browsePeaceable Kingdoms
Graeme Rigby (Writer), Peter Fryer 2 (Photographer)
From the back cover of the book, 1992:
Throughout 1991/92 Peter Fryer and Graeme Rigby took photographs and talked with many of the 3,000 allotment holders and pigeon fanciers in Newcastle upon Tyne. This book looks at the people who keep these small but important pieces of land, which provide leisure, escape, work, pleasure, friendship and freedom, as well as food. This collection of photographs and stories shows the diversity of the people, culture and lives found within and enhanced by allotments.
Peter Fryer is a freelance documentary photographer and has lived and worked in the North-East of England since 1981. His work, which has been exhibited and published both nationally and internationally, includes Let Go, on the North East fishing industry and The Unrecognised Villages about the Arab village in the state of Israel.
Graeme Rigby has lived in the North-East since 1977. As well as poetry and plays, he has written a number of documentary texts for photographic projects, last working with Peter on Coke To Coke. His first novel, The Black Cook’s Historian, won the 1992 Constable Trophy and is to be published in 1993. He is editor of The Page.
Full text by Graeme Rigby from the book, published in 1992 by Newcastle City Council (now out of print)
BENWELL
The Secretary: John Masterton
People don’t always pay attention to the regulations, but they’re there all the same. Flowers, for example: they’re only supposed to take up a certain percentage of your garden. Then there’s the Civic. Someone from the Civic can come up and tell you to take something down, so you say: “Aye, I’ve been meaning to do that. I’ll get round to it in the next few weeks.” Time’s usually on your side in the end.
You try to get good people in. A young lad came a couple of years ago, smashing lad, built like a bull, a weightlifter. He was desperate for a garden. I broke all the bloody rules to give him one. I gave him the worst one I had ’n’ all, just to try him out. He got stuck in every day he was there. He filled three skips with concrete. I thought: “Hell’s bells, we’ve got a good one here,” because they're worth their weight in gold, them ones. He riddled it down. All of a sudden, he just said: “Ah divvent like it.” And that was it. But he did the garden a power of good, mind.
I have to throw them off if they’re not keeping the garden up or if they'’e misbehaving, but you don’t usually find bad buggers that’s gardeners. There are none, really. Except me. It’s a way of life. There was Jack, who died the other day. Fifty years he had a garden here. Think about it. Same garden, as well. Every day, he was here, for fifty years. Never missed a one. It’s a way of life, man. They would sleep here if you let them. You see their wives coming up: “Are you bloody coming home for your dinner, or are you not?” It takes a hold of you, see, and you forget about time, when you’re doing something with your real life.
This week, wor lass won a chicken at the bingo, which is good, because otherwise I would have been getting two boiled eggs for me Sunday dinner. I took a small cauli home yesterday, a little white cauli, absolutely brilliant white. Beautiful. And I took some small summer turnips up, which are gorgeous. I took some potatoes out of the ground: the skins just fell off as I was taking them out of the ground. Bit of Yorkshire pudding. Plenty of gravy on. Beautiful. You cannot beat it. Mind, if we hadn’t got that chicken, I’d have been in the shit.
You’re either a gardener of you’re not. I’ve been a gardener all my life. I was a gardener without a garden. Then, when I retired, seven years ago, I took this garden here. People go away for their holidays. I just stay here. It’s beautiful. If I won a million pound on the pools, I can honestly say, I’d still come up here every day.
BYKER, ST. PETER'S BASIN
Keeping Geese: Jimmy Lyddon
When I first met the wife, when I married her, like, her father used to keep geese down the bottom here. I just got attached to them, you know. For years I said: “Ahhh, I'll get an allotment.” Well, the son got me this one and he bought me the geese. We had ducks, as well. My laddie always liked ducks. You can’t keep geese with chickens, because they’ll kill chickens, but you can keep ducks with geese. But they eat too much, the ducks. They’re like JCB shovels going round after grub. And they’re dirty. Oh, they stink. So we’ve just got the gander and the geese and now the young one.
Tommy, next door, he’s the gander’s mate. He can do anything he likes with him. The gander doesn’t like me. You can see the way he goes for me. Tommy can sit there and pet him up: “Come on, son...” Certain people comes in and he’ll take to them, but not me. And I feed him every day. When they bite you, it’s a nip, like, but it comes up in a great blue bump. It sharp goes away, but, by God, do they give you a nip.
When I first got them, they had been badly used. Mentioning no names, but they used to be locked away in a little cupboard when the pigeon races were on. This is just what I’ve been told about. Now, when he came in here, he was on his own, see: he used to follow me round, he used to feed off my hand, I could do anything with him. The two geese came on the scene: oh! ho! ho! ho! I ended up with two geese and two ganders. Eventually we got rid of one of the ganders because they were always fighting. Just ended up with these.
I’ve had hundreds of eggs off them, but I’ve only got one out of it and the chicken hatched it out. They used to sit them, but they got jealous of one another: one of them would steal the other one’s nest. I don’t know what gets into them. I got one last year and they killed it, one the year before and they killed it, so this time, I put two eggs under a little pullet and she hatched one out. When it was time to take it away from the chicken and put it amongst them, oh, they were fighting cats and dogs. There’s only one goose that’s taken to it: that one must be its mother. The other one wouldn’t let it have anything to eat. The gander doesn’t bother it. They’ve settled down now, but still the other one has a peck at it, a nip.
They’ve got to find their own place to nest, really. Now if I had a bigger place than this and plenty of grass, I’d let them go, let them find their own place. You should just keep one gander and one goose. In the book, it says you can keep two geese and one gander, but I think the book’s wrong, to tell you the truth. When they’re closed in, like this, they get jealous of each other. I’ve got them partitioned, but it makes no odds.
The breeding season is from the end of February through to April, two or three month. You can’t go near them: daren’t go near them! They lay so many eggs before they sit them: sometimes it’s fifteen, sometimes it’s eighteen. You take them away, because it can’t sit all of them. By the time they do sit them, they’re going off, so you leave the latter end ones, take the front ones away, just let them sit what you think are all right. You’re supposed to get them tested. Well, I haven’t got a strong enough lamp to test them. If anybody does want to test them for you, it’s: “Oh, can I have some, can I have some?” because they’re pretty dear, goose eggs, if they’re fertile. The eggs, when they’re fresh, they’re the most beautiful eggs in the world for making custard with. If you want to eat them, scramble them. Oh, they’re beautiful. I said to my missus, one day, she says: “What do you fancy for tea?” “Oh,” I say, “I'll have a scrambled egg... Oh, by the way,” I says, “there’s a goose’s egg in there,” there was three I kept in the house. “Scramble one of them. I’ve never had one scrambled before.” I goes out, comes round the garden, comes back home. She says: “I've scrambled the egg. I’ve just put it in the thing for you, there.” She'd done two eggs, hadn’t she: like a blinkin’ big haystack. I had half, the dog had the other half. Because the biggest goose, she lays some beautiful eggs, like, and everyone you weigh is exactly half a pound.
