Local dinner!

First of all, for all those reading in the North of England, no I haven't gone posh and decided to call my evening meal 'dinner'! But a headline of 'local tea' would be confusing in other ways, so 'dinner' it is, even though it wasn't at lunchtime!

When I got home from work, light was fading fast so it was a quick trip up to the allotment to pick some carrots and a turnip. 

As I have mentioned many times, the carrots are grown in tyre stacks which gets them above the level of any carrot flies that may be around and protects them when the weather gets colder too. 

In the background of this photo is a striped beetroot that I didn't realise was stripy until I got it home from a local greengrocers , the broccoli was also bought for tea today from there too as our home grown ones have long since finished for the year. 

The potatoes are home grown though, not sure which variety as they are getting a bit mixed up in the boxes now as we work through them. Tasty though and also make good chips. 

The steak slice is from a local butchers too, they cook a large tray of this several times a week, and sometimes a chicken or spicy Moroccan one, and one can have as much or as little as needed. It is full of delicious steak in a thick layer, from a herd on a farm three miles away.

So, with little effort, and only the gravy granules bought from a supermarket, one can have an evening meal that both is local, fresh, supports local business and is tasty too! 

Wheldrake Ings

It is some time since I have visited Wheldrake but had a trip out with family earlier this week. 

For those who don't know, Wheldrake Ings is managed by Yorkshire Wildlife Trust in partnership with other land managers and is part of the Lower Derwent Valley National Nature Reserve which extends all the way down the River Derwent to Bubwith. This area floods extensively in winter (and can at other times too) and is home to a huge variety of wildlife. Water levels on the site are managed for biodiversity. Thousands of overwintering ducks, geese and swans make their winter home there, warblers, cuckoos and hirundines breed there in summer and it is a stopover for many migrating species. The habitat supports a diverse range of other species too. 

Many farmers graze their animals on the meadows along the Lower Derwent (including Rosewood Farm), and there is currently a trial going on to look at where cattle are grazing and how this contributes to biodiversity. The cattle have been fitted with trackers for future analysis and to inform reserve management as well as being part of a "no fence" cattle management programme. 

We walked down through the reserve to the sight and sound of geese. The Pink-Footed Geese are back from the Arctic for the winter as well as the often more local Greylag and Canada Geese. The flight of a gaggle of Pink-Footed Geese is as if someone has told them that they should fly in v-shapes but no-one has told them how to do it! Greylags and Canada Geese have a much more defined v-shape to their flight pattern. 

On the right-hand side on the opposite bank of the river is Thicket Priory belonging to the Carmelite Order. This is a modern building with the original hall given to the Order now a wedding and event venue. In summer, walking down through the Ings in the evening is filled with the calls of warblers, and if you can hear them, Grasshopper Warblers, which emit a high pitched continuous reeling sound that I can only hear if the bird is facing away from me. I suspect the compression of sound waves if walking towards the bird when it is facing you pushes the call beyond the range of my hearing!

Turning a corner at the ancient creaky wind turbine brings you to the Pool Hide where we settled in for a while to identify the birds on the small lake there. In winter this is an extensive view over the wetlands and by mid-late November there will be thousands of Wigeon ducks whistling away. On our visit, a few Wigeon were present, some had small remnants of immature plumage. There were also Gadwall, Coot, Mallard and a family of Mute Swans with eight cygnets, the adults not taking kindly to visits by other adult swans. 

At the Pool Hide we were happy to see two (possibly three) Marsh Harriers swooping low over the field at the back of the lake. As large as Buzzards or Red Kites, these birds live and feed around reedbeds and inland lakes and also estuaries. 

These female birds have distinctive yellow crowns on their head which is one of the bird forms of identification at a distance, plus the low flying over the reedbed habitat. Several Marsh Harriers are known to live around Wheldrake Ings. 

The Ings have been managed traditionally for centuries, with livestock grazing and haymaking an integral part of that management. To remove these livestock to grow crops, which some seem intent on advocating as a general food production policy, would destroy this habitat as well as removing flood protection from communities further downstream. 

It is hard to believe that in a month or two, the field above will be underwater. From here going south and east, the landscape is largely flat, the skies big and the way is clear for the geese to find their wintering grounds all the way down the river as it merges with the Ouse, then the Aire, with the Trent forming the Humber and ultimately reaching the sea.

