Be Careful With a Spud

Soviet Accident Prevention Posters @ How to be a Retronaut

Digging 101

From How to Run an Allotment by Alec Bristow 1940

Time for a Corn Boil

"These novel tongs provide a sanitary means of holding hot roasting ears. Made of stainless steel, they permit the ear to be grasped securely without the fingers touching the corn. Claws on the ends of the tongs are shaped in 'fish hook' manner so that the corn cannot possibly slip."
(from ModernMechanix)

Must-Have Allotment Equipment

From Modern Mechanix

Man With The Hoe

"I had never really wanted a photograph of a picture before I saw Millet's Man With The Hoe. I was about twelve or thirteen years old, I had read Eugenie Grandet of Balzac, and I did have some feeling about what french country was like but The Man With The Hoe made it different, it made it ground not country, and France has been that to me ever since. France is made of ground, of earth. When I managed to get a photograph of the picture and took it home my eldest brother looked at it and said what is it and I said it is Millet's Man With The Hoe. It is a hell of a hoe said my brother."
Gertrude Stein Paris France

Resurrected

Lost & Found Dept.

Tidy Up

"Brought away Mrs. Snooke's old tortoise, Timothy, which she values so much, & had treated kindly for near 40 years. When dug out of it's hybernaculum, it resented the insult by hissing."
Gilbert White 1780

Most of the weekend was spent raking, weeding, pruning and beating back the brambles. Satisfying toil against unruly nature as Richard Mabey puts it. I'm not leaving it very ruly, but want to get the big work done now rather than turf some little critter like Timothy the Tortoise or Betty the Bumblebee out of his or her hybernaculum in the middle of winter. With the help of the azada (which I can't recommend highly enough) I've grubbed up an area big enough for the planned hen run. This would have taken three times as long using a spade or fork. And then I built an almighty compost heap (my best ever) and moistened it with lashings of dilute widdle. However, rather than illustrate that, the picture below marks the progress of the oats sown 6 weeks ago.