To tell you the truth, if I breed them, I wouldn’t like to eat them. That’s the way it is. Soft hearted, you get. You get used to them. It seems a shame. If I hatch any, I would rather bring them up and give them away. Aye. If anybody said: “I'll buy one,” fair enough. “Put your price on.” But they’re nice things to keep.
ETAL PARK
A Community of Men Talking
Dick Robson: It was 1978, it started. We had a meeting with the council. What happened was, there was eighty names for thirty five gardens, so we had to put it all in the hat and draw them out. We got thirty five names out and from them we formed a committee. We had nothing: there was just a bare field, really. It took us about two year to get every allotment taken, because people were coming, taking them on, then they found it was hard work. We used to go around at nights, knocking doors and say: “Oh, there’s an allotment there, you know.” Then we started ruling, if you didn’t dig your allotment within a certain time, you were out. It’s surprising how many people did lose their gardens through that. Eventually we got it organised, but there was no huts or anything like that.
Tommy Tazey: The council wanted every potting shed and greenhouse the same. That was taking the individual character away from the plotholder, to me. As long as your hut is respectable and tidy and it’s not an eyesore, corrugated iron and all that, it should be all right... Everything uniform, it’d just break your heart.
Dick Robson: The council wouldn't allow anything with there being houses all around. They said the huts had to be uniform and for us to buy the buildings from the council, but we said, “No way!” Since then, it’s built up and built up. We had to put our own water in; dig our own ditches for our water; put our own taps in. We put our own clinker in for the paths. Since then, you’ll find a lot have put concrete paths in or flagstones. But the gardens have taken off now, really well. They’ve had to, because of the housing round, because if they’re an eyesore, we’ll lose them, they’ll take them away from us. So we have to be very careful. It’s a great thing, being able to have an allotment: it’s being outside...
John Smith: It’s something to do instead of sitting in the house like an invalid all the time. When you first come into it, naturally, you’ve just had, mebbes, a little house garden, a few flowers: you don’t know nothing about the veg. Then you start to get interested and you get talking to people. They’ll say: “Try this plant... Try that plant.” I think the main thing is the community of men, talking.
Dick Robson: Everybody helps each other. If I haven’t got my sprouts, I say: “Have you any sprouts?” They’ll say: “Jimmy might have some... John might have some...” And you just go and ask and they say: “Oh, get a few.” It’s real good companionship.
Jim Breckons: You get a lot of lads, who aren’t even on the allotment and they come across in the car and they say: “I've just had PVC windows in and there’s nowt the matter with the old frames and glass. If I dump them down, will you take them?” You build up your greenhouses with them.
Tommy Tazey: Saves a lot of money.
Dick Robson: I remember John Marshall: he worked on the buildings and he brought a great wagon, a dumper, a great, big, massive load of rough sand and he tipped it over there, and we used to sell sand at twenty pence a barrow load. That’s how we got the sand in here... It’s all stuff that’s given away.
John Smith: You get stuff taken ’n’ all.
Dick Robson: You do get some trouble here, but compared to some, we don’t get a lot of vandalism. We get kids that come in and they’ll break into a hut and take nothing.
Tommy Tazey: They turn the taps on and then the taps is on all night.
Jim Breckons: We seem to have spasms. Odd times they’ll come and they’ll bust every door open and they’ll lay all your gear outside. The next time, three or four months later, they’ll come again and they’ll break everything. They took all these turnips out, one time, and they put all the turnip tops back in. Of course, one day, the lad comes in: “What the hell’s the matter with them turnips?” He looked and he found there was nothing at the bottom.
John Smith: There was a woman in one of the houses, over here. She had getten up, for some reason, in the middle of the night. As she couldn’t sleep, she thought: “Oh, I’ll make meself a cup of tea...” And she seen a bloke digging potatoes out, with a light, in the middle of the night: pinched five rows of potatoes.
Dick Robson: We had one lad, used to break in and he’d leave a note: “Seek And Destroy.” He used to put a note down with a brick on it, in whatever garden he’d broken into. “Seek And Destroy.”
Tommy Tazey: Aye. “You have been visited by SAD.” You’d go: “Sad?” Then, all of a sudden, the next note we got was: “You don’t know who SAD is, but it means Seek And Destroy.”
Dick Robson: We’ve had break-ins where they’ve taken things. I had a camping gas burner and a bottle, that was taken. They’ve taken spades and tools, things like that.
Jim Breckons: There was the day The Hoe & Rake got done. We had this pub, when we did the home brew. The sign’s still there: The Hoe & Rake. We used to sit in there, it was like a bus, six seats on either side. Come in one night, there was five gallon bottled and ready to drink and five gallon on the brew and there wasn’t one drop left. Someone had pinched the bloody lot.
Dick Robson: We’ve got a shop. It started in here, but it wasn’t very satisfactory, because it wasn’t very secure. The council helped at that particular time. There was some training scheme, where they built these things out of really good timber. I went to ask if we could get one. They said we couldn’t have one, but they would fund the money if we needed any money and we could build one ourselves. So I told the lads and they decided to build one. We got a grant and we bought the bricks and then we found we needed more money, so we asked for another grant. We got three or four grants, altogether, and we built a hut that’s secure. It’s not only for the members. Members of the community can also use the shop. We sell peat, gro-bags, fertiliser - all kinds of fertiliser, paraffin, fish food, canes, seeds, phosphogen... All the things that's required on an allotment. There’s a rotavator you can hire...
John Smith: This hut we’re in now, all the allotment holders can use it. It’s there for them if they want it. A lot of them have got their own places now, where they make their own tea, this, that and the other. But it used to be, each man’d hoy fifty pence a time in, so we used to go round the abattoirs, come back: sausage, bacon, savouries, ham shanks... In the winter, there was always broth on, sausage sandwiches. You got a lot for your fifty pence a week. Well, it used to last them four days, that... We don’t do it now. People seem to be going individual. There’s a little bit of animosity creeps in...
Jim Breckons: Some wouldn’t pay their fifty pences.
John Smith: We still hoy money into the box, to make our tea, but we’ve more-or-less stopped the cooking.
