Turnip

The Ranch:

Spring hurtles in, full throttle, thwarted by snowy East-Beast snaps.

It’s been a funny old winter. Blue Monday was actually Happy Monday, as I slunk out of hibernation and got cracking again.

It’s often deserted up there during winter and can feel rather desolate and eerie – especially when we’ve had spates of brazen daylight break-ins. I’ve learned to absorb myself in the secret beauty of it all. It’s nature innit? One lesson after another, especially if you’re mindful man. What’s that flock of long-tailed tits telling me? I wouldn’t even have seen that sparrow hawk flash by if I’d been daydreaming. Is that snowy outline gliding by at dusk a bird or an apparition? 

It’s been a mammoth pruning year, as we tackle a lot of the outer hedge for the first time. The result is a mountain of clippings – some for firewood and some to make compost, all destined to be chopped by machines on the back of the tractor. Sometimes, when chopping brush with loppers, it feels a bit like cutting Wembley with a pair of scissors, but it’s part of the husbandry and recycling that produces food food food – it’s micro-forestry.

It’s all the more prescient, as the ultra-obvious that I predicted yonks ago comes bounding in. They’re even telling us that food inflation is seventeen per cent, although we know that it’s at least double that – especially for poor people.

It dawned on me one day that living off the land mainly entails shifting large amounts of organic material around. Soil for a start, is entirely dependent on it and you need a lot. Firewood too and food of course. I’m spending a lot of time sourcing, chopping, storing and drying firewood. It’s the heart of our house via our efficient stove, which provides our downstairs hot water from 2 kettles and does a lot of our cooking. I recently replaced all the riddle and fire rope round the door and the improvement is massive. We haven’t even switched our heating on – we just accept that it’s cold upstairs.

I’m involved in an exciting project renovating a house to be off grid. A multi-fuel stove with a back boiler is at the heart of it. I’d even designed my own, but ended up buying one. There was a sense of urgency, because of the 2022 clean air act which I think rightly so, demands maximum efficiency and minimum emissions from new stoves.

Modern society allows us to travel around in organic-material consuming vehicles to earn enough money to pay someone else to pump organic material into our houses for heating. We then go along to the supermarkets to buy all the stuff flown around the world. They’ve fucked all that now though, with their criminal fuel bills, making gargantuan profits for themselves. Naturally more and more people are going back to first principles and trying to be more off grid. It’s only a matter of time before the ‘rulers’ try and take those too. It’s already happening worldwide, with companies like Monsanto and Beyer monopolising seed production. The Indian farmers stood up to them.

Around about now, gardening fever begins to show its first wisps – even for recalcitrants like me. All the clever kids say that you can start planting under cover late Jan/Feb, but really it’s better to wait a bit – especially in more inhospitable climes like ours. There’s a big difference between the Grim North and Kent. Seeds will germinate under cover in Feb, but they soon catch up if left a bit later. Spinach bolts when it gets warm, so is one seed worth planting early.

Mid-March however, is the green light to get going. It signals 8 weeks until mid-May, when it becomes safe to plant stuff outside frost-free. It’s the last chance to sow chillies and peppers under heat, because they need a long growing season.

I grow everything in big trays. I let the plants get much bigger than most folk, before planting out en-masse. I also harden them off for a long time. I found this to be the best defence against snug and snail legions.

The other big job has been to get all the beds weeded and mulched. It’s mostly done, thanks to a few stalwart helpers. I’ve run out of compost, so I’m experimenting with using a thick layer of hay. Freddy told me that they do it in France.

Getting together to share resources, to grow as much food as possible is as old as human history. The recent pinprick in history that is digitalisation, has made us lose our way.

Whenever Mr Doubt comes nagging in my ear, I take a look at the bigger picture and see it all as some magical alchemy, which includes the pagan and spiritual side of things as well as the gardening practicalities. (Are you a f’ing hippy or what?)