Allotment Update - late August 2021

 

Guess what I have spent a fair bit of time doing in the allotment?! We've been eating home grown potatoes for the past month or so but a couple of weeks ago, the haulms of the many remaining potato plants got the first signs of blight, so I chopped off the leaves, with just stalks remaining above ground to mark where the plants were. I've given the skins of the potatoes a little time to harden off under the ground and then set about lifting them in earnest over the past few days. 

Luckily most of the tubers are in good condition for storing and any that aren't, either with one or two holes from slugs (or by my slicing through them!), get eaten up quickly. I use an old cloth to rub the soil off the tubers, ensure they are dry and then pack them into cardboard boxes with cardboard dividers between each tuber, that way if one does go off, it is not in contact with others in the same box. Looking at the haul so far, we will have our own potatoes until at least Christmas and maybe a little while into the New Year. They make great chips!

This is a snapshot of the harvest about a week ago. Courgettes, too many courgettes! However, the turnip was quite substantial and was used to accompany pies from our local butchers and in a curry. 

One of the perhaps fifty or so onions we have got hanging up in our store, though again we have been eating them since the start of July direct from the plot. Our porch (more a utility room to be honest) is the coldest place in the house and is good for storing potatoes, onions, garlic, apples and pears though the available space was reduced a few years ago when we have converted part of the room into a downstairs toilet (the benefits of this outweigh the reduction in storage in a family of five!)

Won't be long before we have home grown carrots. In between the stacks are some cosmos replacing the earlier wallflowers and behind the cosmos are minarette pear trees and the grapevine which has been productive this year.

The sunflowers are at least eight feet tall! Positioned in between two pyramids of borlotti beans for storing, they are competing with each other for light and so all are growing really tall. The allotment is east-west so they all get sunshine at various points during the day and it doesn't seem to be having any detrimental effect. 

At the top end of the allotment this year are mini sweetcorn and brassicas. The green net has been a very useful purchase over the years and seems to have kept the cabbage white butterflies out. The nasturtiums are useful for many reasons, not only for pollinators but as a distraction plant for blackfly and good ground cover into the winter until they die off with the first frost. 

This Red Admiral butterfly (Vanessa atalanta) was sunbathing midweek in the allotment on one of the carrot stacks and was unperturbed by my pointing a camera at it! We have one also coming to the buddleia bush in the garden along with numerous small tortoiseshell butterflies. 

Gymnastics in the Wasp Olympics!

This wasp was busy performing gymnasics on a piece of fruit as it cleaned itself in the composting bag in the yard!

 

Mullein

Over the past few months, we've been spending a bit of time trying to identify wildflowers. In fact, this has opened our eyes to quite a number of plants that we probably overlooked before and indeed some that we don't recall seeing. 

There's a new cycle route opened recently along the long-retired railway line from Tadcaster to Wetherby. Some of the route, from the Thorp Arch Trading Estate to Wetherby, has been open for a while now (and recently resurfaced which is a much needed respite for my back, bones and bike!) but the link from the Tadcaster to Boston Spa road to Thorp Arch over the River Wharfe is a recent addition to the route. On my first (and previously only) cycle ride up this route, I saw a grey wagtail and there's plenty of other bird life as it is well wooded and plenty of scrub land which is ideal habitat for many species. 

Thorp Arch Trading Estate is on the site of a former wartime Army munitions factory and some of the retail outlets and other businesses are in converted bunkers and wartime buildings. When we first took on our allotment, about eighteen years ago, an old chap who had taken over his allotment from his father in 1946 was using parts of railway carriages from Thorp Arch, dismanted after the war, as sheds. Given that the carriages will have probably have been old, redundant ones used as storage or premises during the war I expect they were probably dating from Victorian times! 

Near the trading estate there's quite a large area of tall, yellow flowers, standing to above five feet (150cm). These we identified as Mullein (Verbascum thapsus) and they were teeming with hoverflies, bees and other insects. However, the Mullein Moth is an early season flying moth and so it was unlikely there would have been caterpillars on these plants 

One of the plants was going to seed, so we have saved some and will try and grow it at home. It is a biennial, like foxgloves, so it will be in two years time that we can hopefully enjoy these lovely plants in our garden or allotment. 

 

Context and Accuracy in Climate Change Conversation

I have recently been in conversation online with two individuals about the way in which incidents are described in relation to climate change. 

Of course, very few sensible people now doubt the science of climate change and that it is happening. There are online troll and bot accounts, and indeed individuals linked to some of the known lobby groups and polluting industries that do sow doubt or spread denial messages but sites like www.skepticalscience.com and www.desmog.com are two of my go-to sites for accurate analysis and information on who is often behind such activities. 