Dick Robson: It’s the same crowd that comes in, like, but it’s there for anyone. I’ll be working down the garden and they come to the door and shout: “Tea’s up!” And I’ll come and get a cup of tea, so it’s ideal.
Tommy Tazey: We had dumplings and ham shanks. We used to bring loaves of bread and just dive in.
John Smith: (BRANDISHING A LARGE PAN) Well, we did cook very big ones, like...
Tommy Tazey: Then, we’d finish off with the home brew...
John Smith: We just used to gan and buy the ham shanks over at the abattoir at Gateshead. Somebody would hoy a couple of swedes in. Somebody would hoy carrots in. Owt.
Dick Robson: It was good stuff ’n’ all.
Jim Breckons: They were real rib-claggers...
NUNS MOOR
Incomers Like Myself: Liz Randell
I think it was in the late seventies, when food prices were going up and there was a particular surge of interest in allotments: people growing their own food again. I mean, there were always people here, for whom it was part of their culture, their way of life, but I’m talking about incomers, like myself.
I had a friend on these allotments, who said: “Oh, Liz, there’s a spare allotment going - you ought to have one.” I said: “Oh, I haven’t got time,” because I was working and I had young kids and all the rest of it. And she said: “Don’t be ridiculous. Now’s your chance.” And I thought: “Oh, yes. You’re right.” So I got my name put down.
I think I got my husband to put my name down. Now, why I thought he was going to get more joy, I really don't know. Perhaps I was just shy. Perhaps we thought we were going to do it jointly. Anyway, the fact is, he came along. They said: “OK, you’re on the waiting list.” Fine. Well, he came back about every two weeks or every week, even, to see if the list had moved up, and, after about six weeks, I think they must have realised that we meant business, because they said: “There's No. 19, you can have it now.” I think they were probably just testing us out.
Now, in fact, my husband and I argued a bit as to how to do the digging. Surprise, surprise. But within six or nine months, he had quite a bad back problem. It wasn’t actually caused by it, but I think the initial gardenings could have aggravated it. And of course, now, when they say: “Where's your man? Why doesn't he help you?” I can say: “Oh, he’s got a bad back.” I don’t say: “Well, we argued...”
My father was a very keen gardener and though I never helped him much at the time - my kids don’t help me - I think I was brought up with the atmosphere of being keen on gardening. My mother wasn’t, but my father was very keen on it. I’ve always been keen on outdoor activities – I’m not sporty, but I’m an outdoor leisure person - and I got into it straight away. I thought: “This is great!” and I dug away with the best will in the world.
I’ve had it about twelve, fourteen years. You wouldn’t think it to look at it. It’s always been the worst around. No. That’s not quite true. This year, I’m not quite as bad as some, though it mightn’t look too much to you at the moment. I caught a pheasant in that pile the other day: a cock pheasant came out as I came down. The partridges used to nip off the vegetable tops, but now it’s the rabbits that get the lot.
I just grow for the house. If I overgrow, then I give the neighbours some. There’s an old fellow, who is about to give up, because he’s quite old now, but he showed me how to dig, because there’s a technique in digging. I’m not sure I’m a very good pupil, but he came over and did a bit for me, one time. I’ve not been keen on people doing things for me really, number one, because I don’t like to feel that I can’t do it myself and number two, I don’t want them to feel: “Oh, she can’t do it. We’ve got to do it for her.”
Once I remember, there was a fellow over there and he saw me come down on a sunny day and he said: “Och! What have you come for? Have you come to sunbathe?” And I sort of stuck my nose in the air and said: “No! To work!” and stalked on. And then I thought, that’s not how you answer them back, you answer them back in the spirit in which it was intended. I learnt, if there’s a bit of back chat going on, you give as good as you get and you get on much better.
Within a short while, I had people coming along with their excess cabbages, excess leeks and this and that. I said: “Well, I haven’t got much to give back to you,” looking round at my untidy allotment. At first, I don’t think they understood why I didn’t make better progress. I don’t think they realised, not only was I a woman on my own, but I was a working woman with a family on my own.
I can’t do any of the maintenance work. I’m just hopeless with my hands, but some of the men are always messing on with their sheds. I think, possibly, they do it to get away from their wives. I wouldn’t like to say that, but I suspect they do, because they make jokes about doing it. I reckon it’s little lads who used to play with Meccano and building things, so they’re extending it into their later life: chop, saw, make and mend. And I’m glad they do, because there’s Billy over there, who’s repaired a lot of my greenhouse in the past.
I work here on the weekends and, in the summer, it’s straight away when you get in from work, say about twice a week, I’ll have an evening do. Now my work’s been reduced to part-time, so I hope I’ll be able to spend more - not that I wanted the job to be cut back.
A Quiet Little Allotment: Margaret Dryland
My father had a huge garden and many a lovely day I spent just lying in the grass, looking at the sky. One day, I was lying, looking up into the blue sky and I was thinking: “Heaven's just above there.” I gave myself such a fright. I was terrified to think that there was a heaven. I didn’t want to go to heaven.
Well, that’s how it started. I was always keen on digging and things like that. I learnt most of what I know about gardening from me father. He wouldn’t let us touch the garden, but we could stand and admire and just think about it. And I remember when me father had to give that garden up and the house - it was condemned - he got an allotment and I said I would come down and I would help him. Now, I was pregnant at the time. My husband was in the army. I was just digging things up galore: “Well, we don’t really need this...,” and out it would come. Me father didn’t say: “No, leave it, it’s good.” When I look back now, I feel so ashamed of myself.
When my husband got the allotment I sometimes used to go down with him, but he wouldn’t let me do anything. And yet I loved gardening. When we first came up here and got this house in 1948, I thought it was marvellous, putting lettuces in and things like that. It was really great, but I knew then, he didn’t want me in the garden. He must have thought gardening was heavy work and it’s for a man, not for a woman, because he used to say: “Oh, don’t bother to come in. I’ll do this.” I thought: “Well, that’s probably the way men are, and you cannot just go above them, can you?” And I thought: “Well, I’ve got enough to do in the house and I’ve got the children to see to, so if he wants to do the garden, let him get on with it.”
I used to go down to the allotment with him, but I’m a great reader: I can read anywhere, anytime. So I used to take a flask and everything and I would say: “Is there anything I can do? I could pull some weeds up...” And I could do everything he was doing, but I’m not going to shove me nose in where it’s not wanted. “No,” he says. “It's all right.” Yet, we used to go on fishing holidays and he was always saying: “Oh man, don’t sit reading. Come here: I’ve got umpteen rods. I’ll put a one in for you.” “No,” I says, “I don’t want to fish.” So at the finish, I said: “All right, give us a rod,” and as soon as I caught a fish I was hooked. I’ve never stopped loving fish after that. I would do anything that I wanted to do, but I didn’t want to do fishing until he practically made me.