I’m persevering with that daily meditation. It’s not just sitting and thinking – it’s a proper ancient Buddhist one – cross-legged and shit. I stumbled on it over 30 years ago. I suspect t’universe guided me there. I’ve dabbled on and off over the years, but went back to it in earnest over 6 months ago when I realised I had shit to sort. Fuck me, it doesn’t half throw up some weird stuff, putting me in squirmingly uncomfortable situations at times. In the end though, it invisibly guides you. I find myself quietly withdrawing from certain negative energies.

Apples are a rich part of England’s history and in lots of pockets here and there, sit ancient trees of unknown variety, at risk of being uprooted by progress and lost forever.

All modern apples are grafted onto a rootstock, which determines the size and vigour of the resulting tree. 

My small orchard has about ten. One of them does better than all the rest put together. It’s an 1850s Lancashire variety called Golden Spire. It looks a bit like a Bramley and is good for eating, cooking and cider making. I bought ten dwarf rootstock and had my first go at grafting, using the pruning’s from the Golden Spire. It’s quite engrossing – I hope that they take.

I notice that the hazels (about twenty) are dripping with catkins and there are lots of the tiny deep-red male flowers too. Hopefully there’ll be plenty of nuts.

Elsewhere:

A doctor, a lawyer and a lecturer walk into a pub.

That’s about it really. There’s not much more to say. It’s just our quiet little quirky friends-and-family lives, with all the associated trials and tribulations:

Waiting on a cold late-night station to pick a friend up from a London trip; watching the tiny miniature one waddling on all fours, grunting little urgent words, to reach Louise who he adores the most and reaching up to her with his tiny little cherub hands, burbling his incomprehensible version of ‘Pick me up, pick me up’; Louise’s birthday gathering, which was supposed to be just a few of the fam having afternoon snacks and drinks but turns into a full-blown party of NYE calibre, complete with the young generation, live music and loud records. It ends up lasting late into the night, with at least 3 of us inebriatedly falling over the drumkit.

The pub is packed and we’re lucky to get a seat right in front of the fire. For no particular reason, we spontaneously start making up an alphabetic list of sweary names for people. We talk in hushed voices, as there are children on the next table. It’s no surprise, as we are 3 of the 4 vernacularists. Destiny has christened us the ‘you-know-what’ club. That word is our hallmark; our calling card, our term of endearment. I was the kind of schoolboy who went to the library to look up rude words in the dictionary. It’s something I’ve never grown out of. In fact it’s more correct to say that it’s something that I’ve grown into. If it was just me, I’d keep quiet about it, but I discovered later in life, that there are certain down-to-earth intuitive women, often a bit posh, who use the beautiful vocabulary more frequently than I. Not only that, they descend into ubersmut at the drop of a banana.

A to D is a breeze, but E is difficult. Obviously no problem with F, but H is tricky. We’re interrupted when our cheese pie arrives.

The pie is a stodgy stonker, dense with heavy, rich filling. I devour mine quickly, along with the accompanying chips and peas. Growler leaves half of hers and I drool longingly at it. As the minutes pass, it becomes apparent that she’s not going to put it in her bag to take home. I throw caution to the wind, exposing my scrote roots, to ask her if I can have it. ‘Of course.’ She says.

In a rare moment of selflessness, I overcome the urge to instantly devour it. I wrap it up in a serviette to take home to sweetness. It’s coincidentally Valentine’s day, so it’s her gift. We don’t bother with that shit. Love hides elsewhere, unspoken between the pots and pans and the ups and downs. I’ve got the bug for making jewellery. I did make her a nice brooch for her birthday by melting some brass and sticking some bits of broken up costume jewels on it. 

Bloated, rounded-off with a couple of ales, we meander back through the beautiful river ley, up onto the brow of the hill where we can see the magical hill on one side and the sprawling valley of small towns on the other. The weather is grey but bright.

They spontaneously burst into that Carpenter’s song. I pretend not to notice, until Mog prompts me for a response.

We eye up grand properties, imagining that we lived there. ‘That’s my bit.’ ‘No it’s not’ it’s mine.’ 

Heaven in the extraordinary ordinary.

