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NOTHING TO GET HUNG ABOUT
Adventures in strawberry farming and local newspaper journalism.
Hi, I'm Paul Ferguson, the pun-loving head hack at the Farnham Herald and Petersfield Post who spent four years working on a strawberry farm in Hampshire. Expect tales and musings about both from a man who longs to be outstanding in his field...
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Team Leader
Things have changed greatly in the two years since I last posted on this blog. For a start, I’m now back in journalism. To be honest,...
paulorhamish
Feb 9, 202516 min read
Slava Ukraini
IT was just after 1pm on Sunday, September 18, when I stopped pruning and looked around me. The scene was nothing unusual. Six rows of...
paulorhamish
Oct 16, 202213 min read
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Christmas isn’t the same as it used to be, and I’m not just talking about the impact the infernal virus called Covid has made on our...
paulorhamish
Jan 8, 20226 min read
Feeling hot, hot, hot
It seems strange writing about tropical conditions when the temperature is in single figures outside, but I found myself in this scenario...
paulorhamish
Jan 2, 20224 min read
No, knot again: red faced after returning to picking
The farm had a series of trial days in May and June for prospective workers as we needed help with a variety of tasks from pruning to...
paulorhamish
Oct 16, 20214 min read
Clarkson, Caravans and Cows: This entry is brought to you by the letter "C"
I thought about doing an ABC of Westlands and so forth, but then I realised that so much at the farm begins with the letter C, so without...
paulorhamish
Sep 4, 20217 min read
Blessed be the fruit
More than three months have passed since I posted my last entry on this blog and by golly a lot has changed since then. The biggest...
paulorhamish
Aug 10, 20216 min read
A berry mixed start to the year
The only thing that’s predictable about British weather is its unpredictability. Remember the first lockdown? Hard to forget it,...
paulorhamish
May 16, 20216 min read
The Waiting Game
You could call this period the calm before the storm. The pieces are very nearly in place for the picking season. Loads of the strawberry...
paulorhamish
Apr 3, 20215 min read
Causing a buzz on live TV
The farm is a hive of activity at the moment. The strawberries are close to ripening, the caravans have been thoroughly cleaned for the...
paulorhamish
Mar 23, 20213 min read
Pole axed
You know you’ve worked exceptionally hard when even the farm hand, usually a tower of strength, admits things have been tough. When the...
paulorhamish
Mar 7, 20214 min read
So it grows: thoughts on the past, present and future
One of the questions I’m most commonly asked is whether I want to get back into journalism once the pandemic is over and life returns to...
paulorhamish
Feb 17, 20216 min read
The Blog entry about the B-word
“I don’t think people realise how important they are. It won’t affect us too much but I know a lot of farmers are worried.” That was the...
paulorhamish
Jan 31, 20217 min read
Tunnel vision / First attempt at raspberry picking
When I worked for the Hereford Times I wrote a few stories about the huge polytunnel developments which have covered some of the...
paulorhamish
Dec 21, 20204 min read
Stop the count: butchered in the Pigs in Blankets challenge
As I have mentioned previously in this blog, there are two types of farmyard Paul: Pacey Paul, and Peaceful Paul. In addition to these...
paulorhamish
Dec 10, 20204 min read
Time for another plug
It turns out that when it comes to drips, what comes down must also come up. Having taken 38,000 drippers out of growbags at Ford in...
paulorhamish
Nov 17, 20203 min read
Strawberry killer, qu’est-ce que c’est
Look, but don’t eat. The plug was pulled on the water supply to the strawberries in September, but that didn’t stop a few hundred from...
paulorhamish
Nov 17, 20203 min read
Farewell, DJ Aldin
I write this in late October when the herd is thinning. Some of the pickers have finished work for the season and have returned to...
paulorhamish
Nov 2, 20203 min read
Station Master
Life at the farm changed dramatically in late August when Christi and Madelina left for pastures new. The former bagged himself a new...
paulorhamish
Oct 23, 20205 min read
Have you suffered an injury in the workplace?
Here’s a question for you: which of these three work-related jobs ended in my first physiotherapist appointment in more than a decade? A)...
paulorhamish
Oct 10, 20204 min read
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