Desperate is dressed in pjs, wellies, dressing gown and Wurzle Gummage overcoat, covering squash plants against a suspected frost by the light of the moon, when all good people should be in their beds.

Desperate is slug watch in the tunnels at dusk, the wet having exasperated the problem (and me) and a more grizzly job it is hard to imagine.  I close the door after me and leave Mr Toad to patrol the night shift.

Desperate is the plant raiser strimming our celeriac plants, because they have grown just too big.

Desperate is planting lettuce out into un-bedformed land, with two on hoes going ahead.

Farmers are always complaining and I certainly didn’t intend to disappoint you this week!  “How are you?”  I am not sure how to answer politely nowadays.   Fuel tanker drivers strike for better pay and conditions?  They don’t know they have been born!  One farmer hereabouts still has 600 acres of potatoes to go in, but another has 120 under water.  Then there is the asparagus grower who has had to go out and buy all the pickers waders.  The camaraderie of knowing we are all in the same boat does help.

The weather forecast is full of false promises and a whole day of dry is just too much to ask.  Our expectations are low, a good day of achievement might be half day spent hoeing before rain stops play and we retreat inside to hoe celery yet again or make up boxes.

The one positive being the outdoor lettuce season will be in full swing this weekend, when we will be rejoined by Mantas, and I advertise that the overwintered bunched onions will be ready soon, because that is what our customers want to hear.  Though I do wonder if they will have rotted with their feet in water before then.

Pam, Clyde, Dicken
and Arlandas

The swan’s nest by The Staunch has been washed down stream.

Pam, Clyde, Dicken and Arlandas

As I cut sage, a duck sits fast on eggs.  Further along a hedgehog sleeps away the day and approaching the tarragon, a raucous squawk from a pheasant indicates I am the trespasser.  By the comings and goings from the bird boxes, and the speed of turnover of seed from the feeders, I guess there are more mouths to feed.    The swallows are back.  At least there is plenty of mud for their nests!

Pam, Clyde, Dicken – and Arlandas

Now we do not feel quite so ridiculous having the drainage repairs done on Hanes’ piece.

Wed: Heavy rain
Thurs: Light rain shower
Fri: Thundery shower
Sat: Light rain shower
Sun: Heavy rain

The forecast looks no brighter.
By the middle of the month, we had already had above average rainfall for April, although Sept-Feb was the driest since records begun in 1888.  We were reassured to be told by the Environment Agency at a meeting of the Water Transfer Ltd this week that we would have no restrictions on our irrigation licences this season and praised for our innovative scheme, ahead of its time, whereby farmers, the Environment Agency and the drainage board sit round the table together.  In the meantime we have the go-ahead from the ELDC (district council) planning dept for the reservoir on Willey’s field.  Next step – the abstraction licence from the Environment Agency.
Delivery of additional water butts on order from Anglian Water will be up to 28 days.

Nothing grows.  In the field, crops sit disgusted and with low light levels, raised plants in the glasshouses have refused to move in two weeks.

Pam, Clyde, Dicken

Here we are in the bizarre position now with soggy soil and a hosepipe ban; harbouring a backlog of planting, but needing rain for the reservoirs.   In the absence of an official communication from Anglian Water, it is left to the customer to decipher the rules.  It seems we could top up the garden pond by hosepipe, as it contains one or more fish, but Clyde, who is renovating Glen Cottage, must not use a hosepipe to steam clean paint off external walls -  though he could pay someone else to do it!

We watch transfixed as three neighbouring fields of wheat were ploughed under, the black grass apparently untreatable.  Seems chemicals are not always the answer.

Through my kitchen window and a gap in the hedge, Graham’s sheep are happily grazing knee deep in chicory, clover and grass on Hanes’ piece, arrived for their summer holidays under the Soil Association’s 120 day rule.  And tomorrow Arlandas, the first of our migrant workers, returns to the fold.

Pam, Dicken and Clyde

After the bombardment of emails from the Environment Agency designed to put the fear of God into us re spray irrigation prospects for the coming season, our one inch plus has been very gratefully sponged up and with nothing pressing or spoiling, I was able to shut the farm gate guilt-free and head to Tallinn for two nights.  “Where?” everybody asks.

The microwave died and its new replacement cost the same price as a tank of fuel that I would expect to last no more than two weeks.  How can that be?

