Trays of plants would be laid out filling all available concrete standing while I check the weather forecast three times a day in a normal year, but it isn’t that and 44,000 lettuces have been planted in Lincolnshire drought conditions.   The first of the overwintered green manures have been topped, spread with FYM (farm yard manure) and chopped in, while Dicken, in the driver’s seat, I on the back, have squabbled over the brush weeding of autumn sown onion sets and broad beans.  Afterwards the beds appear like a striped lawn, when the mower has been through.

In between we hoe and then my mind travels – I am back yak riding in snow at 3700 metres in Sikkim province, three miles from the Tibetan border in the region known as the chicken neck   The security is so tight, like hands gripped round a chicken’s neck, that even the citizens of Sikkim are not allowed permits, only the 30,000 military who live here and the Tibetan road workers.  Then we are camped over the Nepalese border, armed police a feared of Maoist bandits watching over us, and the overland truck, by night. In my next daydream, I am drinking millet beer from a tube of bamboo and sampling the betel nut, cut with coconut and cardamon pods from a banana leaf at a Buddhist wedding.  A further drive down memory lane takes us to Darjeeling, where the mist hangs low and I am wearing gloves to read in bed in the absence of any heating in zero temperatures.

After criticism from Clyde that my concluding paragraph last week was too downbeat, in my defence I am just being a realist in the current downturn.  The price of lettuce bags had risen and now I report a 25% increase in little gem boxes.  With diesel at a record high this week, propane is up £10 a 47 kg bottle for the thermal weeder, which takes four, on last year.  Despite media reports of soaring food prices, will we receive more for our lettuce this season?  Of course not!

Pam, Clyde and Dicken

Here we are, back in the swing of things, with Dicken noted by his absence.  The doctor recommended to rest his knee injury for two, three days,  “I don’t mind if I do!” said Dicken.   Followed by no strenuous activity for two weeks, but as we are talking Dicken here that shouldn’t be a problem.  Duke, Clyde’s Weimaraner, is limping too, as if taking the Michael.

We thickly mulched the newly planted hedging along side Hanes’ piece with waste straw to suppress weeds.  First we disturbed a short-eared owl, a flock of four that are now sharing the hunting ground of our barn owls.  Next was the small hole above the water line in the dyke, home to a water vole.  Grasses flattened and fertilised were evidence where the four roe deer slept last night.  Turning right on the southern boundary of the 2 acres, where the barn owls nest in the willow tree, we came to the foxes’ earth.

The weather couldn’t have been kinder for the first outdoor lettuce planting of the season.   It is a matter of passing through the pain barrier that first session back on the lettuce planter, but I quote the mantra of Chrissie Wellington, the Brit who holds the five fastest ever women’s times at the Ironman distance “discomfort will not last” and 22,000 are now tucked up under their fleecy cover.

Besides that, we have drilled onions, cut rocket, hoed lettuce tunnels and the autumn onion sets, enjoying the diversity, sunshine and busyness.

The reality check was another box scheme we supply discontinued trading this week, their customer numbers reduced by 50% to no longer be viable and in turn our customer base shrinks further.  They were a real joy to work with, always quick to offer praise where praise was due, which can make such a difference to morale.  How often the only feedback is an entry in the complaints book.  That coupled with further price hikes for biodegradable bags for the coming season and the grisly business of continually chasing payments.

Pam, Clyde and Dicken

I have to admit it even to myself, I am back on the farm.

After a month of over landing up the eastern side of India to Nepal, Chennai to Kathmandu, I am still mentally in no-man’s land, that area between borders.  It happens every time.  I had definitely felt it was time to take our leave that last day in Kathmandu.  It had dawned grey and the rain sleeted down in typically English fashion for which our clothes and the drains were unprepared and we were soon as drowned as the sewer rats and chilled through.  The taxi driver had metaphorically taken us for a ride and we had seen one temple too many.  So why, when I really do appreciate which side my bread is buttered to live in the UK, do I mope about like a spoilt brat?

I battled with Clyde and without enthusiasm to fulfil orders in the snow the first week and attended with even less enthusiasm to the list of hassles arising, the matters that occur and would get sorted on a day to day basis, but hit me all at once after a period of absence.   On the Friday I said, look Pam, you have been back a week, get over it.