When my husband died, he told me to give the allotment up. I said: “Yes, well...” And then I thought: “Why should I?” I wanted to get out of the house. I wanted to be quiet and on me own, so I went down to the allotment. Of course, it was covered with weeds, by that time, but I said to the secretary: “I think I'll just keep the allotment going.” I said: “It's terrible with the weeds, but I’ll just do me best.”
I think it’s something born in you really. You’ve got to have a feeling for nature. That’s definitely the way of it. It’s all right, a tough man saying: “I'll go and do an allotment,” but some of them can’t do it. They’ll say they’ve got a bad back. Rubbish. I’ve had a bad back for years and it's never stopped me. I keep saying: “My God, I’ll have to stop this,” but I’ll sit down and have a rest for five minutes. If you’re interested in anything, it’ll not stop you.
That was three year ago, come October, my husband died, but next year they take that garden off me, because they’re going to put a road over the Moor again. Another road. That Town Moor was a beautiful moor, but now everybody's getting chunks of it, just spiriting it away. That’s the way they do it.
I hadn’t been there very long when I found out. I just couldn't believe it. I thought: “No, that'll never happen...” So I went to a couple of chaps that are on the committee and I said: “Is it true?” They said: “Yes.” And I said: “But why should I lose mine?” He said: “Yours is going to be the one that's going to get covered in concrete.” I said: “What’s it for?” And it was coming from the Redheugh Bridge through the town. The first route was supposed to be where the golf course is, but they weren’t going to allow anybody to snatch a bit of their course, so it fell back on us.
They offered me another garden, but what a state it was in: you never saw anything like it in your life. It had some beautiful leeks and things, but they had never, ever tidied up the stones and I thought: “How the hell can I shift them? I'm only a woman on me own.” And there was a great water tank, you know. And it didn’t have the privacy. It’s a quiet little allotment, the one I’ve got. It’s lovely. I really like it. So I told them: “No.” I didn’t want the other one.
It’s funny. You see, when these things happen to me, I can curse and swear about it and then I’ll say: “Eee, well, you expected this, didn’t you...” and I’ll just laugh at meself for assuming why I should be singled out. No. I just get on with my life and you’ve got to be tough to face up to different things.
I know I’ll miss it.
BENWELL HOMING SOCIETY
Keeping Pigens: Paddy Riley & Margaret Jardine Paddy: We’ve had the pigeons here four year. We had them for a year at the house, in the back garden, when we started. We were going to fly them at West Benwell, but the council said we couldn't keep them, because one neighbour complained, so we got this allotment here.
Margy: That was how we come over here.
Paddy: Every year there’s somebody selling a place, because it’s getting so expensive - you buy the loft and rent the garden. The price of keeping pigeons, now, is getting ridiculous. This is the second lot we've put up. We put one up when we first got the place. It was nowt fantastic. We put this one up, the end of last year: built it at the house in sections and then brought it up here. Pulled the other place down completely. Burnt it.
(A PIGEON COMES IN)
Margy: Howay, pet. Howay, tuppence. Howay, sweetheart... The late ones turn out to be the best, because they’ve made their own way home: they haven’t followed the crowd. It’s getting expensive. Your club fees are really nothing in comparison, by the time you buy your food and your minerals, different vitamins and things that you give them. And with them being young birds, it’s running expensive for training, because your transporter’s only twice a week, but that’s not really enough. Young ’uns need to be trained more than twice a week to get them ready for the actual racing.
Paddy: We’ve only got two pigeons from what we started with five years ago.
Margy: You lose some, training.
Paddy: You kill what’s no good.
Margy: You can’t keep everything you breed. You just couldn’t afford to do that. The price of corn’s going up all the time.
Paddy: At the end of the year, you sort out what’s your best and the ones that’s no good, well, you just kill ’em. You can give them away, but you get a lot of trouble with them coming back. You’re better off, killing them. We killed all of ours two years ago, because we had disease amongst them. We spent about £300 on vet bills. Half the vets don’t even know nothing about pigeons.
Margy: They just say: “Oh, try this... £10. Try this... £12. Try this... £15.”
Paddy: I killed the whole team. Started afresh. I don’t know whether it was this garden, because the lad before had a lot of trouble. We lawned it first and that seemed to stop it for a while. It started going dodgy again: it must have seeped through again. So we flagged it and killed all the pigeons.
Margy: That was one of the reasons we tore the whole loft down. We said: “We’ll get rid of the loft and do it the way we want. All new timber, treated and everything, so you know there’s nothing in the wood.” Touch wood, they’ve been all right. The first year we were 12th top. I mean, fifty members: it was just unbelievable. The second year, we were joint 6th and it was the following year we had to kill all our team. It’s heart breaking.
Paddy: We had them away and I killed them all. I went over the pub and I come back and I sat here and I just cried me eyes out.
Margy: You get attached to them and it’s either in you or it isn’t. A lot of the lads, their wives go: “Oh, pigeons! Oh, that’s all they talk about.” And I go: “Well, so do I,” sort of style. Some of them’ll go: “Tsk! Oh God! Not her ’n’ all!” I think it’s great. I find it very relaxing. It’s not hard work if you do it regularly. You clean out, get everything ready; they come in, you can sit on the gantry and feed them, have a bit play. It sounds silly, but you can have a bit play with the pigeons, you know. You get some that are very spirited, that like a bit play. You get attached to them. They’re like part of the family at the finish. You get to know them individually.
Paddy: When I’m at work, I’m here about six o’clock in the morning, half past six, put them out and I’m back home, wake you up. She comes back before she goes to work, because you start at half past nine. What’s left out, she gets them back in again.
Margy: I finish work and get them out again.
Paddy: It could be a full time job. There’s quite a few here, they’re not working and they just spend the whole day here. Some of them are here at five o’clock. Mostly the ones that’s working have to be here sharp in the morning.
Margy: It’s a full time hobby. The way I look at it is: you’ve done the work to send them but they’ve done the work to come home. You should be here for them, whether they’ve won or they haven’t, whether they’ve scored or they haven’t. If you score, it’s great. If you win, you’re just elated for about quarter of an hour and then you’re thinking: “Right, what are we going to do next week?” You win, right, you go in the pub and they all say: “Oh, well done! Oh, great!” And it’s the topic of conversation for then. Sunday morning, it’s not. It’s finished. That’s gone. You’re looking forward to the next Saturday after that. We’re a small community: all pals together, sort of style. We have our disagreements, like everybody. We wind each other up, we have a laugh, we have a joke, but we’re all friends together.
