April was always likely to be a busy month and was made even more so by a wet and generally cold March which meant that spring planting was delayed. The weather even had one last surprise in early April when were woken by what we thought was a thunderstorm rattling around us only to find that it was hail and then snow which settled for the morning. Ironic too as Bethany was on a school trip in Austria snowboarding that week.
After spending the winter months foraging in the fields post vegetable harvest. The pigs all had to be condensed back onto two fields in time for planting to get underway. Even with our relatively small number of pigs, this always has to be planned with military precision to make sure that arks, fences, troughs and pigs are all successfully reunited in the correct order on the new sites. With more than 5 miles of wire fence and a mile or two of water pipe to relocate, it’s a time consuming and labour intensive task but we always get there in the end. Spring cereals were drilled on 5th April, the ground prepared and planted with potatoes on 16th and the land for parsnips and Jerusalem artichokes manured, ploughed and readied at the same time.
This year the self-imposed deadline was to finish the move in time for our trip to the London marathon. Roz, Ben and I travelled by train on Friday in time to register and relax on the Saturday and Sam arrived on Saturday afternoon after finishing the farmwork in the morning.
Mararthon morning always begins with the stressful and crowded journey to the start, but we arrived in plenty of time to prepare for the start at 9.45. As usual at the green start, the ‘racers’ are hampered by the celebrity runners placed at the head of the field for the photo opportunities. The log-jam was worse this year as runners had to negotiate their way past a barrier of 6 Masai warriors carrying spears and shields. Thoughts of warm race conditions after an hours running disappeared with a twenty minute downpour. After that I resigned myself to take in the experience and forget about any target time. The last 6 miles were the slowest and most painful of my five LMs and I was glad to shuffle over the line in 3hrs 19. Ben had no such problems and had done all the things I had suggested (well, I have to try and claim some of the credit!) – don’t start too fast, keep even pace etc and had a fantastic debut finishing in 2hrs 49. As you can see from the photo, Ben got cold and fed up waiting for me to finish!
While we were in London, Roz and I spent some time meeting potential customers for our pork. Next month: Berkshires to Berkshire.