A time to grow

As vegetable growers we spend about half of the year harvesting our crops and the other half involved in acts related to growing them.  Our lives are governed by rhythms and cycles (in retrospect that applies to all of us) and none is stronger than the sense, right now, that it’s time to start growing again.  The sun rises earlier and we leave our beds with increasing ease after the strain of rising in the dark.  I grow tired of the constant harvest and want to till the land again.  There are 4 or 5 weeks left before the majority of last year’s crops run to seed and of course, in reality, the cycles are not distinct, they overlap. In fact, last year we harvested something from our fields every single week.

This afternoon I must have cut a strange figure, moving stooped, almost crawling under the white mesh, which protects our cauliflowers from pigeons.  Under the mesh the focus is narrow and downward – another world. Where the crop is exposed at its edges you get a glimpse of the devastation which the mesh is keeping at bay.  What would we do without it?