Early Saturday morning, Allan and I are off to Borough Market to pick up an oak barrel from Randolph at Neal's Yard Dairy. We will be using it to mix our preparations. It previously contained feta and is still decidedly cheesy, so will need a lot of soaking and scrubbing before it is ready to use. I leave it in the garden filled with water to begin the process. Then to the allotment to start our digging with Scarlett.
We have decided to make a clean start, to clear as much of the ground as possible. To turn over the soil and sow green manure. It is late in the season, as it was last year, so we hope for some mild weather to germinate the seed.
I come from generations of people who have dug as a way of life: one side of the family digging out coal from seams deep in the Yorkshire coal field; the other side shovelling the very same coal into steam trains travelling up and down the East Coast mainline. I thought I'd avoided the shovel by picking up a camera, but it isn't to be.
Here we are digging again. The funny thing is I think I enjoy it. There's something quite fundamental and even noble about picking up a fork and turning the soil. It responds immediately, as life is breathed back into it....it is as satisfying as it is tiring.
I'd partially forgotten about the earth with the rush of summer and the flourish of flowers and harvest burying it deep beneath a carpet of green, but as we clear the ground I remember what this is all about, the soil.
It's a rewarding kind of digging on the new plot, not so many weeds or stones as the previous allotment and no hint of an air-raid shelter beneath the soil.
a smaller size too, which will be frustrating next summer, but at the moment it seems like a blessing.
By the time it starts to get dark we have cleared half the ground and are exhausted. We put the tools back in the shed then stand together and share a certain pride in what we have achieved.
