After a sunny Christmas Day, a five mile walk through Bolnhurst towards Bushmead and back through the village of Colmworth and a late lunch with our friend who had driven up from London with a van fulll of wooden pallets ( a marvellous gift for Jeremy) we set to work, last night, unpacking some of the boxes in the garage.
Today, with the sun shining again, it was time for Jeremy to start serious work in the poly tunnel. The bulbs we had planted in pots in August and September were beginning to push their shoots through the earth. We planted 30 strawberry plants in a builders sack rescued from the rubble after the shale had been laid around the new drains. And Jeremy put up netting agains one side of the tunnel against which, he hopes, the mange tout will grow and climb and cling.
Tonight we will eat black turnips( peeled and boiled and mashed with butter, salt and pepper), home grown lettuce salad and mustard spinach. All these were planted within a month of our arrival and have thrived and grown in the soft, rich bedfordshire soil.
Bon appetit!
gfreedmanblog 
Wow true people of the soil. You are not both earth signs are you…?
Look forward to seeing all this miraculous growth on Sunday.
I am still green with envy that you could harvest crops so soon – and eat them! I am reduced to two raised borders for vegetables which are filled with ? sub-soil donated by a local builder. Three years of digging in horse manure from the pastures around Canford Heath have not done much. But Alys Fowler suggests layers of cardboard with seaweed to improve fertility. When it stops raining I might try that.