There is, perhaps sometimes understandably, a narrative in some environmental circles of "doomism" or "climate alarmism" which can often manifest itself in taking the worst case scenarios in climate predictions and presenting them as a fait accomplit. Michael E. Mann, in his book, "The New Climate War"  looks at how some of these narratives have been sown by some on the denialist side, framing it as being too late to do anything, or a message of fatalism to try and get people to give up taking action against climate change as they claim it is futile. I have had conversations with one of the regular doomist environmental campaigners on Twitter who regularly posts in terms that might just as easily be written as, "THE END" in flashing day-glo letters. I have made the point that if things really are as bad as he is making out, one either would get too depressed to do anything, or would simply think that one might as well do the bucket list while one still can. 

Michael E. Mann talks about urgency and agency. Yes, telling people that we need to do something quickly to tackle climate change but also that one can do something about it, however small or big and also that the sooner we act, the more mitigation can be done. 

This brings me on to the recent conversation about how particular events are described both on and offline. In the UK there is a newspaper, if you can call it that, called the Daily Express that frequently posts headlines taking what might be the extreme end of a storm or snow prediction for some remote corner of Scotland and framing it as being for the whole country. If people believe those predictions they would spend a fair chunk of the year too scared to step outside their front door! 

Also, often in the media and online, one will see headlines such as, "Country x underwater" or "Country y on Fire" when a severe weather or environmental event happens, when actually the event is confined to a particular part of the country. In the bid for the most eye catching headline context can be lost. Is the storm the worst ever? Or just the worst this winter? Has the drought happened before or is it new for the area? Is the wildfire across an entire State or is it localised to a particular area? This isn't downplaying the effects of such events, there can often be loss of life and property and hardship for those involved, but to understand climate change these events need to be put in the context of history and trends and frequency of occurrence, and indeed in the context of the area affected compared to the whole country or region. 

There is of course a fine balance to be struck between the "urgency and agency" as Prof. Mann puts it and ensuring that an accurate portrayal of events is made, one which cannot then be used by the well funded denialists to accuse climate change mitigation advocates in the future of crying wolf or of exaggeration or distortion. Also, we owe it to the wider public to be accurate, to be contextual, to be clear and explain how a particular event may have been affected by the wider climate changes and how the localised effects are creating harm. 

With permission, I have reproduced below a tweet I replied to the other day and will try to analyse this example and rephrase in a more contextual fashion. 

"Germany, Belgium, London, Italy, Pakistan now, floods. USA, Russia, Canada on fire. Any patterns emerging? Anyone? Or maybe it’s just unlucky.  If you want to stop the 50 years of talking and actually be pragmatic and do something, now would be a good time to start."

So, let's start with this. 

"Germany, Belgium, London, Italy, Pakistan now, floods." 

Yes, it is true that the above countries and places are suffering floods, in the case of Germamy and Belgium these are widely recognised as being abnormally severe. However, Germany is a big country, so is Italy and Pakistan, and all of those three have mountainous and other areas that are much less likely, if at all, to flood. Are these floods unprecendented? Are they merely worse than average? Are these a 1 in 25 or 1 in 100 year event, as is calculated by people such as actuaries and insurance agents? 

In London, there's historical record of the Thames flooding on a regular basis into the City, Samuel Pepys mentioned it in his diaries of the 1660s. A severe flood happened in 1928. Is it worse than that? What I do actually know is that the particular events have been caused by surface water flooding from thunderstorms, but here in the UK we get thunderstorms at any time of year, often severe in summer, so heavy intense rain isn't unusual, I've experienced it in York where a number of streets were flooded and buildings hit by lightning. How much has the increase in concreting over of driveways and additional housebuilding and tree cover loss affected the surface water flooding? Is it actually the landscape mitigation of a reasonably frequent event that has changed, rather than climate change making the particular flood worse?

So, from one simple statement there's a whole lot of questions. Can you pin those floods directly to climate change? Would they have happened if the man made climate change wasn't there? Are they made worse by climate change? 

"USA, Russia, Canada on fire." What?! All of them? That's a really big fire and they are really big countries! 

I checked, the wildfires in Canada, dramatic as they seem, are only affecting 0.12% of the country. Still a lot of ground and the smoke is drifting over cities but that is nowhere near the whole country on fire! What is 0.12% of Canada compared to say the size of Wales? (an often used comparision in reporting here in the UK!) Russia is so big that although the Siberian wildfires can be seen from space, most of the country will not be affected in any way by them. 

