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Autumn newsletters seldom escape some reference to mists and mellow fruitfulness. In two hundred years no one has evoked a grower’s September satisfaction better than Keats in the first verse of ‘To Autumn’. As a philistine farmer I never get beyond the first line, but such is the diversity of our workforce that one particularly beautiful autumn morning while harvesting a particularly bountiful crop of squash, we were treated to a perfect rendition of all three verses from an otherwise subdued field worker.
Some welcome late sunshine has helped ripen the last of our tomatoes. Over the next two weeks we will harvest what is ripe for your boxes, pick those ‘on the turn’ to ripen in trays in a warm polytunnel, and hope that the preservers amongst you will take the rest to make green tomato chutney. Within 48 hours of the last picking, we will be planting winter salads. One day’s growth now will take a week to achieve in dark December, so it is vital to get the rocket, claytonia, mustards and chards established soon to provide salads in January.
My current state of contentment is unusual for a farmer; we have a reputation for misery. Could a dour anticipation of calamity be a prerequisite of farming success? Thomas Hardy’s Gabriel Oak didn’t save the harvest by revelling at the harvest festival; he was out virtuously sheeting the ricks against the gathering storm while everyone else was getting legless in the barn. Joe Grundy, David Archer and Brian Aldridge maintain the tradition across the class divide with their variations on rural self-pity in Radio 4’s The Archers.
I love September; for both its abundance in the fields and the resultant possibilities in the kitchen. More selfishly, I relish the calm that returns to south Devon and, along with many of my surfing staff, look forward to the first of the autumn swells arriving on uncrowded beaches while the water is still warm. With the planting finished, we now settle into the regular rhythm of harvesting both fresh veg for the boxes and filling the stores with roots for the winter.
A combination of cola and certain orange processed foods make my youngest son quite uncontrollable. It can be entertaining for a few minutes but I would hate to have to deal with him in a classroom. Mostly he is deprived of the junk he craves by a puritanical father but I sometimes relent at the cinema with the result that he once had to be physically restrained in the aisle half way through Lord of the Rings.
Issue 12: Fairness and five years.
Find out more about Wicked Leeks and our publisher, organic veg box company Riverford.