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My thinking is you can’t stand still, or you’ll get left behind; people’s tastes change all the time, and we need to grow new crops to reflect that.
I’m typing this in the shade of an acacia tree in Guru-Guru, northern Uganda. It’s midday and nothing will tempt the chickens and goats from the shade; all activity has stopped bar the crickets, yet five years ago this was a war zone. With the village destroyed and the ravages of HIV, former farmers were left dependent on handouts until the arrival of farming charity Send a Cow who have been rebuilding communities through sustainable agriculture here for three years.
I’m writing this in the Budongo Forest Reserve, central Uganda. Until now we’ve been travelling through a parched landscape, scarred by fires and deforestation. It’s been three months of drought, yet last night I fell asleep to the sound of rain on the tin roof, as it is green and lush here even at this driest time of year. The forest canopy and leaf litter protect the soil and provide the organic matter that enables it to absorb even the most intense rain, providing water to the trees above.
After a couple of sunny mornings I feel my pulse rate rising as another cropping year is about to start. Memories of floods and mud will be banished as the first seedlings are fed into the planter and delivered into the soil in orderly rows. It has been a miserable time in the fields but if there was going to be 10 weeks of relentless rain, the dormant winter months were the best time for it to fall.Soil temperatures are relatively high and the first plantings of potatoes in Cornwall and Jersey are sprouting and developing well.
The muck is flying, the furrows are turning and every functioning tractor is hitched to something. Even the neglected and otherwise abandoned, smokebelching old timers get coaxed back to life to haul plants, seeds and crop covers to the fields.
Issue 12: Fairness and five years.
Find out more about Wicked Leeks and our publisher, organic veg box company Riverford.