10th February

 Last week I got the final part of the clear up job on the tunnels that were ripped in the storms.

And it was the worst job.

Cutting all the polythene of and clearing it away is pretty easy.

But the cosy tunnels polythene is held down with ropes.

There are seventy-four legs on each side of the tunnel.

These legs are around 2.5 feet in length and have a screw end which gets screwed into the ground, and the tunnel hoops slip over the top, and just below that there are hooks which is where the ropes get tied around.

In total there is eight hundred meters of rope, which hold the polythene onto the tunnel hoops.

And when the polythene has been ripped off, some of the ropes break, the rope has a breaking strength of one tonne, so it shows how strong the wind was.

So, the tricky part is, there is eight hundred meters of rope, tangled and twisted everywhere like spaghetti, and to make matters worse it has to be untied from one hundred and forty-eight legs.

It is not very easy and a wee bit frustrating to say the least.

But with that job done, there was another pressing job, irrigation.

We still have four tunnels with polythene still on.

One has spring cabbage, which is looking great, one has some kohl Rabi and Mooli Radishes.

The other two are empty, but we have spinach, Rubi chard and spring onions in a wee propagation tunnel and they are looking great and will need planted soon.

But we also need to start thinking about blocking the Leeks and Onion seeds, we always start them in February.

The irrigation took a beating with the storm and was smashed to pieces in places.

And I will be needing water pretty soon.

After another day of cutting and gluing irrigation pipes, I eventually got the irrigation back to looking like it should do, to the tunnels we need to get into first.

Two tunnels that took a fairly good battering will need almost all of the irrigation lines re done, each tunnel has two lines of 50 meters, and at least 100 meters will need fully replaced.

I’m not desperate to re sheet the tunnels just yet, it is better if we get a bit of heat in the sun, as it helps stretch the polythene, making it tight.

In a good spell of calm warm weather, Rab and I can re sheet two 50-meter tunnels in one day, so that part is the easy part.