Potato Day

I often talk about the passing of the seasons and how we look forward to the same events coming round year after year.
Last Saturday it was the much anticipated Potato Day.
After planting the garlic, Potato Day and the start of seed sowing are annual markers of the beginning of a new growing season.

In my last post I talked about Fenland Smallholders Club. Another local group is Cambridgeshire Self-Sufficiency Group who organise this annual Potato Day. It is an opportunity for members of the club and members of the public to purchase from a range of about 50 seed potatoes. There are onions and shallots also and, for the first time this year, dahlia tubers too.
There are refurbished garden tools for sale, crafts and cakes and drinks.

CSSG Potato Day is held in a rather grandiose church in Huntingdon.

It was absolutely packed this year.

I've written about this every year for the past 5 years so I'll keep it brief.
The advantage of purchasing seed potatoes from a Potato Day is that there are knowledgeable folk on hand if you're not sure what you need, there are umpteen varieties available and you can buy as many or as few of each as you like so it's a great opportunity to try new types of potato.
It also happens to be an inexpensive way of buying potatoes.

This year I purchased over a hundred tubers of eleven varieties. That will be over a hundred potato plants for the grand total of £7.62!
Once you work out the best way to grow potatoes, there's actually very little effort involved. You certainly don't need to be digging trenches and shifting tons of heavy clay soil. So that's £7.62 for my year's supply of potatoes and eleven different varieties available for our enjoyment.

The varieties I am growing this year are the seven varieties I've settled on growing every year plus three which I grow in some years and one new variety.
The stalwarts are:
Earlies: Arran Pilot and Duke of York (Usually Red Duke of York but a crop failure means we couldn't get hold of them)
Second Earlies: Charlotte and Kestrel.
Maincrop: Valor, Desiree and Pink Fir Apple

In addition, I am growing Bonnies again as a second early and Cara and Orla maincrops. I have grown all these varieties before.

Finally there is Blue Danube, reputed to be one of the best for roast potatoes. This one is new for me.

Most of the potatoes will be set to chit, the process whereby they are encouraged to form strong sprouts before being planted. The aim here is to give them a start as they can't go outside yet. Potatoes are not frost hardy. No-one seems to be able to prove whether or not chitting works but most people do it! It certainly does no harm.



Half a dozen of the Arran Pilot potatoes will however be planted out in the morning, but under the protection of the polytunnel. These give a super early crop which is grown and harvested before the polytunnel space is needed for other crops.

Having selected and paid for my seed potatoes, I went over to the refurbished tool stand to chat to the guys there. I was admiring a cultivator with five spear shaped tines, a beautiful piece of equipment but of little use in my no dig garden with reasonably heavy soil.
But I was so glad I went for a chat as one of the people pointed out a potato fork they had for just a fiver. This looks like a normal digging fork, but the prongs are wide and flattened, designed to minimise spearing the harvest. I can't wat to try it out.

Fenland Smallholders Club lives on.

This past Sunday was a big day for me.
It was the AGM of the Fenland Smallholders Club and, after two years at the helm, I was stepping down as Chair.
But there was a big problem. There was no sign of anyone being willing to take over the mantle. There was a real danger that the club would fold after over forty years.

The club had been in a similar precarious situation before I took on the role of Chair, so my tenure had just bought a little time.  Of course, I could just stay on as Chair if no one else came forward, but this was a bit like a game of chicken. If I gave way and showed any hint of being willing to carry on then it was sure that nobody would stand and we would be in exactly the same position this time in 2021. Besides, there are over 200 members in the club so it is unfair for one person to be forced into a position because of others' inertia.

