KW-17 Signs of Life

and a special Barracks spontaneity challenge

After another week of absolutely miserable weather, the sun came out. And it stayed out.

In almost 30 years of growing rhubarb, I have never forced it before. It turned out way more wild and exciting that I was thinking. If there are any vegan cooks out there who want some of it, and have ideas of Awesome Things To Do With Rhubarb, let me know and we’ll see about getting some to you!

Temperatures soared into the double figures and the garden said “that will do” and started to slowly unwrap itself from its cold wintery fog and, if bursting into life implies an explosion, then it isn’t doing that, but maybe it is slowly expanding into life. The only metaphor for a slow explosion I can think of is farting into life, and yes, I think that is what it is doing.

This newsletter is going to be late, because I have just realised I don’t have any nice photos for it, so I am going to get up and brush my teeth and enjoy the morning game of hunt the phone and get out there and take a couple of pics of the slow emergence of life. It rained all night - which is ok, I guess - so maybe there is enough of that left over to make a decent picture or two. Meantime, here is Tony standing on a pile of grass.

None of the porcine people of the Barracks loves fresh grass as much as Tony loves fresh grass. He also loves eating generally, but they all do that. They are, after all, pigs.

Which reminds me. This week, I fixed the lawnmower-tractor. Ride-on lawnmower might be more English. So, that means this year I have repaired two broken mechanical things. If you worked with me in the world of telling computers what to do (aka programming), you’ll know that I have a strong preference for making new things rather than doing maintenance of existing things. This absolutely transfers perfectly to the real world of real objects. But, I was possessed by the spirit of James May, and the horror of the potential repair bill if I couldn’t do it myself, and I did it myself. I felt inordinately good about that, and went straight ahead and mowed lots of circles and straight lines and things.

I climbed up a very tall ladder to get this picture, and it looks singularly unimpressive. My photography skills are less than my vegetable growing skills, but also the ridiculous size of everything here makes it tricky sometimes. From the top of the ladder, I got a new, surprising perspective of the hugeness of this place.

The next poorly-ill mechanical device on the list is the rotavator. I did the lawnmower first, because grass cultivation does a bunch of things:

• one of the main targets of this year is to see how many carbons we can pull out of the atmosphere. As a statement piece to show the ridiculousness of the concept of an individual carbon footprint. Grass is one of the best ways to do this

• it’s the best mulch I can produce, and we are going to need literally 20 tonnes of mulch this year

• the pigs love it. Especially Tony, but all of them really, and it does them such good, and attempting to be a self sufficient pirate island whilst spending every cent I can acquire on pig food bought in from the outside is clearly ludicrous

• mowing makes the place look nice, which is more important than you might think

But now I absolutely have to fix Mr Rotavator the Choppy Chop, or there ain’t going to be a whole lot of anything much going on in the vineyard, and I really would rather not have to dig the potager beds entirely by hand. I will if I have to, of course, but I can’t do the vineyard. Not even worth thinking about.

And in the coming week.

• Plant all of the spuds. Or at least, nearly all of them.

• Fix the choppy chop

• Rotavate. If I get the thing fixed like early, today maybe, then the plan would be to rotavate for probably half of the week. This is very weather dependent. If it rains the whole time, then it’s keep off the fields time. If it dries out a bit, then full steam ahead.

• Sow some more stuff in pots. I think I might get the bulk of the pumpkins started. I’m going pumpkin crazy this year. For the roffles.

• Build a damn big fire.

And this is the spontaneity challenge. Come to The Barracks next weekend and help me celebrate Bealtaine. Every year, I make myself a fire and say to myself next year, I should invite people. Well, this year, I have done. Some locals, some fine folks from Berlin, and maybe one or two from further afield. And you. If you have been here before, then just drop in, if you want directions, get in touch.

And look. I didn’t get out of bed to go and take more photos of the slow burst into life of all things growing. I guess we know what this Friday’s Barracks in Pictures is probably going to be about!

Sorry it’s late. Don’t think it is a sign of a diminishment of the great pirattey love that it comes with and until next time (or this weekend!)

your

Pirate Ben

xoxo