This is the middle of three similar outings, whereby we set of from Mog’s abode and stroll through ambling countryside, for repair and fortification at a reachable hostelry, before strolling back again. At least three of the four vernacularists are on each trip, so bad behaviour is inevitable.

Although perfectly ordinary, these hostelry walks are not something that I’ve ever done before. They’re a bit extravagant for a peasant like me. In fact I even try and decline one, but school teacher demands attendance.

The latest is magnificent . There are twelve of us including all four club members. It’s a proper sit-down do and it’s ace – everything about it – the company, the food, the beverages. It’s Growler’s birthday and it was Mog’s the day before. It was challenging thinking of an appropriate gift for each of them. If one of them thinks that theirs is better than the other’s, hell-hath-wrath could ensue.

In the end, I hacksaw two bits off an old bronze plaque in the back yard, then cut and file them into heart shapes. I solder clasps onto the backs. I get out my set of alphabet stamps and I’m in that schoolboy terrain again. I could write ANYTHING and cor blimey, I do. It’s not difficult. They are thrilled with their tasteful thoughtful gifts, which become their club badges.

With full-membership presence, frivolity is certain, perhaps pushing the boundaries of acceptability. Sadly graffiti ensues on the walk back, offending a local resident. Naturally butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, so I get the blame, even though it wasn’t me.

Turnip:

I’m self-sufficient for potatoes thanks to a simple system of storing them between layers of straw in the cool dim barn, separated from each other. If one goes mouldy, the surrounding ones aren’t affected. Rats got them one year, so I made a mesh cage. They start to get sprouty and a bit spongy as spring develops, but nevertheless remain edible until the first earlies arrive.

I arrive one day to find that they have escaped and staged a protest against the govt’s flagrant turnipism.

It takes me a while to get to the bottom of it. It transpires that former health Secretary Thérèse Coffey, a fine example of healthy living, has suggested eating seasonal foods like turnips, in the absence of tomatoes and peppers from abroad. I’m sure she was saying it in context, but I can fully understand why the spuds got upset.

It’s a bit like when that Marie Antionette woman told the Frenchies to eat cake and they got all uppity about it.

I’m so grateful for what our wonderful government has done for us over the last three years, so I’ve dutifully planted two turnip varieties.

I hear on the grapevine that there’s a competition to grow the biggest turnip. The five winners will have their entries strung together – a bit like those plug things that people shove up their bottoms. They’ll then be posted to Thérèse for her to file appropriately.

For passionate love, there has to be rage too and fucking hell there is dark frustrated rage at the moment and it’s by no means just me. One of my favourite spiritual sayings is ‘let it burn’, meaning lock yourself away and let it run its course, without inflicting it on others. Still, its searing heat can forge something remarkable once cooled. That King of Swords thing is double-edged.

I have my private haven to rant and rave in and surprisingly archery helps a lot. Rather than conventional archery, based on the traditional longbow, I’ve chosen the Eastern variety that uses shorter recurve bows, suitable for horseback. It’s more difficult to do, because you shoot from the other side of the bow and use a different grip. One advantage is that you can grab a handful of arrows in the bow hand and shoot quickly. The quiver is one that I made for the kids when they were little, from the back of an old leather settee.

Hence, my imagination runs wild as a volley of arrows spikes the cunts who have done all this to us. In reality, the rage dissolves naturally, usurped by the concentration and mindfulness required for accurate shooting.

Perhaps everyone’s lovely inspiration at the moment is sweet cuddly Matt Hancock. Weren’t they nasty to him when he went in the jungle?

The latest is the release of several of his WhatsApp messages, which took place when he was Health Secretary as the pandemic unfolded. He wrote himself a li’l old book, to tell us all how nice he is and he was helped by a Torygraph journo who subsequently broke her NDO to spill the beans about his shitty little tricks.

It was plastered all over the front of the same Torygraph that fully supported all the govt’s actions throughout. If genuine, what comes across is Hancock’s dismissive contempt for us ordinary peasants. ‘Shall we release the new variant?’ and so on.