After Anglian Water have only so recently announced that their new pipeline, Covenham Reservoir to Boston, will no longer follow this route, it would have skimmed Hanes’ Piece, I thought the letter from npower a late delivered April fool.  A request for access for a non-intrusive ecological survey on Willey’s Field, in connection with the proposed Triton Offshore Wind Farm, which needs to be connected to the grid at the existing Bicker Fen substation.

Pam, Clyde and Dicken

We have rotovated and ploughed, only working land that is immediately needed – for lettuce, celery and parsley –in order to retain what moisture there is.  We removed the fleeces to hoe the first two plantings of lettuces, while the obliging sun shrivelled the weeds behind us and gave us that feel good factor into the bargain.  The sheets were then dug back on again, a less than popular job, and will remain until just before harvest in around four weeks time.

In the unseasonal temperatures the kales threaten to send forth shoots of yellow flowers and the leeks set into 2 acres of concrete, make harvest a challenge.  In the poly tunnels, the rocket lives up to its name and lettuces for cutting on April 20th are ready now.

Ironically, over the hedge on Hanes’ Piece, Phil Broughton is laying land drains, a repair job to be got in before the tax year end.  A lesson we have learned the hard way is one cannot grow quality vegetables on poorly drained land.  The field comes out of the two-year conversion late autumn, so it will be spring 2013 before we start cropping.   Now we just need faith it will ever rain again to justify our investment.

Pam, Clyde and Dicken

We have been hoeing and Clyde to and fro-ing with the muck spreader.   He put up a vixen from the manure heap and closer examination revealed six cubs in her earth, a large litter related to the abundance of food here for the taking –  “so that is where Fen Farm’s chickens went”; from the 20,000 strong free-range poultry unit and ultimately Clyde’s chickens.

The brushes on the tractor-mounted brush weeder have been replaced again, at the astounding cost of £22 each, a rise from £12 and I remember gulping then as we need twenty-five.    We trawled the net, looked at less robust yard sweeping brushes and then just coughed up.  Praise the Lord we aren’t on stony ground.  We filled a skip with our twice-used crop covers.  The farm waste plastic recycling scheme was short-lived, when after a year the collector in our area stepped down.  We hope another will step forward to fill the void.

Pam, Clyde and Dicken

The new season’s growth of thyme and parsley, spinach and red and green kale contribute at last to much needed cash flow at this hungry gap in the year.  The spring greens are now covered in once-used fleece against the pigeons and to encourage growth.   Kohl rabi, autumn raised, and beetroot in modules have been planted and sheeted, together with a spring sown variety of broad bean.

The first tentative steps have been taken towards the construction of an irrigation reservoir on Willey’s field.  Andrew Spence, our civil engineer, took a test dig and confirmed boulder clay, which eliminates the need and additional expense of a plastic liner.  “Application for prior notification of agricultural or forestry development – excavation/waste.  Town and Country Planning General Permitted Development Order 1995, schedule 2, part 6 and 7” has been completed and submitted to East Lindsey District Council.  Until this is in the bag, we cannot proceed to stage two, the water abstraction licence from the Environment Agency, an arduous process we are assured.

Pam, Clyde and Dicken

We have planted Ash, Beech, Walnut, Field Maple, Holly and Sweet Chestnut along the northern boundary of the farm, for the pleasure of the dog-walkers along the East Fen Catchwater Drain, one who told us, as he stopped to pass the time of day, of sighting an otter, and some to coppice.   Clyde knocked up another batch of bird boxes, a high rise of council flats for the sparrows on the gable end, a detached residence and out of a rough-hewn log, a country cottage.  Birds explore the drainage pipes sunk in the gatepost for that purpose and carry out house viewings with an air of the most discerning buyer.  The module trays have been steam cleaned for next month’s sowings, courgette, marrow, squash and a trailer load of Strawberry Fields’ yester years delivered to the scrap yard –  pig trailer axle, hay cart axle, tractor batteries and defunct parts…  Guy, who has been to London twice and doesn’t intend to repeat the experience, has rescued the 2-furrow plough, so that it will live on in ploughing competitions rather than be lost forever.

The culprits of a spate of burglaries in Stickford have been apprehended, but I doubt their penalty will be so severe as he who stole a silk scarf from Catchwater Cottage, neighbouring Willy’s field, and received deportation to Australia.

My snaps are now uploaded onto Myphotobook.co.uk – the Everest flight, got the certificate!   The Mother House in Calcutta, where Mother Theresa’s spirit lives on; Karmi Farm*, where we kicked back and soaked up hospitality belonging to another era, until we didn’t want to leave…..it all seems a long time ago.

Pam, Clyde and Dicken

*www.karmifarm.com