Paddy: One of the lads’ pigeon loft got burnt down. Somebody set fire to it. Totally demolished the place.
Margy: Everybody was just gutted. All his pigeons were in the loft, sitting young ’uns. Everybody was gutted. The lads were saying to me: “Ee, Margy, don’t go up there, Margy. If you go up there, it’ll break your heart.” The pigeons were protecting their young. And the plastic pans: they were melted into the pans. They try to protect their young, you know. “Oh,” I says, “no!” I couldn’t go up for that. That would have totally just... I wouldn’t even look at it. Everybody was gutted. It was a terrible thing to do.
Paddy: I went up and put a loft up for him. A lot of the lads bred him pigeons and everything. There was a hundred and eighteen he had. He’s got about forty five young ’uns now. If anything like that happened here, I think I’d just chuck it.
Margy: I wouldn’t... When I first came on the gardens it was, more or less, well, Paddy’s pigeons and Margy. But then, that year when I took over with the young ’uns, I was looking after them totally on me own and I was scoring with them, then I felt I had become a pigeon man, because they were coming down, saying: “You flew a good pigeon this week, Margy.” Because they knew he wasn’t here and I had done it all meself. And then the wind-up was: “You get him out. You fly a better pigeon than he does.” Then I felt that they had accepted us as knowing what I’m doing, basically, whereas before, I was just here with Paddy, sort of style. When we started, he just put a loft in the back garden and he said: “What do you think, if we start with the pigeons?” I thought: “Why not? I’ll have a go.” Well, the first time I was in the back garden and he said to me: “You’ll have to shout these in...” I felt stupid. Standing on the gantry, looking up at the sky, shouting: “Come on.” Stupid. The next one in, I was howling and Billy was killing hisself laughing at us. But then you get used to it.
Paddy: I was in hospital. Was it not when I had peritonitis?
Margy: He had a burst appendix and went into hospital and I took over. He was really bad. He said to me: “Well, you’d better score this week.” I said to him: “Don't be silly. I’ll not score this week, but I will next week.” He said: “How's that?” I said: “Well, they’re used to us, but they’re not used to me basketing them all the time.” So away they went the first week. Nothing. So the second week, where was I? 6th, 9th and me third pigeon took the 2nd Noms. Well, you would have thought I had won the race. I was jumping up and down on the gantry: “I've done it! I’ve showed youse! I can do it!”
Paddy: And that’s when I started getting the mickey taken out of us.
Margy: I would like one full year. I don’t mean one full season. One full year, breeding and everything; for him to just say: “Right, you either do it or you don’t. If you don’t, you keep your mouth shut and I’m the boss. If you do, well, I’ll sort of give you equal ways.” I would like to do that for me own satisfaction; to see if that was just a flash in the pan, or if I really did get it right. After this season, I would like to breed them the way I want to breed them and do what I want to do with them, because Paddy would say, I basically only know what he’s told us. But I still have variations, meself. He does things that I wouldn’t do. We still have different ideas.
Paddy: She’s trying to buy us out. Or kick us out. (LAUGHTER) What about the time I gave you the small loft on your own? (MORE LAUGHTER)
Margy: He built us a small loft here, right, with eight squares: nest boxes. So I had sixteen pigeons. So I’m in the big loft and I’m saying: “I want that one and I want that one and I want that one.” “What do you want that nugget for?” I go: “Never you mind. I want that one.” “Ye can have that ‘un!” “I want that one.” He says: “What d'you want...?” “I'm having it. No. You’re not keeping all the best for yourself. I’m having my choice. Right? And I’m going to fly against you in the same garden.” So I got me pigeons here and I’m doing everything for them, all me own way. Everything. Well, they’re coming back and I’m going: “Here’s one of mine! Where’s your skemmies?” So every week I'm going: “Here’s one! Oh, howay pet, come on...” He said: “Oh, I’ve had enough of this.” You know what he done? Put them all back in the big loft and pulled mine down. (LAUGHTER) “I don’t think this is working,” he said, “having them split.”
Paddy: When we go to sales and that, when we go to buy pigeons, she maybe always picks the one we get the most from. Nine times out of ten.
Margy: I like to look at them. Don’t ask me what I’m looking for. It’s just something in the pigeon that says: “I’m all right,” sort of style. I can’t explain it properly. You look at it and you say: “Aye. I really fancy that pigeon.” Every time we go to sales and I say: “That’s a smashing pigeon, that, I'm telling you, it's a good pigeon, that,” it’s always the one that takes the most money. You go up to fifty and you think: “Oh, I’ve had it now. There’s no way I can go any further.” There was one the other week and I’ve got to be perfectly frank, it was the best young ’un I've ever seen. Ever. It was beautiful. It was a real corker. We went up to about fifty five and it went for about a hundred and two, a hundred and ten. The lad next door bought it.
Paddy: Remember that time we bought the Pick of the Loft.. .
Margy: We once bought one: Pick of the Loft. I went mad. I said: “Never buy a pigeon unless you can see it.” We went over, the man said: “Go on, son. There’s me young ’uns.” Paddy says: “Oh no. Our lass looks after them. She’ll have the pick.” “Well,” he said: “You can have everyone but me Nom pigeon.” He must have thought: “Oh! Nugget!” I said: “I’ll have that ’un, there.” He said: “What?” He looked at Paddy and went: “Ah tellt you, you couldn’t have me Nom pigeon, didn’t ah!” He said: “You can have anything else, but you can’t have that one.” So I said: “Oh well, fair enough.” So I’m looking and I’m thinking: “There’s nothing really catches me eye,” and I got me eye on this one in the corner, so I said: “Right, I’ll have that one, then.” He says: “Oh...” I says: “I’ll have that one in the corner. The one with its arse stuck up.” So he said: “All right.” I thought: “He doesn’t want to give us this one, either.” He’s standing talking to Paddy and I’m talking to his loft manager. So we come away and Paddy’s laughing. This man didn’t really speak to me at all, did he? It was: a woman was a total no-no. The sort of vibes I got, was: “What does she know?” When we’d come away, he had said to Paddy: “Oh, your lass has got a good eye, like, hasn’t she?” He says: “That one she’s picked is the same way bred as me Nom pigeon.” Paddy says: “She’s usually pretty good at picking them.”