Job no 1, irrigate lettuce tunnels, only to find rats (a Strawberry Fields first) had been enjoying the little gem.  Connect hose to overhead irrigation, only to find a split caused by frost damage.  Yes I am back on the farm.

Dicken as I speak is in the meantime on the way back from a week skiing in Austria, nursing a knee injury.

As a finishing touch to the BT saga – you will remember we were without the landline/broadband for four weeks in December and every exasperating communication was with a call centre in India.  Well, we were sharing a table in a certain eating establishment in Calcutta, which I wouldn’t admit to actually frequenting, and the young guy told me he was a BT engineer in India.  “Madam, may I ask if you are BT customer?”  I couldn’t lynch him, he was so proud!

Pam, Clyde and Dicken

Driving to collect the fattened goose, the plant raiser called.  The lettuce, due for delivery end January, were ready now!

BT turned up on Christmas Eve, not to fix our landline, but one at Mexican Bridge.  Didn’t even know we were down.  And then at 11.45 pm the broadband light shone, like the star of Bethlehem.  I said it was a Christmas miracle (as good a theory as any) for Maria to skype her family in Seville who had laid a special place for her/the webcam, at the table.  Cynical Dicken thought it was because BT weren’t working on the line and sure enough, Boxing Day over, the light went out.  So again this blog comes to you from the “Mareham” Office.

Cards and text messages from friends and relatives from afar and from employees past and present – always the best bit of Christmas I feel – over indulgence and festivities, now I feel the need to reconnect with the soil, the elements and get those lettuce planted.   I probably don’t speak for Dicken and Clyde, but I am funny like that!

Coming to you with all the best for 2012 from Pam, Dicken and Clyde at Strawberry Fields

Today Strawberry Fields is operating from Mareham-le-Fen.  Our Bt landline has been down since 7 December, but “at least we have broadband” I said.  Fault was reported to the automated Bt fault line and instantly broadband disappeared too!  I telephoned 0800 from my mobile to India, “do you mind if I call you Pam?”  I didn’t care what he called me, just why we were down for the second time in three months?.  Major problem apparently.  “lots of digging”.  After a couple of days we were entitled to free call divert, not an unqualified success unless, after locating my phone under multi layers and removing two pairs of gloves, I wanted to hear a fax tone that couldn’t get through, to be reminded of yesterday’s appointment or to donate to my “favourite” charity.   The latest target date is now December 30, three target dates have already come and gone, which is why this morning, Dicken and I have carted pc to access an inbox untouched for a fortnight, scanner, invoices, files, cropping programmes, seed catalogues and more paraphernalia than you would think necessary, to Sandy Nook.  And if that weren’t all complicated enough, there is no Vodaphone reception at Dicken’s, so Clyde is on my Vodaphone mobile to field the diverted calls.  As I said, Season of Goodwill to all Men, except BT.

We, that is the one handed worker and the OAP, were happily cutting parsley, oh I exaggerate a bit(!) when a lurcher shot through the hedge dividing off Hanes’ Piece.  The hare coursers are back, respecting no boundaries nor no (wo)man.

We introduced the “Winter Wonderland” kale – an extravaganza of white, pale green, dark green, and purple, of curly, jagged and straight edged leaves for the festive season.  An afternoon was spent harvesting 15 kg of sage, which then had to be pre-packed for stuffing the nation’s turkeys.

Although BT haven’t done anything for my Xmas spirit, it just leaves us to wish you all a very Merry Yule Tide and cheers from all at Strawberry Fields

Pam, Clyde and Dicken

It is Clyde’s week off on the rota and as Dicken put it, all we are left with is an OAP (me) and a one-handed worker  (see his few words below).  Arlandas is booked on the Vilnius bus for a surprise visit home for Christmas, full of promises to return next May.  And to Egle Grigonyte and Evaldas Tirva, a boy Mano Mazylis on November 26

The chard, spinach, romanesco cauliflowers are all harvested.  Now “Let them eat spring greens” I say!  We move to the ‘2 acres’ where the barn owl nests for leeks, the second planting marking the halfway point through our leek harvest.