In 1950, the Chinchaga fire in Canada was the largest single fire in North American recorded history. Was that climate related? Were the 2014 Northwest Territories and 2016 Alberta fires climate change related or made worse from climate change? 

Again, all questions which really don't lend themselves to simplistic reporting. The author of the tweet is right to ask what patterns are emerging, or maybe these are - taken individually - just freak events or indeed are they part of natural cycles of burning and renewal? Is it just that humans have made these events more likely through activities unrelated to putting carbon into the atmosphere - for instance carelessness with littered glass or camping fires or indeed deliberate fire setting, these causes being responsible here in the UK for some wildfires. 

Going on, the author is inaccurate in seeming to imply that people are merely just talking and not doing. I can agree that not enough is being done, there has been inertia, influenced by polluters and denialists, in climate change mitigation, but if you take UK decarbonisation for an example, the switch from coal is nearly complete in power generation and a large amount of renewables capacity, particularly wind, has come on stream with lots more to follow. There's a lot of technical innovation happening, I am invested in a wave power company and also in agricultural robot manufacturer for instance and there's been substantial financial divestment going on as companies manage their risk exposure to climate change and fossil fuels. 

We can say for certain that the incidence and intensity of all substantial climate events, whether drought, floods, hurricane intensity etc is increasing due to climate change. The instability of what did formerly be more predictable weather patterns is increasingly noted and these have effects on land and in nature. There are more "stuck" weather patterns due to variations in the jet stream and heat build up in such as the Arctic is influencing the weather not just in that region but in lower latitudes too. 

However, simplistic headlines do not tell the full story and may even exaggerate or distort the story. Alarmist statements can be used to discredit or dishearten or indeed cause people to give up. However, if events are reported on accurately, the effects are expained and indeed these events are set into the wider historical and geographical contexts then the public can get a better idea of what is going on, how it may affect them and indeed how particular severe events may or may not be related to wider climate trends. 

Grazing meadow biodiversity

I took this picture this week, near where I live. I was going for a walk anyway with my family, but having had a rather frustrating conversation with a fundamentalist vegan online I wanted to illustrate the point of how this landscape differs from one which is monoculture crops. This blog is based on my Twitter thread. 

(note - everyone makes their own choices as to their own ethical framework, whether around meat or anything else, but I do find statistics quoted by many vegans online to be misleading, inaccurate and unfortunately there's a failure amongst many to look at the implications of what they see as a utopia without livestock farming)

What you are looking at are grazing meadows for cattle and dairy cows. The grassland is full of clover, some dandelions and buttercups. The field margins have numerous wildflower species and on the day of the walk at least 5 butterfly species and various bees, hoverflies, birds etc (my local patch bird list stands at 90 species since 2010), the hedgerows are good cover for them. 

(Wild chicory, one of many plants along the southern field margin)

If this was arable, nearly all the hedgerows wouldn't be there, the fields are too small for the economies of scale needed, machinery etc. 

The clover would not be there, nor many of the other wildflowers (there might be a few under the "set aside/field margin" schemes but nowhere near as many). The grasslands act as a carbon sink, the grazing is an integral part of the lifecycle and maintenance of the meadow.

Whilst the particular landowner really isn't interested in selling, in many other parts of the countryside these fields would be close enough to a town - and a major road - for housing development to be a real danger to this landscape. 

(Burdock, a substantial plant in one corner of the meadow)

There's other fields near us that are part of rotational farming, where crops are grown sometimes and then livestock (mainly sheep) are put out as part of the cycle. There's fields down the slope from where the photographs are taken that flood every year and grazing is the only farming activity that can be done on them.

Again, the biodiversity present on a flood meadow is far greater than that which would be present on a standard monoculture crop field.

(Ragwort - not in the meadow, as it is of course a hazard to livestock, but along the access road nearby)

The local farmers spend money in our town, some of them supply local businesses. Some local arable crop farming is for the local breweries and I know one local farm that leaves stubble which also helps such as migrating geese and other farmland birds such as grey partridge.

Do you think a remote landowner, supplied by huge corporate agribusinesses, selling into a long supply chain, is better than the above?

Fledgling blackbird in the allotment

Today I went up to the allotment before the heavy showers came, the two jobs being to pick more blackcurrants and to thin out grape bunches on the vine we have trained along the fence at the back of the plot. 

However, I noticed that in the hedge were the noises of young blackbirds and shortly afterwards found one sitting in the Falstaff apple tree. 

