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 in early-September.

Scorchio!

The Redhill glasshouses became a deathly place after the last berries were picked and the water was turned off. The predominant colour turned from green to a shade of rust as the strawberry plants lost their verdant hue while their drooping runners added to the dying, slight post-apocalyptic feel.

It couldn’t stay like this, of course, and I was asked to start removing the tens of thousands of irrigation drippers from every glasshouse except Pheasant House.

Keen readers of this blog will remember that I enjoy this job and I’m quite good at it. I’m fast although I accept I sometimes can be a bit aggressive in pulling the drippers out.

The temperature was already in the mid-20s when I started pulling out the first drippers in Stock House on September 5. I was quickly down to a t-shirt and shorts but there was no cooling off and things were only heating up. As the day went on I took pictures of the thermometer as the surface temperature rose like the heat in an oven: 32c, 37c, 39c…

The highest I read was 42c, possibly the hottest temperature I have ever worked in. Steve later told me the figure was the surface temperature in the house rather than the actual interior temperature, so I could take a little bit off that figure, but I’m not sure. I was roasting like a rotisserie chicken and found myself running my head under the outdoor tap on several occasions.

The temperature's rising...

I cleared the houses after a couple of days but I gave Beech House a skip for a while as the gage read an eye-watering 46.9c when I popped in. Job done but even though the temperature was starting to drop outside, there was little relief for the time being.

Next job was removing the growbags and dead plants. That means piling at least five bags at a time on a wheelbarrow or sled and making a delivery to either the compost pile or bonfire, depending on the contents. In situations like this we often have competitions to see who can shift the most bags in one journey and we managed to pile 20 on a sled on one occasion.

Time to remove all the dead plants.

But the temperature in the glasshouses was still toasty and a bonfire is hotter still, so it really was like going from the pan into the fire at times. Plus we often had to wear masks as all the dust and detritus from dead plants often flies up and gets into your nose.

A bit of a clean-up followed and that’s more fun than it sounds because it means using the leaf-blower. It’s a lovely bit of kit and you feel like a Ghostbuster wearing it, but I’ll refrain about making puns about blowing leafs and jobs because it’s too obvious.

I absolutely love using the leaf-blower.

The glasshouses didn’t stay empty for long and a few weeks later Sam and I joined Christian and his merry gang of Eastern Europeans for two days of growbag moving. The women “massaged” the bags – the bags are rigid when they arrive on pallets, so they need fluffing up - while the men delivered them on wheelbarrows and sleds to their home for the following year.

The process was repeated in Pheasant House minus the Bulgarians a few weeks later because the plug was pulled on the plants a tad later. The plants were still producing strawberries in early September and we managed to fill up a few hundred punnets at a time, albeit in ever decreasing numbers.

Raspberry picking also continued later into the month and I picked my last in late October. By that stage just two Ukrainians, plus Sam and I, were left on the picking team while Christian and Katarina got on with their pruning and husbandry duties. The last man standing vibe kicks in and the bonhomie that a crowd provides disappears into the fading evening light.

Whereas the Redhill site feels more homely because everything is close by and there’s often activity, Ford often feels less hospitable because of its vastness. You can easily get lost in the place. That emptiness becomes more apparent when the temperature and workforce starts dropping and the scene starts to bleaken. The tracks become muddier with ever passing shower and the foliage on the surrounding trees start to thin.

Crisp, cold, wintry mornings on the farm are quite lovely. The temperature was -3c when I took this photo at 8am on a late November morning.

Yet there is a kind of beauty to be appreciated at Ford during late autumn. It’s there in the crisp, cold mornings when the fields and footpaths are covered in a thin, crisp layer of white frost. It’s there in the treeline, where you can see the usually hidden bird nests high above the lugg, and it’s especially evident when lunch is hot soup, straight from the flask. Having a sip of tea or coffee while standing in a cold frosty field is a pleasure, trust me, and it’s one I would never get to experience working in an office.