Self-Sufficiency in Style
August diary
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Self-Sufficiency in Style August diary
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Most men like diggers. I do not.
Impossible for a normal human being to drive without smashing the greenhouse and running over the cat, you have to employ an abnormal human being if you need a digger - a digger driver. Digger drivers are expensive, unreliable and disobedient. They leave a trail of mud, damage and ill feeling behind them. |
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So the news that we needed a digger again was viewed with horror. The friendly farmer who dug the footings for the walled garden was busy with harvest. It came about like this. |
Harvest takes priority over everything. |
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August |
We live in the very driest part of England. That always comes as a
surprise to most foreigners, who were under the impression that all of
England is equally and permanently wet.
August is, of course, the driest month. A claim which is viewed with extreme scepticism by all inhabitants of these islands, who, of course, know better. |
| We had been worrying about the new walled
garden for months.
Once meadow, it is heavy clay with no ditches. It rapidly turns to pools of water at the merest hint of a cloud. |
The new raised vegetable beds would have become duck ponds. |
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Pipe Work |
We knew that long ago there must have been a land drain, because we could
see some old clay pipes exiting into a ditch a quarter of a mile away. But
three years of looking had failed to locate the source.
It was when we were preparing the foundations for the wall that we found the drain running deep under the site of the garden. Alan, the carpenter's eyes glazed over. "We'll get a digger," he said. "We'll lay plastic pipe between all the beds and get rid of the water down the old drain." |
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So a shiny new tracked digger was hired. Our carpenter leapt into the seat
with enthusiasm.
"Mind the greenhouse!" "Don't worry" he yelled back, "I've always wanted to drive one of these." He wasn't joking, but somehow we got the job done. |
Digger Delight |
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It's a plastic world |
Under the paths and between the spaces reserved for the raised beds we had
dug ditches, put in 4 inch plastic pipe and covered with gravel.
The greenhouse had survived. |
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Our friendly neighbourhood farmer stopped by on his frantic annual harvest
dash from field to field.
He admired the first of the beds. "Bit close together those pipes," he suggested, "you will be very dry." "On this land?" I was horrified. "Global warming," he said with a smile. Farmers get a funny sense of humour around harvest time. Lack of sleep, I should think. |
the first of 23 raised beds |
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Getting rid of the water That's why we are draining the land at the inexplicably named Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner. |
A bad
dream