Can you spot the blackbird? He was sitting very quietly, not yet understanding enough to be afraid of my presence, in the sunshine looking, as they all do at that age, quite unsure of what to do next! 

Over the years we've had many blackbirds nest in the hedges around the allotment, both mistle and song thrushes have nested around the site along with dunnocks, wrens, blue and great tits, woodpigeons, house sparrows and one year some linnets did somewhere around the allotments. 

Leafcutter Bee

In this post I talked about the Leafcutter Bee that came to visit our back yard the other day. 

In one of the pots we haven't used this year have been some weeds that I have left to grow to see whether they were any good for pollinators. 

Discovered that the Leafcutter bee(s) have been busy! In the photograph there's the semicircular holes where the bee(s) have cut out sections of leaf to take back to their nest. 

A New Normal

Increasingly, the narrative in the media and spoken from the mouths of political and business representatives is of, "Going back to normal". In the UK, the date has been set for this 'normality' as being July 19th. Negotiations with the virus appear to have failed or maybe never got going in the first place. 

Of course, who wouldn't want to be able to go out to the shops or a restaurant or event without having to prebook, take a mask or take a covid test? It is so tempting, that vision of 'normality', going back to life as it was in BC - Before Covid. 

But that normality was wrecking the planet. 

That normality created a society of haves and have nots

Wealthy and untroubled normality for one person was anxiety or hardship for another. 

Taking off the brakes off societal interactions may cause the thing that keeps virologists up at night - vaccine escape.

There have been many people filling up the pages of newspapers or platforming themselves on social media, gathering with other conspiracy theorists and pseudo-science advocates on marches, even some speaking in Parliament, who feel that the restrictions on our lives that were necessary to reduce the awful death rate from Covid-19 were unwarranted, even to the point of denying the virus itself and its effects. 

The TV presenter Andrew Marr recently suffered from Covid-19, catching it at the super-spreader event also known as the G7 Summit in Cornwall (although some dispute this) Whilst he didn't end up in hospital, he wasn't working for several days and felt pretty ill. There's many other accounts on social media of similarly double-vaccinated people catching Covid-19 and being ill at home. In schools, where children are not vaccinated, and indeed in university towns, the virus is widespread, mainly the Delta Variant originally discovered in India and here because of the lax border controls of the UK Government. The case rate is currently skyrocketing again. More cases means more illness, means more hospitalisation, means an increased chance of a mutation that will escape the vaccines and we'll all be back to square one.

Yes, the vaccines have reduced the effects in many people of Covid-19, keeping many out of hospital, no doubt saving many lives in the process. But they don't stop someone from catching the disease, they don't stop someone from passing it onto someone else that is maybe a person who hasn't yet been vaccinated fully, if at all, maybe someone that for health reasons cannot yet have the vaccine, for instance those who are immuno-compromised. 

Some say that because people aren't dying in the numbers they were at the height of the pandemic, that because hospital admissions aren't at the levels they were, that there's no need for any restrictions on our lives. They've forgotten one thing, one major issue, Long Covid. 

Long Covid is the term used to describe symptoms of Covid-19 lasting more than a few weeks or beyond the main symptoms of the virus. Some people can even suffer from Long Covid despite not having the original symptoms. This can encompass chronic fatigue, lung damage, persistant cough and breathlessness, digestive issues and 'brain fog' - concentration issues amongst other things. No one knows how long they can last, although for many people they do, thankfully, appear to lessen over time and there's been some reports of the vaccines giving an immune system boost which has helped people. But no-one yet knows whether these symptoms will disappear completely or whether there's permanent long term effects on health. 

Up to one in twenty people, including children, have or have had Long Covid. The estimate for April was 1.1 million people in the UK in that month with some kind of long term symptoms from Covid-19, with around 376000 at that time estimated to have had Long Covid symptoms for at least a year. The UK population is about 67 million people. That's a lot of people and a lot of demand on the health system and indeed on Government finances. Many people who were asympomatic with Covid-19 have experienced Long Covid issues. Many will also be those people who have had long term hospitalisation from Covid-19 and the damage wrought by the disease, including someone I know about (friend of a friend) who spent several months in hospital, some of which on a ventilator, and now can only function at home with oxygen supply on hand and has been back to hospital since. 

Sure, go back to your parties, go back to the pub, take your mask off and stop giving people space. Stop caring if you so wish. But there's consequences. Can you live with those? Can the State support millions of new long term incapacity benefit claimants? Can the economy support a possibly permanently reduced workforce? Can families manage their finances if the main breadwinner(s) are out of action for months, with the impact of potential poverty on children's life chances, already damaged by the disruption to education? 

