Bounty from The Earth

First exposure to the air for these Arran Pilots.

This year has been a tricky one for many reasons, mainly the weather. To tell the truth, I'm looking forward to putting it behind me and beginning anew next spring.

But there are still plenty of crops out there and today I ventured to dig up a few more potatoes. Believe it or not, I'm still harvesting the Earlies!
Problems early in the year made them difficult to sell and I thought most of them would have rotted away or been devoured by slugs, but I managed to dig a surprising amount from the Sald Blue and Arran Pilot beds today. When you push the fork into the ground, lever up the soil and up pop nutritious, tasty potatoes, well the feeling never changes. All the back-breaking effort earlier in the year is forgotten in an instant.



And there's an added bonus. For the harvesting of the spuds is a great time to clear weed-covered beds. And on my smallholding those weeds have almost become a crop in themselves. First to them were the sheep, who I have discovered will eat just about anything. I even gave them a brief taste of the veg garden today, closely monitored of course.

But the main recipients of the weeds are the pigs, most of all the three girls who will be going off in just over a fortnight. In fact they've been getting all the imperfect potatoes, the stringy runners, the oversize courgettes and everybody's blemished apples of late. And I don't think they suspect a thing!

Ready soon!

 

Thursday 27th September 2012
The weather has settled down now after the storm