35 Bags of Muck

 

I have had a delivery.  35 bags of manure, well composted manure.  I know I should compost and there are plenty of places where I can get fresh manure locally for free (and I did during the pandemic).  I even have two compost bins.  My neighbour, however, keeps goats and chickens in a paddock running alongside the length of my garden.   They tend to attract rodents and I do not want to be hosting a nice cosy compost heap home for rats.  If they are eating next door they can live over there also is my view.  Eating on this side of the fence is strictly at a table with a knife and fork.

There is rather some form on this.  We are not on mains drainage.  The four houses on our side of the road were built in the 1920s as farm hand housing by the local authority with room for a (small) small holding.  When I got here in 1987 the pig sty had been transformed into a BBQ area but the well is still in place (and I understand the well water was being used for the head of the household’s shaving every morning in the 1970s).  It scares me and the concrete block remains firmly over it at all times when I am around with a very large and heavy plant pot on top of it.  If the need arose we would put a pump down and use it for the garden but until that day comes I will stick with water butts and ignore its existence.  

Anyway, I digress.  The sewerage for the 4 houses has always been dealt with by the local authority to whom we pay that aspect of our water/drainage bill with the water supply part being Anglian Water.  Up, until, the noughties this was by way of a little sewerage farm at the far end of the houses from mine.  They then looked to change this to a septic tank.  This disturbed the rat population at the sewerage farm and the dykes in the immediate vicinity who went looking elsewhere for food.  It was summer, I had my back door open and was in the living room when I heard a rat come in and attack a yoghurt pot I had left on the kitchen counter.  Thankfully, it left the way it came and I spent the afternoon in marigolds with bleach.  We went on to replace the rear doors with stable doors so we can open the top half only in warmer weather.  We also bought a wheelie bin (our local authority throws a few bundles of bags at us every few months save for garden waste bins which is a paid for service).  The family opposite did not get off quite so lightly.  The same afternoon as my yoghurt pot incident they found there toddler sharing its banana with a front end furry, rear end long thin and scaly new friend on the garden room floor.  They moved.  I don’t know if the two events were connected.   (Actually I doubt it but I am telling a story here!)

Moving back to the actual story - the cost of this particular exercise (35 bags of muck if you have forgotten) offends my mean streak but the vegetable beds were not put to bed properly last autumn (I ran out of time), could do with a boost and for a variety of reasons we have loads of cardboard.  Some of the beds will be covered over with cardboard and loaded with manure.  I will need to dig over a couple and feed with blood, fish and bone for stuff that does not respond as one might hope to manure ie root veg.  I am not aiming for obscenely shaped carrots, nice straight carrot shaped ones are my preference.

S’s view is that it is my hobby and it is not required to pay for itself.  Frankly, I am not convinced that the veg side ever will beat the costs of whatever bargains the supermarkets are coming up with though they might taste better.  Fruit, in our garden, however, is a little different - there is so much of it and most of it requires next to no effort compared with the veg.  I’m thinking apples, pears, white currants, black currants, red currants, gooseberries, damsons, figs, plums, blueberries (the latter 2 or 3 are not huge crops but still).  Cherries, we have never done well with in our largely north facing garden.  The MiL does so we will just have to accept a circa 9 mile road mile journey for in season cherries!

For now 35 x 40 litre bags have been transported to the bottom of the garden.  Bit of an effort over lunch that that but then that’s my exercise for the day - spot of both cardio and weights, what’s not there to love?