Ergot of rye.

Ranch:

The mild, muggy, rainy, northern summery weather is breaking into autumnal gales and horizontal rain and the harvest is bountiful.  All the potatoes are in storage in the barn (between layers of straw in a rat-proof mesh cage). Despite a poor apple harvest, there are enough for us, and some of them have great flavour. The Golden Spire though is dripping with big apples.  In contrast to bucket-loads of hazel nuts last year, there are hardly any forming on the trees. I’ve no idea why. Nature is a right mystery trickster.

The pest that trounced the figs last year is so far absent and the harvest has begun – the tree is laden. I don’t particularly like them and usually end up giving them away. Courgettes too are in abundance and I’m actually struggling to get rid of them.

There was high drama on the hill on Saturday – a big fire in one of the unused allotments at the bottom. Kids have been going in and dossing in the caravans on it. It was over in the far corner where there’s no vehicle access, so the fire brigade couldn’t get near. In the end, they ran a hose right from the top. There were several firemen (and one woman). It was potentially very dangerous because we had no idea whether there were gas bottles in the caravans. The fire tripled in size in minutes, taking out a large ramshackle tree-house shed. Afterwards, their fire engine got stuck at the top of the track, and it took over an hour to get it out.

Ergot of rye

It’s funny the things that you remember from medical school. I can clearly remember about ergot of rye and St Anthony’s fire but I have to look up sodium-potassium balance every time. Ergot is the fungus claviceps purpurea which caused outbreaks of gangrene and hallucinations throughout the middle ages. LSD was first isolated from it. The last recorded outbreak was in France in 1951 from contaminated flour. Ergotomine prescribed for the treatment of migraine and Ergonovine for the treatment of post-partum haemorrhage and induction of uterine contractions are also derived from it. I spotted a black cylinder coming from one of my rye grains and when I looked it up sure enough that’s what it is. I had it for breakfast and now my toes and fingers are black and I’ve been tripping for days. Only joking.