This is of course a situation which many clubs and small organisations across the country find themselves in. The digital age brings some great benefits, but actual personal contact and going out to meetings and events has suffered as a result. It was I who started up the Facebook group for members of the club and I have sometimes wondered if that may have contributed to members' apathy. It is all too easy to hit the like button and somehow feel you are doing your bit to support the club. But there have been huge benefits of the Facebook group too. Especially for newer smallholders, it means they don't have to spend time building up a network of people to call and they don't have to wait several weeks to ask someone's opinion at a meeting. Answers on the internet are instant, even if often at odds with each other. Facebook has also provided the club with a great means of marketing and a huge pool of potential members. The days of turning up at agricultural shows and country fayres with a club stand are long gone.

But nor should the past be left behind and forgotten. Fenland Smallholders Club has always been slightly quirky and slightly old-fashioned. In my time on committee I have tried to drag it kicking and screaming into the current century, but it has often been an uphill struggle against a tide of conservatism.  Occasionally, when I am feeling mischievous, I bring up the subject of veganism. That gets things kicking off!!!

But the old timers have much to teach us. Many members, including ourselves, have come from city life and come with idealised views about rural life. Jumping in at the deep end soon brings you back to reality and the smallholding learning curve is a steep one. But at the same time there is a balance to be struck. Many countryside attitudes are indeed ill informed and need challenging.
You've only got to look at the all too common attitude that any uninvited plant or creature needs to be destroyed. The indiscriminate use of chemicals which came in after the war has decimated our wildlife and left our ecosystems in tatters.
But I would like to think that smallholding harks back to a time before industrial, monocultural farming and that it can provide some sort of model for the future. I'm not saying that every single person can be expected to own a piece of land and spend much of their time producing their own food. Most people wouldn't want to, but that's no excuse for accepting the way things have gone.

So, back to the Fenland Smallholders Club. We still have meetings at least every other month. We have a buddy scheme where an incredible range of members' knowledge and experience can be accessed. We have subgroups for Grow-Your Own, Cheesemaking, Winemaking and Wool Crafts. We have an annual duck order for members and we have a cheap seed scheme. And if all that wasn't enough, members get an excellent bimonthly magazine too.
We try to do whatever we can to support members, both practically and socially.
Smallholding can be a lonely pursuit. In fact most smallholders are fiercely independent people. So having the opportunity to meet up with other smallholders is probably the most valuable thing the club offers.
Yes, we have a Facebook page, a website and even a Twitter account, but it's that face to face contact, the interest and education that our meetings offer which is the real draw.

But we are like the village pub and the high street, constantly facing an uphill struggle to keep going. Everyone bemoans our disappearance but few people see that active, practical support is needed to keep these institutions going.
I may sound old here, but these days people want to have their cake and eat it and that is not always possible.

So this post has been a balance of nostalgic pessimism and forward-thinking optimism and that ability to balance past and future, to move with the times but with an eye to the best of tradition and the past, is the key to the survival for clubs like Fenland Smallholders Club.

Well, I've wandered and rambled right off the path!
Back to last Sunday and the AGM.
There was a real danger that the club would fold due to the membership as a whole being too apathetic to take responsibility for it. I know that sounds harsh but that's the way I see it and now that I am no longer Chair I don't have to be quite so diplomatic (not a strength of mine anyway!)
But the people who do care turned up and restored some of my faith in human nature. There was a genuine banging together of heads to come up with a solution. I had been expecting a bumpy meeting, but almost everybody's contributions were positive and it really came across how valued the club is.
Everybody has busy lives which don't always go to plan. Sometimes we go through really sticky patches where we seem to be trudging through mud. But if lots of people can get involved then the responsibility can be shared and running the club can actually be a joy rather then a burden.
Fortunately just enough people, with a little cajoling, were willing to step up to the mark.

Even more importantly, we do now have a new Chair. More than that, we have our first ever female Chair (strictly speaking, club rules and most members still like to use the word Chairman, but I insist on dropping the man bit off the end!). This was a huge relief. To see the club fold would have been absolutely tragic.
I will of course be staying very involved and doing everything I can to make sure the new Chair feels supported and not burdened.

At the end of the day it is about community and everybody taking a bit of responsibility for the mutual benefit of all.

Long live Fenland Smallholder Club!