Is 'normal' worth that cost to society and to people's lives? Yes, there are costs to society and livelihoods from the lockdown, and there are indeed balances to be struck between restrictions and the economy, but adopting a carefree attitude at a time when the virus is still spreading, particularly amongst unvaccinated people, is asking for trouble. 

Do we want to do 'normal'? Should we do 'normal'?

I would suggest that the present capitalist, consumer, always on, instant gratification and delivery society is not 'normal'. For most of the history of the human race, our comfy lifestyle hasn't been the norm. Even comparing more developed human civilisations, we are in an exceptional, unprecedented age, where our extraction of resources far exceeds the carrying capacity of the planet. In an age where we have the potential to end life as we know it on Earth.

'Normal' has meant overconsumption. Buying stuff we don't need. Cluttering the planet up with plastic. Decimating biodiversity. Polluting the atmosphere. Warming the planet to climate tipping points with the consequences increasingly on our TV screens. Normal means deaths and preventable disease from the pollution in our cities. Normal means over a million people accessing food banks here in the UK. Normal means a chronic shortage of affordable housing and rent-seeking landlords. Normal means the politics of hate and division. 

Why would anyone go back to that? 

Allotment update - 28th June 2021

Well, it has just been Midsummer and the weather has decided that it is late September. Whilst the rain is welcome, in that we don't have to do much watering, it does mean that the local slugs and snails have some exciting meals out....

The allotment is divided into five main sections, four rotational beds and one permanent bed, although at the sides of each rotational patch are some permanent planting or pots. The view above is of the top section this year nearest the gate. In the far corner have been some radishes, which are sown every so often so as to keep a succession throughout the season. The turnips that were planted next to them went to seed as this Spring has been rather topsy turvy in terms of weather, first very cold then very dry then very wet into the start of Summer. In the back right there's a bed of mini sweetcorn, started indoors in cardboard tubes and peat pots, at least fifty plants. Each plant will usually produce about three cobs and we freeze them in portions or have them fresh in stir fry. 

The net is covering a mixture of brassicas, some cabbages, calabrese and broccoli, all of which seem to be doing well. The net is to stop sparrows and pigeons from nibbling them and the cabbage white butterflies from laying eggs on them. 

The view above is of the second section of the allotment. This year there's onions, some of which have been picked now, and two stacks with carrots in, both of which have young carrots in now. There's some parsnips out of shot to the right, as well as some leeks and spring onions. In the foreground are the tops of the blueberries which are in pots of ericaceous compost, these are now fully enclosing in the cage now to protect the fruit from birds as it ripens. Though that didn't stop a blackbird trying to poke its beak through last year! In the middle are some cosmos and wallflowers. I have left a few forget-me-nots, ragwort and poppies to grow in gaps, the poppies do seem to attrack blackfly away from other plants and many other insects seem to benefit from their presence. 

One of the carrot tyre stacks, with comfrey to one side and pear trees and the grape vine in the background. The comfrey is a favourite of several bee species that come into the allotment. At the moment the bees seem to be feeding on the blackberry flowers, some nettles and dead nettles I have allowed to grow in a patch of the allotment near the hedge, the comfrey and the cotoneaster. 

After the permanent bed which consists of blackcurrants, raspberries, a damson tree and an apple tree, there's what is. this year, the pea and bean bed. We grow borlotti beans (and occasionally yin yang and kidney beans) nowadays though we used to grow runner and french beans for family until they had access to an allotment themselves through an In Bloom group. There's a few courgettes in this bed too, alongside the overwintered broad beans, which are producing well at the moment. It always has puzzled me why broad beans need so much pod for perhaps five or six beans, though it has been suggested to me that they need plenty of insulation given the cold Spring we have had!

Down the bottom of the allotment this year is the potato patch. Red Duke of York and Kestrel this year. We used to grow a lot of Desiree but in recent years the yields haven't been too great. I did get some Sarpo Mira one year which were really productive but are difficult to get around here without ordering them, and that is an expensive way to get potato seed when there is a nearby nursery we can get loose ones in any quantity from. 

