Sarah’s Big Cauliflowers

Sarah has enormous cauliflowers. Simply gigantic. You can’t see her if she stands behind them.  

They’re too big for the vegetable rack, and would cause chaos if we just kept them in the kitchen which is, as I am sure you know, an oasis of tidiness. Although since we embarked on building an extension which will more or less double the size of the kitchen, we’ve given up worrying so the kitchen is littered with tupperware that won’t fit in cupboards, a lot of Sarah’s wellingtons, my work stuff, off-cuts of oak from the builders, and often Tonka the tortoise.

The extension has created its own problems not least of which was removing large parts of the roof. Once the builders had successfully done this they went away and then it rained. It rained in a way that would have pleased Noah. His ark would have floated in 12 hours rather than 40 days. It rained so hard it hurt. And the kitchen ceiling poured water. So I spent a large part of this deluge dominated day on the roof struggling with tarpaulins and bits of lead to try to stem the Niagara that was gushing into the house.

Since most of it came down through the light fittings, we now also live in the dark.

But back to vegetables. Sarah’s cauliflowers may be colossal but her tomatoes are tiny, and there is one cucumber about the size of a small carrot. Our horticultural expertise doesn’t extend to knowing why the veg has remained determinedly dwarf or suffers from gigantism but nothing is normal about any of it. We even have spherical courgettes.

Meanwhile in the animal world, we now also provide the country’s most expensive eggs. I worked out that, if we produce 25,000 a year they cost about 50p each since in order counter the continued assaults by most of the local badger population, we had to install six foot double fencing dug into the ground another 18 inches, coupled with a double strand of electric fence at badger nose height.

The badgers ate 11 of our chickens, including most of next year’s adults, which meant that the remaining chicks had to grow up in the house. And guess where, specifically, that was. Yes, my study. The conservatory had been knocked down to make room for the extension; it’s obviously a health hazard to us having chickens in the kitchen, and a health hazard to them having a dog there too. Bedrooms are not appropriate. So it was my study. Where they grew up accompanied by Tonka.

The badger problem did have one ray of light which was that we met Martin from the East Kent Badger Group. Martin is a cornucopia of knowledge about badgers and gave me several handy hints about keeping them at bay, one of which is to get a cheap transistor radio, put it in an upturned bucket, and play Radio 1 all night.

If I was a badger, I’d definitely move to the next farm.