The white van man delivering bales of leek/celeriac nets needed a signature and the frosty morning had turned foul, as I emerged from the sorrel.  The conversation went something like this:
“Where have you been?  In the field?” amazement in the voice.  “What are you doing?”
“Cutting spinach”  (I knew sorrel was a non-starter!)
“Are you going to be there all day”.   He felt my hands.  “Oh, I don’t envy you”.

A new ginger Tom Cat has moved in.  The resident farm cats amicably allow him to share their bowl.  The word is obviously out in the feline community that there are lots of rats at Strawberry Fields for the taking.  The tally sprung in the trap is up to eleven.  Colin who cleans the dykes with his JCB, after visits back and forth to the doctor all summer long, has been told he has probably had Weil’s disease and is lucky to be alive.  Meanwhile the pigs grow into pink pork on their beetroot diet.
Pam

Dicken’s story
Hi all, It is normally my job to copy and paste Pam’s comments onto the website, but today it’s my turn at doing the creative writing?!? I’ve just returned from having a well-deserved week’s holiday from working on the farm to being able to work on our, mine and my girlfriend Becky’s mud and stud cottage. It was Tuesday evening when I had a small accident, I managed to slip with a power drill and drill a hole through my web between thumb and index finger. It was a good excuse to down tools for the rest of the week and visit Manchester, to take in the beautiful cooking aromas and festivity at the Piccadilly Gardens’ Christmas market and to sing along to Bryan Adams at the M E N arena, also lots of Xmas shopping. Now I am back to the reality of the frosty mornings and dark nights when I finish work. I am grateful for the new heating boiler having been installed so I can sit here typing away without gloves on!!

Guesthouse Puka didn’t live up to the name and a deluxe room it clearly wasn’t, the paintwork distressed in the wrong sense of the word, but Joaquin, stand-in proprietor, made up for its failings in kind.   He invited us to share tapas, toast spread with tomatoes and olive oil sprinkled with salt, olives and salsa dip and a huge pan of paella already bubbling on the stove.   In his blue checked shirt impressions were of a Majorcan who had never left his island, but Joaquin lives in the States, his wife a professor in University of Tampa, Florida.  His mother died and he had been home a year sorting out her affairs and still the paperwork wasn’t complete.  It was the day of the elections and he was disillusioned with the current socialists, not least because he had imported a load of lumber from the US for a government dept and still not seeing a dime a year later had to lay off twenty workers he could not pay.

I bring the conversation round to agriculture.  Almonds, olives are four years rotting on the trees, he tells us.  Nobody wants to pick them, they want to be a DJ in one of the four thousand hotels or waiter in a restaurant. You will see terraces in the mountains, but it is of a time past.  The food all comes in from the main land now.

By next morning, his mood had lightened with the People’s Party landslide victory.  “Now people know where to invest, they will spend again”.

We explored eastwards, Pollenca, Formentor, Port Alcudia and were usually the only visitors in town.  “closed for a rest,” “open weekends only”.  We had to drive to the next town to find breakfast.  We then headed into the agricultural centre, Llucmajor, Porreres, Petra and Sant Juan with little of interest for the sun-seeking tourist, past Don Quixote windmills, grapes and olives, almonds and oranges.   We poked around the markets, admiring squashes hanging in question mark shapes, wild mushrooms in abundance, rows of black acorn fed Serrano hams, suckling pigs displayed with balls of tripe, sheep heads and variety packs of hen combs, offal and eggs taken from the deceased.

But best of all was the mountainous western route, where villages snuggle into the hillside, terraces the remnants of by-gone subsistence farming days.  Goats ambled across our path.  Validemossa, where Chopin and his lover, George Sands spent a winter of discontent.  Deia that Robert Graves abandoned Blighty for to write his poetry.  Soller with its presnt day ex-pats, such as www.anna-nicholas.com Café/bars, seafood crepes, alioli  (mayonnaise with garlic and lemon) delicious sole basking in mid-20 degrees overlooking the Mediteranean  from which it was pulled the same morning.