The potatoes had plenty of earthing up against the very late frosts (last one was early May and there were some cold nights even after that) and there's a few flowers on them now. Once we have finished the sack of potatoes bought from the local butchers (with the potatoes coming from the Yorkshire Wolds) then we'll start on ours. At the back of the picture above is the hazelnut tree which grows very enthusiastically, hopefully we'll have some hazelnuts again this year. We didn't plant the tree, it was there when we got the allotment and survived half of it being chopped down in the neighbouring allotment when it was cleared for use by the landowner. There's blackberry bushes at the back too, which the bees are loving for the blossom at the moment. 

So, lots of work to do. Today, having checked for birds, I finished off giving the hedge a trim, having started this last week and combined this work with removing nettles from the blackcurrant and raspberry bushes and some other weeding. We also got some swift boxes put up on the house today but that is for another blog...

Local Bees

We spend quite a bit of time making our garden, yard and allotment a pollinator-friendly oasis. Quite apart from the benefits to the local insects, another motivation is that over the past few years many gardens in our street have been paved or tarmac-ed over and some of the other nearby allotment owners still cling to the weedkillers and other chemicals or insist on mowing and strimming everything in sight. So we want to do everything we can to provide an oasis in this increasingly barren local landscape.

In this blog I talk about the Tawny Mining Bees that appear in Spring in our garden and make their little holes in the blank spaces in the flower beds. They came again this year and it was fascinating to watch them popping in and out and excavating with their legs. 

More recently, a friend in a neighbouring allotment has had Tree Bumblebees set up home in a bird box they have put up on the side of their shed. These are regularly in our allotment foraging.

The Tree Bumblebee (Bombus hypnorum) is a recent arrival to England, having only first been reported in 2001 in Wiltshire but has quickly spread north as far as Scotland. More about the Tree Bumblebee - even known to evict Blue Tits from nestboxes (!) - is on the Bumblebee Conservation Trust website. 

I was doing some weeding in the allotment not long ago and wondered what an unusual bee was that has stopped to visit some half grown poppies amongst the potatoes. Online enquiries found that it was an Orange-Vented Mason Bee (Osmia leaiana), not commonly recorded in our part of the world.

I contribute records onto iRecord, the NBN (National Biodiversity Network) recording scheme for flora and fauna. They also have species maps  which give a reasonable idea of the distribution, although this is from comparatively recent sightings. 

This last Wednesday I was in the yard with my daughter when a bee that looked like it was stuck to a section of leaf landed on a flowerpot! It spent a few minutes resting on the edge of the flowerpot before taking off, still with the leaf. 

Upon research, I discovered that this was a Leafcutter Bee, although I am not yet sure of which species, there are potentially three different ones that it could be that are found in North Yorkshire. 

Leafcutter bees cut out and take small section of plant leaves to line their nests and do no lasting damage to plants.  

A close up (a bit blurred as I only had the small Canon camera to hand) 

In the photo, you can see that the bee is using all its legs to hold onto the segment of leaf it has obtained, I would imagine that it needs rest every so often if it is carrying these all day! 

Allotment Update - 6th June 2020

Finally, over the past week or two, the weather has improved and there's been some warm sunshine! The garden and allotment have responded and it now looks like we actually grow things!

Today, these were the first of the broad beans to have with Sunday lunch, the plants being overwintered with protection on the coldest nights in winter and early Spring.

They have grown a bit sideways rather than up but I think that is the wind, rain and a bit of snow over the winter months. 

Also shown on this photograph is what may be the last of this season's asparagus, as we've been picking it now for several weeks it may be time now to let the plants rest and recover for next year. There's three asparagus plants and an action for over the winter will be to build this bed up better to give more protection from late frosts.

Sunday lunch was a piece of lamb shoulder from our local butchers, the lamb having been raised on a farm three miles away. Quite lean actually for a shoulder cut and delicious with mint sauce, gravy and vegetables. 

"Peas release me, let me go.....". Maybe not quite the song of Engelbert Humperdinck but it is now time to uncover the pea plants now they are flowering and hope that the local pigeons and sparrows don't have some kind of party! 

For some reason this year we have had trouble getting peas to germinate so this row is all that we have, which is a shame. 

This is the potato patch down the bottom of the allotment this year. Struggled to find space to get all of them in to be honest and had to do a lot of earthing up against frost until May, Now, they seem quite healthy and are growing well. Just need watering now until picking the first ones come the end of July. 

This photo is taking looking over the blueberries, whch will need netting over soon, and the carrot tyre stacks towards the blackcurrants and pear trees. Plenty of pears on the Comice (nearest the camera) but fewer on the Conference (behind) due to the late frosts. Not many damsons for the same reason but we still have some in the freezer from last year! Although you can't see them very well on this photo there are some Cosmos between the tyre stacks. 