You would think it would be major news across all platforms, and spark a revolution, but as ever, bourgeois English gutlessness prevails and it’s fuck all as usual.

There’s talk of bringing him to justice. Publicly, there’s talk of court and prison. Privately, the rage of people who weren’t allowed to be with dying loved ones and their ilk is beyond dark and they would happily see much worse done to him.

On the underground, people are saying it’s a smokescreen to allow in a much more sinister agenda.

Underground:

When despotism arises, there are always underground movements with the courage to resist. La Résistance for example.

I’ve written nearly a hundred posts and documented the pandemic from the point of view of an A&E doctor working in it, since it started. I still get irate at people, with no medical training who claim that Covid never existed and that it’s just rebranded flu. These are the same people who generate hatred toward the ordinary decent medical staff who worked through it. I keep trying to point out that they were duped by the coordinated international narrative, just like everyone else.

People want to know what to do. There’s lots of obvious stuff such as trying to be as off grid as poss; using cash only; avoiding supermarkets (they all use facial recognition cameras, tied into peoples’ cash cards); forming micro-societies based on trade and so on.

Gill Scott Heron said that the revolution will not be televised. Did Sitting Bull turn back from Little Big Horn because he’d left his smart phone in his teepee?

EVERYTHING that they’re trying to do to us relies on tracking us digitally. It’s a no brainer then, to weave and wind under the digital radar and find the underground.

Gas and electricity comes into our houses via a pipe and a big wire that can be isolated and switched off. The atrocious energy companies just sell the bit above the switches. They are all fundamentally dishonest and use bullying tactics, disguised as authority to frighten people. There are ways and means. 

I accepted long ago that the instant I switch on a digital device, I’m being tracked. Trawling the internet to find out what’s really happening is truly a minefield. I don’t trust any of it. There’s a whole industry based on AI, designed to divide and rule. I find a lead, then go on my private doctors group to ask the others what they think, before forming an opinion.

Once you realise that the same people who told us the pack of lies about the pandemic are the ones lying to us about everything else, it gets hard not to get lost down a rabbit hole. Question everything.

Ukraine has a long complex history. Please read up about it from a reliable source, before supporting the puppet government installed by those at the top: The US interests there; the Biden laptop and so on. It’s dark. I see a picture of Zelensky and Sunak in flying helmets, which dwarf their squat cunt physiques, making them look like creepy Kafkaesque insects. America is pushing for WW3 by proxy and it’s terrifying.

I never got Covid despite sustained heavy exposure at work. Most of my colleagues got it mildly and therefore had natural immunity.

mRNA has never been used before on a human population therefore no long term safety data, therefore not possible to give informed consent.

The single paper upon which Emergency Use Authorisation was based was deeply flawed and later proved to be utterly corrupt.

The injections have had more reported adverse events than all other previous jabs put together. The unreported events are much higher.

There’s an epidemic of immuno-compromise, caused by the spike proteins. A small proportion is from Covid itself, the rest from the injections.

There’s a massive rise in excess deaths in vaccinated countries compared to unvaccinated countries.

Covid is a biphasic illness. The second phase only effects some people and is actually an allergic inflammatory response, which is easily treatable.

Vitamin D is essential for T cell function. Most westerners have woefully inadequate levels which is worsened by obesity due to poor absorption.

Natural immunity and all effective treatments have been heavily censored and dissenters have been silenced.

PCR testing in the community was a complete sham, with inaccurate cycle levels and appalling variations in standardisation.

Masks don’t work.

Lockdowns don’t work.

These are all well-triangulated corroborated facts that I’ve been trying to sing from the rooftops since day 1 and I’ll keep on because people have the right to know the truth.

Once you see all this, you dig deeper to find out who’s behind it all and what their agenda is. It’s sinister. It’s a bit like when I took the Park Keeper to task.

You have to have a laugh or else it all gets too miserable. I’m planning a vernacular jewellery business. Bella Freud is selling Hello Cunty key rings for seventy quid.

I’m off playing those little round things with my cool disc jockey friends soon.