After the drama of last night, it was a relief to see the fire was out this morning. Despite MSN weather insisting we were enjoying heavy rain last night, not a drop fell. It was the hard work of the Fire Service to whom the credit belongs. There’s an ugly black scar left on the fields, but nature will bounce back.
Blackened scar on the hill top. It wasn’t as bad as it seemed in the dark, but still pretty worrying.
It used to be the farmers with grazing rights on the uplands would get together in early spring and set a controlled fire to burn back the gorse. This would cause the gorse to grow tender new shoots for the sheep to feed on and prevent wildfires.
It still happens, but the ageing and high pressed farmers don’t have the time or energy they once did. More people need to realise that farmers don’t run a business like any other. They think in terms of generations, holding on through the bad years in the hope the next will be better. Livestock farmers manage the countryside for those who follow.
This year the local sheep farmers are having a terrible time lambing with some disease doing the rounds. One told me he’d bought some expensive new stock and out of eleven births, three survived and he lost two ewes on top. But maybe next year would be better.
Gardeners rarely think in those timescales. Gardens come with houses and allotments stay in an area, but people move every 10 years or so, on average. Few stay in the house they were born in until they die. Yes, we gardeners plan in terms of years but rarely in decades or generations.
Potato Planting
Yesterday I planted my Estima second earlies in the long raised bed by the polytunnel. The bed is a metre wide and I set two staggered rows, 60cm apart, spaced 40cm apart in the row. We’d topped up the soil and applied Elixir potato fertiliser
That leaves my Sarpo Mira and Sarpo Axona maincrops plus the ten Casablanca first earlies started in pots to fit in somewhere.
Shallots
The small bed had red and white shallots planted. There was a little space left so I popped in a short row of beetroot Boltardy, started in modules.
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