Property News · July 31, 2016

Grow your own by all means, but don’t dream that self-sufficiency is the answer | Corinna Hawkes


Last week, Monty Don mocked The Good Life. He was right – we should both cultivate and buy our foodWhen I lived in the French countryside, I started a vegetable garden. The farmer next door came round with his huge tractor and ploughed up a plot on the sloping field in front our house. I lugged the soil around to take what had inevitably ended up at the bottom to the top, stopping only on doctor’s orders (I was pregnant at the time). As a novice gardener, I did not know much of what to do. But that freshly ploughed soil did. The vegetables shot up, the roots shot down.With my newborn daughter on one arm, pulling up weeds on the other, I tended the land and loved it.  And was I happy when, during the whole summer, I did not have to buy one single vegetable. I also enjoyed being self-sufficient, of having to rely on no one but myself, of benefiting from the fruits of my labours. Even though my digestive system got heartily sick of courgettes, it was deeply appealing, it felt good. I even weaned my daughter on homegrown carrots. Continue reading…

Source : theguardian.com
Read more…Grow your own by all means, but don’t dream that self-sufficiency is the answer | Corinna Hawkes

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