The Book of the Barracks

Is going to be published by Dorling Kindersley on the 22nd April, Earth Day, 2027. Here are some links:

This week was all about starting the preparations for winter. Pre-preparing if you will. All jobs are better if you plan for them, including planning for them. Conserving and preserving food for the next 12 months needs a lot of jars and pots and bottles and crocks to put them all in. Before they can be cleaned, they need to be found. Most of what I do at The Barracks is moving things from one place to another, it’s only the size of the things which changes. King Bert.

Because I don’t have enough to do, I have started writing Volume 2 of The Book. No-one has asked me to, but I have told everyone that I have spoken to at the publishers that I am doing it, and none of them has tried particularly hard to discourage me. they used to say I couldn’t be trusted to grow grapes… There is plenty that I wanted to cram into Vol 1, but the number of pages and the format of the tome was decided way before I was ever asked me to sign anything.

Good morning to you all dear pirates. I’m sitting here, far too early in the morning, listening to the World Service as the number of dead and missing in Nepal and Tibet continues to rise and I’m wondering to myself, and so by extension with you, is this still too remote, too distant, too foreign for it to have any meaning closer to home? Is there anything that could happen anywhere in the world that would be bad enough that it might actually cause us to effect change in our own lives?

Honestly? This week coming up is intimidating me slightly. There’s not much that stops me bring productive as having way too much to do. I need a plan. A big plan with lots of jobs in it. Let’s have a look at things. when they were young and sweet and smol In the pumpkin patch (which hasn’t had pumpkins in it for a while), I want to sow winter rapeseed. I have some very high quality seed, which I got cheap from a farmer. The bad thing about it is, it is two years old.

Although a big part of this whole experiment that I’ve got going on here is to growing all our own food, I don’t think I actually talk about growing food all that much. So I thought for today, we could do a bit of a roundup of the state of the gardens, where we are and what to think about for next time around. Butternut squash on the way So here we go, a whistle stop tour of the BOG (Bits Of the Garden) I tried a whole bunch of new potato varieties this year.

Being a grandparent is the greatest thing. I was kinda young when I became a dad for the first time, and was, to be honest, still pretty young two years later1 for the second time. You’re young, your idealistic, not quite as wise as you think you might be, and kids are a lot of work. Mostly, they eat constantly. You can’t haggle them out of a meal because you have other things to do like you can do with your own body. That’s ok, I like cooking. The washing up that it generates though - oh my.

I seem to be reading three books at the same time this week. This is not a thing that I often do, but it has lead me to a startling realisation about why I have so many damn books. It is partly because I left the barracks at least twice this week and mostly because I am forgetful. Or disorganised. These lettuces, going rampantly to seed, are probably 5th generation Barracks lettuce. Every year, I let a few of them mature in the greenhouse.

This week’s Daft Punk climate headline (harder, better, faster, stronger), - Bananas in Essex! Local banana fan surprised by his collection of 200 banana plants suddenly flowering and producing fruits. Here be bananas. The ground is still just rocks. There is a reason why the variety of banana that Eric grows1 is not a thing you have heard of - the Musa Basjoo - and that would be that they are totally inedible. It’s the Cavendish that we know from the supermarket, but still, props to Bananaman.

It’s ridiculously early, and I have a cup of tea. I’ve been watching the night for a while, and admiring the silence. It feels more relaxing than sleep, sitting here, watching bats all whirling and dancing outside the window, having a final feast on morning twilight insects before their high speed docking return and to the eaves to hang around away from the heat of the day.