COXLODGE
Leeks, Chrysanthemums and Begonias: Fred Lee
I started them off the beginning of December. They’re a little bit difficult to get away in December because you’ve got to keep the temperature 60° in the greenhouse. It takes a bit of controlling in that time of year ’cause you’re getting frost and snow, cold and wind and that. I just pot them on and pot them on, till I plant them out. I grow them under cover all the time. I water them and I feed them once a week. I feed them with Chempak 2 up till about the end of June, then change over to Chempak 8. Now Chempak 2 is a high nitrogen fertiliser; Chempak 8 is a high potash fertiliser. At the end of June, I’ll look at me plants and I’ll know whether they want this Chempak 8 or they want another feed of Chempak 2. I just go by me eye and me feel and that’s what I’ll do. Sometimes they don’t get nothing after that: I’m happy with the way me plants are growing.
Starting from the first week in July or the last week in June, I’ll pick one leek and I’ll measure that every week. Now, an average a leek will grow half an inch a week, so if that leek is growing half an inch a week, I’ll know the rest are growing and I never look at the rest until six weeks before the show. As long as my leeks are about six or seven inches the first week in July, I’m quite happy. I know I’ll show good leeks.
Six weeks before the show, I’ll just wrap a cloth around them and get a nice blanch on them and that’s all I do. Come show day I dig them up, fetch them down here and wash them with the hose pipe and me heart’s beating like a drum. That’s when the adrenalin starts to flow, because everybody’s got big leeks. Everybody’s got big leeks: “Oh, mine’s fourteen inches around!” “Mine’s twelve inches around!” You say: “Wait till the day of the show...” All the talk, they put the frighteners on you.
I just show them locally. I do six shows. I grow seventy five leeks. Fifty leeks would do, but I’ve got space for seventy five, so I put seventy five in. If I’ve got any to spare, then an open show comes along, if I think they’re good enough, then I’ll put them in, but me club shows come first. My big rival, he had a shirt printed up, No. 1 Leek Grower, and he’d wear it to the club. Then I started winning. Well, I won it the one year and the lads started saying: “You’ll have to give that shirt to Fred.” He’d sort of go: “Hmmmmh...” Well, I won it again and at the presentations, he came up and he officially presented me with the shirt. That’s the kind of lads they are.
Tom Cherry
Most of the stuff I grow is for show. I show at all the chrysanths. I show dahlias from home. I grow parsnips, carrots, blanched leeks. I don’t grow for the house, like. Just a few cabbages to fill the place out. If it was me, I’d get rid of the lot. Cover it, you know. That covered area is half the size it used to be, but I’ve got arthritis, so there’s not much I can do. It’s getting worse for us, harder, so I cut down. This whole allotment’s not mine. I share it. I’ve taken this part over, but if I’d been all right and if it had been me, I would have covered the lot over. I would have had three or four hundred chrysanths instead of a hundred and thirty.
With leeks, you just stick them in, give them a drink of water and that’s it like. Once they’re in, they’re in. People tell you there’s more to it, but there’s not. I’ve won a canny few shows with the leeks, but I like the chrysanths. Well, I mean, they’re a better looking plant, you have to say. It’s harder. There’s more to do. I can get in under the covers in the summer and I can spend hours in there. It totally relaxes you. I can come up here with a lot of worries, at times, the wife's bad, ill, ye knaa, and you can switch off. It makes all the difference in the world.
I’m in the Northumberland and Durham Chrysanthemum and Dahlia Society. I go to their meetings. I get catalogues. The Society keeps you in touch with a lot. We have meetings once a month. Last year, I went down to Walker’s of Chester, seen what they have. People keep you in touch with new introductions. If you’re lucky, some sport for you. It’s never happened to me, like. Ian Richardson, a local lad, he had one from a variety called Dynasty, which is a dark red, and it sported like a cherry. He took the stock down to Riley’s and they can take a million plants off one of them. They’ve introduced it for him. They call it Cherry Dynasty and it’s a good 'un.
I just like chrysanths. I think they’re a better flower. A dahlia man won’t say that, though. I’m not very good at the dressing of them. I don’t like it actually. Some of the blokes, they’re married and their wives are interested and you find a lot of the wives do the dressing. Some of the blokes are good at it. Fred used to be an excellent dresser. I don’t like it. Probably ’cause I’m no good at it. Some varieties and it’s ten minutes, half an hour’s work, dressing them. Some of them you can dress at home and take them to the show and they’ll not mark up, but some of them’s that soft, when you touch the petals you mark them. You’ve got to do it just before the judges. But it’s a bonus if you can do something at the show.
Harry Carr
I like flowers. I’d rather have flowers than anything, but I do everything else, mind. The wife’ll not buy greens or owt like that, because I always grow plenty of them, but preferably flowers, aye: chrysanths, carnations, asters, hanging baskets, as I say. I’ve improved a bit since I started. A little bit. Not a lot. I find it very pleasing. I do so much a day and that’s it. I just potter around. If I fancy sitting, I sit.
I treat it as a hobby. It’s a relaxation, put it that way. It’s a challenge to grow from seed and different cuttings, things like that. It’s rewarding. It’s pleasing when you see it all bloom. But I still take me holidays. Preferably after the season’s over, mebbes end of September, October, but I’ve got to have a break. Then it all starts again, when I come back: taking my chrysanths out, taking the cuttings in January, February. You tease them on to get the best results the next year. I’ve got any amount of work. I never stop. I have three or four hours a day up here. At least. Depending on the weather. But in winter, summer I never miss a day, ye knaa. I’m up every morning.
I’ll be honest with you, I think chrysanths take a bit of beating. I used to grow dahlias, but I found they had no smell. They’ve just got no bloom. They didn’t last as long as chrysanths, anyway. I just find that they’re a bonnier flower. You try to do something nice, ye knaa. Since I became invalided, I’ve got to take me time with what I do, but I still grow about seven, eight hundred blooms: that’s about two hundred plant seedlings.
They originated in the Himalayas. It was the Chinese domesticated them, so really they’re a Chinese flower. I can understand the Chinese doing it. It’s my favourite flower. It’s not the wife’s. She’d rather have the smaller ones, but I like them. I’ve got an affection for Winnie Bramley. There must be thousands of named chrysanths, but I've got an affection for Winnie Bramley. Not many people show them. Yellow in-curves might look all the same to you, but they’re not.
