1st February

Last week as you would have noticed, the leeks were cut at the bottom rather than just the roots cut off as they should be.

But after a wee bit of warmer weather and rain then the temperature dropped back into minus weather again, the ground had frozen solid.

We then couldn’t pull the leeks out of the ground.

So Erin and Calum’s School work and my teacher work had a day of  YE HA. Work had to be done.

Normally when we are struggling to pull the leeks out of frozen ground, I put a machine on the tractor, this machine has a huge blade that goes under the leeks and loosens the soil, sometimes it leaves a clump of frozen soil round the base of the leeks, but we can then chap that of with a hammer, then dress the leek.

But last week, we were left with around a foot and a half of frozen soil around the leek, so when we tried to hammer of the soil, the leek just snapped.

So we eventually gave up and had to just cut the base of the leek at soil hight, which does mean we lose a wee bit of the bottom, and also, they are a winter variety called winter bandit, and they usually don’t grow that tall anyway, but they can stand very cold weather.

We have about another month of leeks left for harvesting, then they will be done for the year, so hopefully, we can start hand pulling them by hand again and have a nicer looking leek.

Our leek season has lasted almost two months longer than other organic growers this year, and the reason we know that is everyone is phoning us for leeks.

Even the huge organic producers down south have ran out, so we are treating them like gold dust, and not very happy and having to cut them rather than pulling them.

This week’s weather forecast is for a big freeze again, so it’s looking like unfortunately they will need to be cut again rather than pulled.