List of UK Independent Wool Spinners, Dyers and Suppliers

 

Name	Find/Events/ Shop	Webpage
Ardalanish - Mill Shop	Map	https://ardalanish.com/
Ardalanish - Online Shop	Online Shop	https://ardalanish.com/
Baa Ram Ewe	Online Shop	https://baaramewe.co.uk/
Birlinn Yarn Company	Online Shop	https://www.birlinnyarn.co.uk/
Blacker Yarns	Map (visits by appointment)	https://www.blackeryarns.co.uk/about/contact-us/
Black Isle Yarns	Online Shop	https://blackisleyarns.co.uk/
The Border Mill - Online	Online Shop	https://www.thebordermill.co.uk/
The Border Mill - Shop	Map	https://www.thebordermill.co.uk/
Buachaille - Kate Davies	Online Shop	https://www.shopkdd.com/
Caithness Yarns	Online Shop	https://www.caithnessyarns.com/
Cambrian Wool	Online Shop	https://www.cambrianwool.co.uk/
Cartref Yarn	Online Shop	https://www.cartrefyarn.com/
Countess Ablaze - Online Shop	Online Shop	https://www.countessablaze.com/
Countess Ablaze - Studio Shop	Map	https://www.countessablaze.com/pages/visit-the-studio
Daughter of a Shepherd	Events and News	https://daughterofashepherd.com/
Doulton Border Leicester Yarn	Online Shop	https://doultonborderleicesteryarn.com/
Eden Cottage Yarns	Online Shop	https://www.edencottageyarns.co.uk/
Erika Knight	Suppliers	https://www.erikaknight.co.uk/
Garthenor	Online Shop	https://garthenor.com/
Gathered Sheep Yarns	Online Shop	https://gatheredsheepyarns.com/
Giddy Aunt Yarns	Online Shop	https://giddyauntyarns.co.uk/
Grey Sheep Co	Online Shop	https://www.thegreysheep.co.uk/
Highland Wool CIC	CIC Project	https://thehirsel.com/highland-wool-mission/
The Hollyhock Flock	Buying Options	https://hollyhockflock.co.uk/
Hooligan Yarns	Online Shop	https://www.hooliganyarns.com/
J.C. Rennie & Co	Online Shop	https://www.knitrennie.com/
Jamieson and Smith	Online Shop	https://www.shetlandwoolbrokers.co.uk/
John Arbon Textiles	Visits not possible at the moment	https://www.jarbon.com/
Kettle Yarn	Online Shop	https://www.kettleyarnco.co.uk/
Knockando Woolmill	Online Shop	https://www.kwc.co.uk/
The Lace Knittery	Online Shop	http://www.thelaceknittery.com/
Lammermuir Wool	Online Shop	https://www.lammermuirwool.scot/store/c1/lammermuir-wool-shop-window-buy-our-wool
Laxtons	Online Shop	https://www.bylaxtons.co.uk/
Lily Warne Wool	Online Shop	https://lilywarnewool.co.uk/
Nellie and Eve	Online Shop	https://www.nellieandeve.com/
Northern Yarn - Online Shop	Online Shop	https://www.northernyarn.co.uk/
Northern Yarn - Shop	Map	https://www.northernyarn.co.uk/
Peak District Yarns	Online Shop	https://peakdistrictyarns.co.uk/
R.E.Dickie	Shop Currently Closed	http://www.britishwool.com/index-2.html
RiverKnits - Online Shop	Online Shop	https://www.riverknits.uk/?v=79cba1185463/
RiverKnits - Studio Shop	Map	https://www.riverknits.uk/?v=79cba1185463/
Toft Alpaca	Online Shop	https://www.toftuk.com/
Town End Yarns	Online Shop	https://townendyarns.co.uk/
Triskelion	Online Shop	https://www.triskelion-yarn.com/
Uist Wool - Online Shop	Online Shop	https://www.uistwool.com/
Uist Wool - Shop	Map	https://www.uistwool.com/
Wensleydale Longwool	Online Shop	https://www.wensleydalelongwool.co.uk/?v=79cba1185463
West Yorkshire Spinners	Map	https://www.wyspinners.com/
Whistlebare - Online Shop	Online Shop	https://whistlebare.com/
Whistlebare - Farm Studio Shop	Map	https://whistlebare.com/Studio/
Woolistheanswer	Online Shop	https://www.woolistheanswer.co.uk/about-us-1