I had not had a whole twenty-four hours away from the farm since Easter and it took until Thursday to turn off.  Friday we were back home, the Fens looked bleaker and flatter.  Already it seems like a dream, a pleasant dream, but just a dream never the less.

Pam

We labour under leaden skies.
Inexplicably we sell more spinach and chard in a week than during the main season – perpetual, true, swiss and rainbow.  Leeks too are on the move.
While some crops, take coriander, past their prime drawing to a close, their harvest is agonisingly slow and their sales sky rocket.  And others, the Romanesco cauliflowers, like turrets on fairytale castle, come on to take their place.
We plan a time-off rota to each recharge our batteries and Arlandas dreams of a visit home, but there is still too much work for Mondays and as Clyde takes the first leave of absence, we struggle to meet deadlines as drivers arrive optimistically ahead of schedule and stress oozes from my pores.

We have been giving some TLC to the kilometre of hedging on Willy’s field planted last winter, reapplying another layer of straw mulch and removing any weed competition from inside the tree guards.

A conundrum.  Whose been eating my peppers?  As the last of the red sweet chilli peppers ripen, a creature is taking a small bite out of everyone (surely Ratty wouldn’t be this delicate?)  But then more peppers are gathered and piled at the edge of the poly tunnel around a hole to the outside.  (too big a task for Town Mouse’s country cousins? but no evidence of droppings to incriminate Mr Rat)

Pam, Clyde, Dicken and Arlandas

The celeriac and last of the beetroot are safely gathered in.  Chard hoed and cut parsley fleeced ere the winter storms begin.  All bare land is tucked up in grazing rye and winter vetch, including the aftermath of celeriac and early leeks, without the usual it-would-have-been-better-to-leave-it whilst tacky soil smears to the tackle, the tractors tyres and the road.  Just how kind the “back end” has been is evident in the spring greens, most of which could be cut this side of Christmas if we had the sales, but the fields are bursting with other bounty!  Crop covers though are on standby for the first sign of trouble, severe weather (what happened to the October snow forecast?) or their number one enemy, the pigeon.  Dicken creates stale seedbeds in readiness for the first drillings of salad onions in the new year, whilst Clyde ploughs for the early lettuce plantings in February.

A super breed of rat is staging a break-in to our recently foam-insulated ambient store.  John set ambushes of giant sticky pads, which have only succeeded in snaring Rudy and then me, as I struggle, tangled up in goo, to release a dog who is competing in the 2011 season of Strictly Come Dancing!

I am incensed at the government’s announcement this week to halve the feed-in tariff to 21p for solar pv as from December 12, after only eight months.  Germany had a three-year crack of the whip.  One solar firm I spoke to fielded over 500 calls in the following 24 hrs.   We cannot get the work done within the time frame and the reduced feed-in tariff means running the electric boilers is no longer tenable.  Looks like it is back to oil-fired for us.

We are already being asked for our Xmas/New Year collection/delivery schedule!

Pam, Clyde, Dicken and Arlandas.

The body says hibernate, the government says no!  We meddle with the clocks, it is still dark as I load the pick up trucks, but at least we can tell the septoria from the parsley as we begin the first harvest of the day.  But it is only temporary, a fleeting phase, and while the days continue to shorten and the nights draw in, we know we must make the most of the daylight hours while the weather is still kind.

The broad beans went in slightly earlier than the optimum November 5, but sown on the heaviest land on the farm, we were afraid if it started to rain, it might never stop!  Back end jobs, clearing up crop covers, collecting irrigation pipes, flaming the drilled onion sets – and the celeriac lifting is a continuing story.  Sales have slumped off a bit, there are those who only want us for our lettuces!

When I left you last, our soil association inspection was imminent.  There were no non-compliances, but as usual afterwards I felt like I had been wrung out with the washing; after a day of paperwork I lose the will to live and needed to do something real.  I got down on my hands and knees in the soil to hand hoe spring onions, you can’t get much more real than that.

The chickens that were being let out by torchlight, now are thrown their evening feed of grain at afternoon tea break.  The two stray domestic geese still reside over the drainside, even Mr. Fox considers them too tough for his supper.

Pam, Dicken, Clyde and Arlandas