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After a soggy start with some drowned early lettuce and potatoes, 2014 turned out to be one of the best growing years we’ve had. Plenty of sunshine and just enough summer rain falling at the right times was followed by an exceedingly ‘long back end’. I always love saying that; for the uninitiated, it’s farming speak for those long and mild autumns we often get in Devon when the grass keeps growing; this year the long back end spread across the whole country and as a consequence we go into the winter surrounded by an embarrassment of greens.
In the fields, it is half a million down and half a million to go; leeks that is. It’s very muddy but not much else to say there, so here are some other thoughts.
When food and farming rubs up against fashion and celebrity I get the urge to bolt for the cabbage patch; then again, recipes from a fry-up chomping leek puller aren’t going to shift the kale and cauliflower. With that in mind, let’s leave prejudice in the fields and bring on the irritatingly young and gorgeous Hemsley sisters. They might be more commonly seen smiling from the pages of Vogue promoting stomach flattening, bowel curative, gluten-free cooking, but I met them two years ago in proper farmer’s wellies, picking samphire in the mud and rain with one of our farming co-op members.
Looking up to the north there is snow on the moors, while in the valley the emerging wild garlic and snowdrops are frozen into the ground. After months of warm, wet Atlantic air giving a mild start to winter and an abundance of green veg, high pressure has anchored itself over Ireland.
A few of you have warned me over the years that while you like the veg, you can do without my “commie rants”. I try to confine my weekly musings to the farm but trying to run a business responsibly is itself a political act, so here’s another.
Issue 12: Fairness and five years.
Find out more about Wicked Leeks and our publisher, organic veg box company Riverford.