We plough the fields and scatter

For the first time in my life I was actually glad it rained today. This is what being partially responsible for some fledgling vegetables and fruit in Pilsdon’s garden has done to me, having spent hours laboriously hoeing trenches, digging holes, and planting potato sets, onions, cabbages, strawberries, and pea saplings which were born in half a drainpipe in the warmth of the church (it has underfloor heating!).

Under the careful tutelage of another volunteer more experienced in such matters, I have been learning how to thin out radish saplings which are vigorously bursting into life in serried rows outside the potting shed. The dark art of “pricking out” saplings into larger individual pots is no longer a mystery to me. I have become adept at marking where the rows of vegetables are to be planted with bits of bamboo, twine and a measuring tape.  This has all so far taken place under the sun of the third hottest March in recorded history giving me a good farmer’s tan, although April seems to have other plans, including hail.

What makes all this work satisfying is knowing that this produce will eventually end up on my plate. I’m not working for money but literally to put the dinner on the table.  Give it a few months and assuming all goes to plan we will be busy harvesting, the food either to go to the kitchen or to the freezers for storage.

However the last couple of days I haven’t been able to get out to the garden as other tasks have taken precedence - cooking dinner for 20+ takes all afternoon and I was on for both yesterday's and today's dinner, and I’ve also been slapping some white vinyl silk on the walls of a small bathroom in the attic.

Although I usually have some idea what I’m expected to do each day due to the rota there is a lot of variety and unexpected tasks crop up from time to time - on my third day at Pilsdon I found myself helping to dig a grave for a donkey.   And I’m always learning something new, or discovering that I can actually do something that before I had never got round to trying such as the focaccia I made today from scratch, in the Aga, which turned out really well to my utter surprise.  And yesterday I was shown how to make butter from the cream from our three cows. All useful stuff which I assume will begin to become second nature the more I do it. Only one way to find out I suppose!