The mornings are dark when I awake and yesterday as I
stripped the old runner beans from their poles, there was a sharp wind with a
cold edge blowing from the east; the same wind that is following me across the
field to shut up the ducks and the chickens for the night. It is only quarter
past six but heavy, grey night clouds have darkened the east, and are gathering
their forces against the clear band of silver light still lying along the top
of the hill to the west. The air is full of raucous cries as the rooks lift
into the sky, turn against the gathering darkness and sweep towards their night
roost in the woodland at the top of the hill. Then all is silent save for the
plaintive quack of one of my ducks waiting for its supper. My waddling friends don’t
argue. Once I place the feed hopper inside they dutifully follow each other
into their shed. By the time I secure the electric fence around the chicken run
it is dark. I call my dog and head down, collar up, I am glad to be heading
home where a warm, bright kitchen and the smell of supper awaits me. Gone are
the warm evenings when I lingered to watch the swallows fill the evening sky, and
waited for the first glimpse of a bat through the trees as dusk fell.
The allotment looks forlorn. The apple trees are bare;
their fruit is carefully packed into boxes in the store shed and only a few
windfalls are left for the squirrels. The squashes have been lifted, hardened
and are also in store and all that is left is a bare patch of grey earth and a
rash of new young stinging nettles in one corner. The large, green umbrella
leaves of the rhubarb have collapsed and their rotting remains lay spread
eagled across the flinty soil. In the greenhouse, the last tomatoes hang on
shrivelled stems to ripen slowly until the first frost.
The end of the season. Time to hang up the fork and the hoe
and burrow down indoors in the warm.
But that is not the way things work. Because this is where
next year starts. It is a time for new plans, new ideas, and lots of hard work
preparing the ground (literally) for new beginnings. It is wellies on, gloves
at the ready, scarf tucked in, a jar of hot chocolate on the shelf in the veg
shed, and down to work while the weather holds.
I have already sown broad beans, and onion sets outside and
in the polytunnel late salad leaves, winter lettuce, coriander, parsley and
rocket are showing their heads. There are carrots in tubs which will hopefully
survive the winter and this week I split open a packet of winter peas, soaked
them in paraffin to deter the mice and carefully dropped the small wrinkled
seeds into shallow drills in the dark, still warm earth in the hope of an early
crop next year. Hidden at the back of the potting cupboard is a roll of
horticultural bubble wrap waiting to be used if it turns cold.
And now it’s into the manure heap with the wheel barrow. Steam
gently rises in the cool air as I shovel in the dung and trundle it along to
the beds I have cleared ready for digging. There is something special about the
smell of damp earth as it is turned with the spade; freshness and decay rolled
into one. Equally, there is something seriously satisfying about digging; a
sense of achievement as a messy patch of weeds morphs into crumbly carefully tilled
soil. Or is it a masochistic streak buried deep that just enjoys the exercise? I
try to do less each year to protect the soil structure and I have come around
to the idea of permaculture and green manure but tucked inside I am my father’s
daughter and he believed in digging.
And the digging gives me time to plan and to dream of all
the things that I am going to do next spring. The vegetables I am going to
squeeze into this plot, the drip feed, self-watering system I am going to work
out how to use next year, the sacrificial flowers I am going to plant between
the vegetables to deter ravenous insects from eating my crops, the beautiful
scarecrow I am going to make, the ornamental bed of cut flowers I am going to
grow, and so it goes on.
Just a few more weeks of hard work if the weather is kind and
the allotment should be put to bed, clean and tidy, ready and waiting to begin
again. Then I can retreat indoors.
Roll on the spring!
