Interrupted Journey

Chapter 10 - Harvest

By the middle of August, we had been harvesting for weeks. Both the produce from our vegetable patches, as they became ripe, and any wild food we could find, particularly bilberries from the moors. For several weeks the kids - and some of the adults - seemed to have permanently purple mouths. Much of our precious sugar was used in preserving them.

We all became experts in hedgerow foods and we had to be careful to avoid over harvesting. Only with the nettles was that not a problem. There always seemed to be an abundant supply of them.

Then we started bringing in the main bulk of our crops. The hay had to be cut, raked into stacks and dried in the sun before being brought into the barn. Try as we might, we couldn't get any sort of cutter to attach to our ancient working tractor so that meant hours of sweating labour cutting with an old scythe that, ironically, had been used for keeping the nettles under control and with wooden rakes that Ned and Gary had manufactured based on an ancient one that they had found at the back of the barn.

The haymaking was a massive labour. For two weeks, we had everybody in the fields from dawn to dusk. Though there were still raids almost daily, we had to risk cutting right back our defensive operation. If we failed to bring the hay in, we were dead anyway.

Fortunately, the weather was kind to us with the hay. By the end of August, it was all cut, dried in the sun and either carted into the barn or piled in covered stoops in the field. Then the sheep were allowed into the hay fields to tidy up.

Then it was on to the oats. There were two distinct areas of the field. About half was sown with seeds from the farm store all those weeks ago. We had collected all that we could find. As an experiment, we tried by sowing the rest of the field with some of the animal feed oats. These were much less successful and I suspected that something had been done to the seeds to stop them from thriving. We carefully kept a stock of the successful strain separate to be used as seed for next year. We meticulously cleared the field and even had Emily and Lizzy following the rest of us to make sure we hadn't missed a single grain.

Only Mam remained at the farm, keeping the place running and preparing meals which were as substantial as she could make them in the circumstances - heavy physical labour from dawn to dusk meant that we needed all that food. She also looked after little Annie. The two had become very close with Mam showing an open affection towards the little girl she had never shown to any of her grandchildren. Maybe she felt that, because of her experience, the little girl needed particular attention, or maybe, because she was slowly stepping back from her role of matriarch, she no longer felt the need to stand slightly aloof from the younger members of the family.

Once the oats were cut and dried we made a start on the bulk of the vegetables. The potatoes and carrots were quite successful but the greens - mostly cabbage and beans - were less so. Without commercial pesticides these had been ravaged by insects in spite of our careful hand tending. We gathered what we could.

At last, the harvest was in. The stacks of vegetables in a cool corner of the barn looked impressive. So I went back to my lists and tables and did the calculations.

Then I checked the amounts and redid the calculations.

I then rechecked them even though I knew I was going to get the same result. It wasn't going to be enough.

On reflection, we had overestimated in a couple of ways: we had failed to take account of loss through disease and insects when farming without chemicals; and we had failed to take account of how poor the soil was. Though we had worked to enrich it, it hadn't been enough.

We would do better next year.

If there was a next year.

We began a desperate search for any more wild forage that might help us through the coming year. We all grew heartily sick of nettles and, when we found a pair of oak trees in a sheltered spot, down by the guard cottage, we sent the kids in shifts to throw stones at the squirrels to keep them off. They even managed to kill a couple which went straight in the pot. When the acorns fell, they were collected and, after roasting, grinding and repeated soaking, could be used to make flour.

David was sent up on the tops with his bow and arrow and managed to take several pheasants and quail but we had to stop when the loss of arrows became too great. If he missed his target, it was almost impossible to find them amongst the heather. We also shot a couple but, on balance, it was too much ammunition for not enough meat.

As the first storms of autumn started to roll in, we knew we were in for a long, hungry winter.