You’ve got to have a lot of patience with chrysanths. Now, dressing: Fred, he’s a dresser. Fred can have worse chrysanths than me in the garden, but when he’s finished with them on the day... I mean, he’s bloody ridiculous, man. Fred is a good chrysanth grower, but I’ve seen him sit for hours combing the petals in, getting the little ones out that have gone off. When they’re finished, man... He should have been a hairdresser, Fred. He’s got the patience of Job, man. He’s the top man. He could dress a woman and make a success of it.
Fred Lee
In 1941, when the allotments were put on the Leazes Moor for Dig For Victory, I was on there with me mother, helping me mother and a photographer came and took me photograph turning the ground over. I think the interest stemmed from there, because when I came out of the forces, I got married, I wanted a house with a garden. It was 1951 I got married. I had an allotment in 1958 and I had it till 1978. I went into the nursery business and it didn’t come out, didn’t work out for us, so I left in 1980 and I took this allotment over in 1980 and I’ve been here ever since.
With the chrysanths I used to go all over the country to the shows: London, Harrogate, Stockton. I won the Northern Championship at Harrogate. You go to a chrysanth and dahlia show, it’s a wonderful sight. So’s the begonias, so’s the gladioli. When you go to a gladioli show: beautiful colours. When you grow something to that standard, I think you’ve achieved something.
The wife plays hell. She says: “The garden’s an obsession with you.” Well, I say: “Right. I’ll give the garden up. I’ll go to the club and then I’ll go to the betting shop. I’ll come home drunk and I’ll throw me dinner at the back of the fire.” She says: “Gan over the garden.” The wife has a niggle, but I know where I’d rather be.
Chrysanths are very time-consuming. Leeks you grow them at home for about five or six months, then you come up here and you plant them out. Once you’ve got them planted out, you can sort of say: “Right, that's it.” You can sort of neglect them a bit. Same with begonias. Begonias can live on a little bit of neglect, but chrysanths...
Then, there’s dressing them. The petals have got to be straight: no crossing this way or that way, you’ve got to get the petals straight. Any holes, you’ve got to make them up so it’s just like a picture. A nice quality. Sometimes, when you cut chrysanths, you get holes, you get bad petals: you’ve got to hook them out, fill the gap in. There’s a petal turned the wrong way. You’ve got to get your centre: do a nice circle in the centre, so you’ve got to dress your petals back. I used to love that. I used to stop up all night dressing flowers on a Friday night for a Saturday.
Begonias don’t take any dressing, but you start looking for easier ways. 1957, I started chrysanths and I’d just got a few begonias going. Now they’ve taken over where the chrysanths has left off. When you cannot grow chrysanths anymore, you grow something else and I just carried on with the begonias. I haven’t got the time, you see. Me son’s mentally handicapped and me daughter’s in bed with multiple sclerosis. I’m lucky to come down here an hour a day and I’ve got to wait till everything’s right. When the wife says: “OK, I can manage now,” I’ve got to come up here and do the best I can.
So I just grow leeks and begonias. Leeks is local, but with the begonias it’s all just a little bit more different. I go up to Ayr. It’s one of the best flower shows in the country at Ayr. You’re competing against Scotsmen and if you win up there, then you’ve done something. The way we are with leeks down here, they are with begonias up there. That’s their thing. To take their thing back to them, just like taking coals to Newcastle, to take the begonias up to Scotland and then win with them, you’ve done something and that’s what I like about that.
They’ve started away and they’re looking nice and that, and I’m just waiting for August to come till I see the flowers.
NEWBURN
A Little Bit Kingdom: Tony Scott
Any depressions that you might have, they just physically go within minutes of you getting down here and sitting down. I think you’re just away from the home environment - not that we don’t get on at home, but it’s a fact that it’s nice to be able to come away, if you want to come away, and have your own little bit kingdom. This is my little bit kingdom.
I’ve got me cooker, that’s a calor gas fridge there, a sink unit, TV and I’ve got me stereo system under there. I don’t use the turntable because of the dust and that, but it plays the tapes great. They’re all things that I’ve picked up for nothing. The lights is in. I’ve got a generator, which I run my garden off and I run the lad’s next door off, as well. I’ve run a cable right down the bottom to Ray Blackburn’s garden, for a water pump for him, because he’s got plenty of water in his garden, but he’s got to hump it from the bottom up to the top.
I’ve got a massive well under here, beneath this, which is a trap door. It holds something like two thousand gallon of water. I’m fairly handy. I work for the gas board. I’m a service technician: in that sort of work, you pick up a lot of crafts. But all this has cost basically nothing for to build. It’s all scrap timber and bits of glass that I’ve picked up. I probably spend more time down here, than what I do in the house, if the truth were known, especially over the last fifteen weeks, because I’ve been on the sick. I’m waiting to go into hospital. I’ve got a blocked, or a semi-blocked artery in the neck and it’s giving me blackouts. So I’m down here all the time. And the kids are down here: soon as they finish school, they’re straight down here, that sort of thing. They divvent bother going home. They have their teas here. They’re here till sometimes ten o’clock at night, especially when they’re off school.
When you finish work, you like to relax. There’s nothing worse than sitting and the telephone goes. You’re up and down off your seat all the time. Here, you can do a little bit of enjoyment, you can do a little bit of weeding, planting, anything you wish. Come back and sit in here, five minutes, pot of tea, everything disappears. The kids are the same. There’s always something for them to do: clean the hen run, doing the chickens, collecting the eggs, doing the weeding...
I get five, six, seven, eight, ten kids down here on a Sunday. They all get involved. If I say: “Right, I want that patch weeding,” there’ll be five or six of them actually in amongst the cabbages, pulling the weeds. They know exactly where to put them. If I tell them to put them on the heap, they put them on there: the likes of nettles, thistles, that sort of thing. They’ve all got their gloves down here. But if it’s chickweed, they automatically just take it into the run for the hens.
It teaches the kids a lot. It teaches them self-respect, how to use tools, machinery, that sort of thing, because I do teach them. I wouldn’t just leave them to get on with it. It also lets them see things that they would never see: frogs, newts, diseases in your garden and stuff, potato blight. They do pick up that kind of thing. My leek was bending over the other day and the laddie, it’s only what he’s picked up and what he’s heard off different people: “Is that that botrytis or that rot stuff, fusarium rot?” And he has got it. When a kid takes an interest in something like that, there’s always something you can build on. To me, there is, anyway.
Black Reds and Tumblers: Jimmy Ashworth
I’ve always had poultry since I was a kid. I just started off with banties, pigeons... They were mostly just strays, what I had then, pigeons I got off other people, but I was seven year old when I first had pigeons.
