A View From The Greenhouse…..Fixing The Foundations, To Build Back Better

On Sunday night just passed we were treated to the sight of upwards of 150 tractors, of varying shapes and sizes, convoying around the villages in this part of Cumbria be-decked in Christmas lights.  As you might guess the aim of the exercise was to raise funds, particularly for a children’s cancer charity. The event was dreamed up and organised by the brother of a local girl who had sadly died, aged just sixteen, from leukemia. Although I didn’t know her personally she was a pupil at the village school and many of her friends, some of whom are members of the local farming community (as she was), were driving some of the vehicles. At the last count over twelve thousand pounds had been raised locally and I believe there’s a match funding offer in place from at least one local business. I have no time for the ostentatious “virtue signalling” fest that is Children In Need. Although it undoubtedly does some good and raises the profiles of some excellent causes, it hives off far too much of the donated money (millions of pounds, in fact) for me to ever consider giving to it. If you have a couple of quid to donate, my advice would always be to give to a local charity, where you know it will (hopefully) go directly to a cause that needs it and probably doesn’t employ a CEO “earning” over £150k a year. Well done to everyone who selflessly gave their time (and loaned their farm equipment) to make the event such a success.

The “terram” is down, the raised beds are in situ and the wood chipping paths have been laid. All that remains is to source some decent quality top soil (there are more “grades” of the stuff than I’d ever imagined, mix it with some decent organic compost and make ready for the arrival of Spring. We’re thinking beetroot, carrots, parsnips (possibly), kohl-rabi, white turnips, some brassica, onions and leeks, but the planting plan is far from decided. We’ve still got the other half of the outdoor space for potatoes, peas, broad and runner beans, but I’m bringing the french beans back into the greenhouse. I’m probably going to put some borlotti in, too. We’ll see.

All more or less cleared out now, there’s been a little bit of work needed following “Storm Bert” and I’m not sure what this weekend will bring, but apart from the vines and the brassica that I’ve left in the ground, more in hope than expectation there’s not much that can get damaged unless something really catastrophic were to occur. I am going to repopulate the strawberry beds, once I get round to picking up the compost to top them up. I’ve “fed” them with some chicken manure pellets and some nettle water. I’ll put the weed suppressant back, plant the best of the plants I’ve save and collected from the runners and cover the lot with a couple of layers of fleece. There’ll be some thinning out ant replacements needed, come Spring, but that’s all “part and parcel”.

I keep adding to the compost heap, being (still) the haphazard gardener I am, I haven’t got round to finding out exactly what I should and shouldn’t be putting in it, so, as long as it’s food waste, grass clippings, raked up leaves, or shredded paper I see it as fair game. It’s obviously breaking down and it smells as if it should do some good when I eventually get round to using it in any quantity, but it does seem to be full of wed seed, even though I consciously put weed into the recycling bin, along with all the woody stalks. Maybe this is something I’ll have to learn to live with or maybe I should use it to top up the strawberries. The weed suppressant plan worked this season, maybe I’ve just inadvertently solved my own problem!

I finally got round to picking the very last of the chilies, deciding as I did so that my largesse had (almost) been exhausted and I needed to keep at least a few for myself. I’ve pickled them in cider vinegar, with a couple of bay leaves, some coriander seed and some mustard seed, pricking them top and bottom to ensure the pickling solution gets inside the pods, saving the seeds form blackening (hopefully). I also gave a small bag to the young fellow who’s doing the cooking in the local. He’s a decent lad and seems to know what he’s up to, if they can hold onto him and the place itself can weather the coming “kipper” months from January to March, we may still have somewhere to get a beer without having to drive or catch a bus.

The discussions held during the Tuesday evening “debating” society sessions, which have replaced winter dominoes (for now), are occasionally heated and sometimes so banal that they hardly seem worth a mention, but sometimes a story is told by one of our august company (more often than not me) that either makes us laugh, makes us angry or makes us reflect. Geologist Dave is a much travelled fellow and consequently often brings something interesting (mostly rocks) to the table. This last week it was a violin, not a remarkable instrument, in and of itself, but a poignant story surrounds it, none the less. Dave’s grandfather was killed during World War One and his body was never recovered, his name is one of the many thousands that adorn The Menin Gate. He was called Ernest, a name he shares with a great uncle of mine who was also killed during the same conflict. Dave’s grandfather was something of a musician and was well known in the Cockermouth area for his fiddle playing. After many years and at no small cost to himself, although the instrument itself has no real value beyond the sentimental and historical, Dave has managed to have said violin fully restored and a new bow made for it, the old one being too bent to ever be playable. It’s a shame none of us can play, but the telling of the story brought some history to life for us all. When the village pubs are all gone, and the curmudgeonly old buggers who stubbornly hang on to what they represent with them, where will such stories be told?

On a similar vein, as I’ve previously mentioned, I occasionally visit a Facebook page called “Old Rossington Photos”. This picture was recently posted, it shows a group of men who may well have been miners (the colliery shaft was sunk in 1912 and coal was first brought to the surface in 1914) although they could just as easily have been workers on the Rossington Hall estate. One of the first real political “slogans” any of them would have seen would (probably) have been the poster bearing Lord Kitchener’s visage along with the wording “Your Country Needs You”. I don’t know whether or not any of these chaps answered the call, although it would be strange if they hadn’t. They’d have happily gone to the trenches, as so many did, believing that God and right were both on their side, not least because of the less than subliminal messaging. Was the use of the pithy “slogan” widespread in politics in the early twentieth century? I don’t really know, but if it was, it can hardly compare with the continuing barrage of mindless, puerile, semi-literate ‘word soup’ we’re bombarded with these days. You don’t have to look far to find it, either. The Labour Party, which seems determined to govern by “X” post, is going to “Rebuild the foundations of Britain“. It’s going to do this by being “Mission driven“. While it’s at it, it’s also going to “Stop the chaos and drive change by turning the page“. I’m guessing that wet behind the ears SPADS spend much of their days “Blue sky thinking” in small focus groups to come up with this infantile drive, which, to be honest,  we’ve all heard before in one form or another. Tony Blair had his “New Labour, New Life For Britain“, whilst, in 2015 the Tories offered us the less than pithy “Strong Leadership, A Clear Economic Plan And A Brighter, More Secure Future”. I could go on, but there has to be a point, doesn’t there? It’s all waffle. Meaningless rhetoric that’s been repeated, time after time, with, sadly, much the same result. Nowt changes, or, if it does, it doesn’t change for the better. I’d like to think we were ready for a bit of action, but it seems that talk is all that’s on offer, and not just from Labour, it’s almost as if politicians take their “orders” from a higher authority, one who’s message, ironically, is (we’re going to) “Build Back Better” . Proper pithy, that one, I’m surprised Keir “My Dad Was A Toolmaker” Starmer doesn’t make more use of it!
 

© Colin Cross 2024