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Most of us like to think that our assessment of the world and the decisions we make are based on evidence, rationality and logic. However, we are emotional beings, full of prejudice and ego, with the added complication of media manipulation thrown in. Science makes valiant efforts to exclude emotional bias and self-interest through systematic testing and peer review before its conclusions are presented as proof.
I am on our farm in France, where we are picking the best crop of sweetcorn I have ever grown; 30,000 cobs to the hectare which are so plump and sweet you can eat them raw. Walking through the crop, my spirits rose to giddy heights until I reached the field next door, where 70% of the cobs are grotesquely deformed with galls of the soil-borne fungal pathogen, smut.
We are awash with vegetables; I can hardly remember being surrounded by such bounty and quality in the fields, barns and boxes. We’ve wonderful cos lettuce that Mr McGregor could only have dreamed of, great tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers from the tunnels, the sweetest carrots, sound onions and tasty charlotte potatoes. It has been a near perfect season so far and confidence is returning in the fields, almost enough to make me want to plant more soft fruit; but the memories of the 2012 deluge have not quite faded.
Between the showers, our neighbours are busy with harvest; watching the grain flowing from the combine harvester, I feel envy and deep nostalgia for the smell, dust, sweat, cider and teas in the field that were the harvests of my youth. When my parents took on the tenancy of Riverford back in 1951, they (like most of their neighbours) kept cows, sheep, pigs, chickens and grew corn, and a lot of grass. Every farm also had its own orchards and cider press. The work was varied, complex, highly seasonal and demanded a wide range of skills and machinery.
I spend most of my time in Devon on the farm where I grew up, which has become Riverford HQ. My newsletters are inspired by daily encounters here and, as a result, tend to be Devon-centric. This is perhaps annoying for those of you in the east and north, so I thought I would mend my ways.
Issue 12: Fairness and five years.
Find out more about Wicked Leeks and our publisher, organic veg box company Riverford.