KW-06 Tales of life and death at the Barracks
How soon is too soon?
Ten minutes ago, before I got out of bed to go and get the laptop I’m typing on now, words and sentences were cascading through my imagination, beautiful muse-inspired thoughts to share with you. Sadly, I was still asleep, a little over half dreaming of the newsletter.
Of course, when I try to take the ephemeral and push it out through my fingers to the keyboard, it all turns into noise and, as it has been a week of very little interest, I stutter to a stop and decide to go and make a cup of tea instead.
The embers in the fire were still glowing hot, and, scraping them together at the front of the grate, the tinder I piled on top caught easily, and within no time, fire returned to the loft. Call me the modern Prometheus.
I’ve spent, like every gardener, all winter (is that what we are calling it?) planning next year’s planting. We love to sit in our potting sheds and potter. I even made a historical map thing of all the growing that we’ve done here over the last 5 years. (Yes, this is year six starting now. I have very mixed feelings about this). It’s what we do all winter to stop ourselves from going completely mad. Well, this year, I suppose I spent rather a lot of time sawing and chopping wood as well. It’s still not done, but it’s done to the degree I wanted it to be done to. Now, I have a week of shovelling and wheelbarrowing bark and sawdust to look forward to. This last week, though, I spent in almost complete dedication to the joyful backmuscle killer that is raking wet leaves from wet grass.
And I have distracted myself - back to this coming year in planting.
The overwintering crops are all doing ok, maybe not quite as well as last year, or maybe I am time confused because it has felt like spring for a week or more, and last year, we were full of snow. The onions are looking a little droopy, but alive. The garlic appears to not be playing this year.
As for the rest of the year - t’s never too early to start planning what you are going to do. In fact, it’s a very good idea. It makes it more likely that much of it will actually happen. Whatever the degree of springliness (and this will pass, and we will return to winter before it’s over) it does feel that February is a little early to actually start doing it.
Despite that this week, looks like it might possibly be A Good Idea to get out there and start preparing some ground. The earth unfroze at the start of this week, and maybe I want to get out there and turn it over. The pumpkin patch is this year going to be down to summer wheat and that can go in as soon as the soil temperature hits 2 - 4 degrees. The vineyard was very much neglected last year, so getting in there and inverting the top 5 - 10 cm feels like a something that might be done.
If I could get in there and do it two more times before sowing with pig food (mangolds, sweetcorn, soya beans), that would massively cut down the weeding during the year, and ultimately the amount of porker porridge we could make from it.
Other than that, this week I’d really love to make a start on the frames for the tomato house, but maybe I’ll keep letting the ideas germinate up top for a while longer.
And finally, I’d like something from you. I’d like you to tell me what I should do more of. I have neglected all of the socials and communication channels fall off a bit this winter and I want to change that. If I were to do one more thing per week, what would you rather see? Instagram, TikTok or a blog post? Please let me know in the comments and for now, I shall say see you next week
Much pirate love
your Pirate Ben
xoxo
Currently Reading:
But don’t ask me about it yet. I have literally just started it :)
I'm assuming this means you got the choppy chop working again! Did you fix it in the end or did the local bodger actually do something useful?
More pigtok please