Big blisters

We're doing no-dig veggie gardening. This is to keep the top soil where it should be, with all it's micro-organisms and structure that plants find ideal to grow in. Also, the land here is where the ice sheets ended last ice age, so for every kilo of soil you have, you get 2 kilos of stones. As we're having 12 beds each 1.6m by 10m long, plus the 12x24 foot polytunnel, and 10m by 15m soft fruit area and 10 tree beds, I didn't fancy digging for some reason!



Here's our field, marked out ready for the veg beds - at least, the top 10 metre of it is. Rest is going to be grazed by our neighbours cows and sheep until we get the pigs, goats, geese, barley, kale and artichokes in.

K digging. We are digging trenches around the perimeter of each bed to help stop grass from encroaching - the trenches are the size of K's fancy hand-beaten bronze azada-hoe so we only need run it around the edge to keep it clean. Then cardboard goes on top of the grass, followed by manure, then black plastic to make sure the grass is killed off. We're doing this on the potato and squash beds, taking the turf off the pean and bean beds for liming (PH 5 here!), and I am double-digging the root beds. 100% pure daft in the head, me like - the ground is almost solid granite! I'll be a real man when that job's done, with hands like shovels and hair sprouting where it shouldn't.

These days instead of heading to a nice warm office to slip into a coma from sheer boredom, I spend the morning getting covered in brick dust while making loft hatches, or sawdust cutting wood for the fire, then after lunch (cabbage, bread, eggs) K joins me to dig in the freezing mud until we're knackered, then it's tea and cake time, then I get the fire on and we take it in turns to cook some combo of dried peas, potatoes, leeks and garlic for dinner. Then we sit in front of the fire and pretend to read when we're actually nodding off and I wish that I have made some beer three weeks ago.