The Real Crop: Community and Care on the Allotment
There’s a rule in our family, and it was never written down. It goes like this: nobody walks past Pat’s shed without saying hello. I’d like to say I came up with it. I didn’t. It was Iris, aged fifteen at the time, who laid it down one muddy Sunday after watching her brother try to sneak past with a wheelbarrow. Sam, a grown man with a mortgage-sized sense of responsibility, had spotted Pat by his shed door. He did what any of us would do if we were in a hurry and had a barrow full of horse manure. He put his head down, picked up speed and tried to go past like a man with somewhere very important to be. “Morning, Sam!” came the voice from the shed. Sam stopped, because you can’t not. And that was forty minutes of leeks. Forty minutes, I tell you. I know because I timed it, mostly out of sympathy and partly because I was hiding behind the compost bay having a quiet laugh. By the end Sam knew exactly how deep to dibble a leek, why you never rush a leek, and what Pat’s father use...
