquired as to whether or not there’ll be similar available next year. Everybody likes summat for nowt!

A very quick word about the pineapple, which will shortly be getting “put to bed” for the winter. Nothing much is happening, but the central core is new growth and I’m guessing, should it survive, that I’ll need to pot it on in spring and maybe find a patch in the greenhouse for relocating in early summer. What started off as a bit of a daft idea, following a chat with my youngest, could possibly, in time, bear fruit (see what I did there?).

I couldn’t hold myself back any longer, although seeing the outcome told me maybe I should have. I’d waited until now to see if the surviving turmeric plant would flower, but, there being no sign and given the cold snap, I thought it best to harvest. The over-ground growth was quite extensive and healthy enough, but I didn’t want a hard frost to damage the crop. I haven’t weighed it, but there won’t be more than 200 or so grams (less than half a pound in old money), it tastes good though, different to the powder in an earthier way and I’ll use it to bolster the nettle tea. I’ll also save a piece for next year, hopefully with better results to come.

All the chilies are harvested now, but some of the long sweet peppers still hadn’t ripened and I wanted to do something with them, hence the multiple canes and a couple of fleeces. I was working on the theory of “warm air rises, cold air falls” and, to a certain extent it’s been successful, there are a couple of bell pepper plants still in with fruits staying stubbornly green, but they seem to be happier with the cold than the pointed ones. I’m guessing this week will see the final harvesting, then there’ll just be the few remaining chard plants to dig up and the sprouts & kale to try to nurse on for some green veg in the winter months, although there’s little sign so far.

The long red peppers are an essential component of my version of chilli jam, but a glut left me pondering what to do with the rest. They’re a fine ingredient in stews and salads but I had contemplated making an Italian style antipasti of roasted peppers in olive oil and bottling them. Research put me off a bit; the process is easy enough, but they deteriorate quite quickly (apparently) and they aren’t something we’d eat all that regularly. I found a recipe for sweet pepper and onion relish, which keeps well, so I gave it a go, using red onions and adding red jalapenos and a couple of cayenne chilies to the mix, along with cider vinegar, soft brown sugar, mustard seed and salt. It needs to develop for four to six weeks, but initial tastes make me think it’ll be at least edible, we’ll see. I’ll probably freeze the rest and maybe plant one or two fewer next year.

When you get to a certain age and when the weather drops the temperature to a certain level, the last thing you need to be donning is your wellington boots, especially if they’ve been stood in a cold shed for weeks on end and you haven’t got the requisite thickness of socks on your feet, but us northerners are both resilient and obdurate and I considered it only fair that, given several of my neighbours (stalwarts of the local farming community) had made their way to London to join the march, the least I could do was wear my wellies in a show of solidarity. I have no doubt that the policy of attacking family farms in this way is now set in stone, but this march (and more recent events) confirms to me that although this government has a huge parliamentary majority, it doesn’t have the country. Whether or not it cares, of course, is a whole other matter!

Herr Starmer has already openly declared his preference for Davos over the people of this country and he makes no secret of the fact that he sees this nations future as being inextricably linked to the asset stripping, anti independent citizen cabal that has the likes of Larry Fink and Bill Gates as its public faces. Blackrock has all but destroyed independent pig farming in the mid-west of the US and Bill Gates owns over a quarter of million acres of prime US farmland. These people and their confederates are totally amoral and are driven by nothing but avarice for and of its own sake. The actual “human condition”, outside of their own immediate circles, is of little or no interest to them.

This Suffolk Tup is, on the surface of it, a fine specimen of his genre, but appearances can be deceptive. According to the young farmer I spoke to, who’d leased him for tupping season, he wasn’t up to the task, but sadly, there are no refunds for poor performance in his world. Any road up, we leaned on the gate, as country folk are wont to do, and took ten minutes to discuss the potential impact and wider implications of the inheritance tax changes. He wasn’t happy, although he’s likely (for now at least) to be unaffected, but he knows a good many honest, hard working and fully committed yeoman farmers, whose families have been on their land for generations, who (he says) are rightly concerned. These are family businesses, often with a two or three homes that are part of the structure and way of life in farming communities. These farms are at risk, due in no small part to house valuations, although he was unclear as to whether the homes themselves remain exempt. If not, then these farms could easily disappear and with them their direct contact with the food chain and the local community. Corporate farms aren’t inherited, they pay their corporation tax (if they can’t find a way to avoid it) and maximise profits for shareholders, caring not one jot whether or not Bill the shepherd has a roof over his head in his beloved countryside or not.

Some would say the policy itself is ill thought out, but I’m not so sure. Some say the Chancellor’s an economist of great experience, so she must know what she’s doing, others say she’s a member of a wider authoritarian Globalist movement that wants to tell us what to eat, where to live and what to think, while others say she’s nothing more than a patsy who’s only in post because she’ll do as she’s told by the same people who pull the strings of the Toolmakers son. But if this government IS colluding with foreign business interests to corporatise food production, or, worse still, acquire land to build windmills and “solar farms” to launder our taxes into the pockets of the soulless, already filthily rich and far too powerful, then shame on them.

It’s only a “conspiracy theory” until it comes true.
 

© Colin Cross 2024