Me friend had game birds at Newburn, and that’s where I mostly got interested: when I saw his. I started going to poultry shows, and I bought a few from the different shows. They’re not popular, because they don’t lay a lot of eggs. Most of the lads have got hybrid hens, that teem eggs for the house, but these game birds, Old English game birds, they just lay January, February, March and that’s about it. Then they divvent lay until the next year. But I wasn’t really bothered about the eggs.
They’re not like other breeds of poultry: you’ve got to keep the cocks all separated, otherwise they start fighting. They’ll fight to the death. That’s what they’re bred for, for cockfighting. When they made cockfighting illegal, people decided to show them. I wouldn’t say it was their aggression that interested me, but they’re proud birds, you know, the way they stand. It’s mostly their character.
You can get Black Reds, Brown Reds, the Pile, Spangle, Greys, there’s Famous Game, there’s Polecat and all different colours, but I kept Black Reds, mostly. With being unemployed, I was there all the time. Well, you have to gan every day. A lot of people get them and they just feed them once a week, but I was there every day. I was the only one they ever seen. They used to come for me, but if a stranger came in, they’d be all over the place.
I bought a cockerel and seven hens once - they weren’t game hens, they were just normal brown hens, at a sale in Acklington and the lad I bought them off came from Newbiggin. He tellt us, he says: “The only reason I’m selling them for, son,” he says, “is ’cause the cockerel hates women. Me wife’s petrified to gan in the hut of a morning to collect the eggs, ’cause the cockerel gans for her.” I says: “Oh...” I thought it was just a bit nonsense to get rid of them on to me. So I bought them off him, like. Well, the cockerel never bothered me. It wouldn’t attack blokes, but as soon as it saw the wife, pssshhhht! It ran straight for her. It’s true that.
I went down to the Great Yorkshire Show at Harrogate - I wasn’t competing there, me mate was competing - Stanhope, Wolsingham, Egglestone and Durham Show. We just used to share the petrol money. If you won, you only used to win fifty pence. You got a rosette, a card rosette...
But I’ve given up the allotment now. We had a flat when we lived at Newburn and it was handy for it. But since we got the house up here in Throckley, the garden here: have you seen the size of it? It’s like an allotment. I would bring some game birds up or get some more, but it’s the noise of the cockerels crowing. Once they start crowing of a morning, that’s it.
I’ve got pigeons now. Tumblers. I’ve only had them about six weeks. It’s twenty three years since I’ve had pigeons. Once I get them hanted to the hut, used to it, so they’ll come back to it, I’ll start flying them. I let them out and I was on all day Saturday and Sunday catching them. I had to gan right across the road: I had made a trap to get them back off this old woman’s roof, they wouldn’t come back here. I was on two days catching them. People thought I was daft.
When they’re flying, they gan up and all of a sudden, they do like a somersault in mid air. If they’d been hanted, I would have let them out and you could have seen them, but I daresn’t.
Time and Water: Ken Robinson
I’ve sat here in the dark, with just a little light from a car battery, and I’ve watched the leeks, the leaves coming out of the centre and curling. On the plants, I’ve actually watched the bud in the axil start to grow out of the plant. It’s a marvellous thing. If you just sit nice and quiet, because they’re very sensitive, you can see.
Take like today: sunshine and the leeks droop. Now at night time, you sit here and as soon as the sun goes off and it starts to get a bit cooler, you can see the movement on the leaves of the leeks. You can see them jerking up to where they want to be. And if you just sit patiently, like I do down here for hours - many a time it’s half past eleven, twelve o’clock at night when I’m going off home - you see them starting to twist after they’ve straightened themselves up. You can actually see them grow. It’s fantastic. I’ve watched seeds breaking through the soil, then a little flip and the two main leaves that's coming up have opened up. All in the dark. That’s why I stay down as long. It’s more interesting during the dark than it is in the daylight for me, like.
It’s a fascinating thing to watch leeks, to watch them grow. They’ve got a leaf that's down like that, all dropped down, and all of a sudden, it’s to see them coming. They’re jerking up and they’re starting to twist. They twist all the way down in the dark and as soon as the light comes back at them, they just flop back over again.
I’ve been down here now for forty years, gone 31st March. When I first came down here, these gardens were derelict. There was nothing. There was six gardens taken. The whole lot was just a shambles. Brambles, elders, sycamore trees, elderberry trees: you name it, it was in there. We were waterlogged. There was no paths. The gateway was there, but it was overgrown. There was no fencing at all. When I came to live in this area, I went down to the council, they just said: “Well, the gardens are along there, take your pick.” There was an old fellow down here called Bob Scott. He’s dead now, like. Him and I got together after two years. In those days, there was no paths across. You had to come through the gate and all the way up other people’s gardens to get through. I thought: “Well, people aren’t happy with this. We've got to make something.” And this old fellow and I, we started and it took us three and a half month to cut all these hedges back. When it rained, you were walking on top of hedges; if it snowed, well, you’d just had it.
The pig man was on here then and he used to keep just a track in. He used to clip the hedge back just enough to stop it scratching his van. There was no water: he was having to bring it down. We got our heads together and we traced the springs. There’s springs all over the place in here. The pig man and I put a feed in from the middle of that bank up there and piped it from a big spring. It was just cascading down. We took it away, brought it down to the side down there, in the corner of that garden. Everybody’s got a well. The water runs in and fills his, then the overflow comes into the next one, then into the next one and all the way down. So that’s how you’ve got the water system: plastic pipes run along the bottom.
Like I say, during that time, the water was in abundance. Some of the gardens, you stood on, you went in up to your chin. You sank straight down into water, there was that much of it. But gradually, as the gardens got up, more people came in. It filled up and it filled up and it filled up. And as the years have gone, this land has sunk drastically, as well. Believe it nor not, it used to be level. You can see the situation of how it is now.
These gardens up here used to be the dry ones. Them ones were waterlogged, but they’ve all dried up now, because the water’s not there. Five or six year ago, there was an abundance of water. There’s one garden at the bottom, you cannot grow rice on it, there’s that much water. You walk down there in the middle of summer, when it’s red hot, you need wellies, because the water comes over the top of your shoes. And they still try and let these gardens at the full price, you know. Now with the weather the way it’s been, the well’s just trickling in. I’ve got more sweat on the top of me brow than I’ve got water coming off that. If it hadn’t been that I’d collected water in the rain barrels, I’d be carrying water. I have to put it in the car and bring it by barrel. It’s going to happen shortly for these leeks. As soon as I put these leeks in the trenches, I’m going to have to start and bring water down by car.