In the office, next to the slogan about pigs being ready to fly, David's brother Julian has pinned up a picture of David holding a huge, ugly, ruddy coloured carp. The fish weighs thirty-four and a quarter pounds and it dwarfs David, who is kneeling down on one knee, holding the giant scaly beast towards the camera. David caught the monster on his week's fishing holiday to France. He'd gone there with Julian in 2005 and reckons he caught the same fish then also. 'A great way of making money,' he said. 'They cost about £ 500 but they get caught over and over.' It is the end of the second week of June and it's hot: 80°F and more by midday. The heavy rains of May seem like a distant memory. From the office where we're sitting, I can hear the thwack-thwack of the sprinkler systems as they pump water across the rows of carrots and beans. So far this morning, I've eaten a handful of small snap peas, a tender broad bean, its flavour sharp yet delicate, a couple of indoor flat climbing beans which are big enough to sell at £4.50 a kilo, a juicy spring onion and a stilltoo-thin though delicious carrot which is a week or so away from being ready to harvest. Fat-Boy has shown great interest in the proceedings, especially in the carrots: he loves all vegetables except for onions, garlic and cucumbers, and carrots are one of his favourites. I pull one for him and he chews it enthusiastically, thumping his shiny black tail on the baked earth before carefully dropping the spidery green leaves on to the ground. In a week, they'll be ready to sell, along with the beans and the peas, the turnips and beets. In the polytunnels, the tomatoes hang heavy and green, needing only days more sunshine to ripen them into delicious redness. Dark green cucumbers hang down under their big, ungainly leaves. Minute peppers are beginning to show beneath the foliage. The straggly leaves of the garlic plants have grown to two feet and the bulbs beneath the soil are swelling and ripening. Safe from slugs in boxes on top of straw bales, the strawberries are beginning to change from white to pink; soon, like the tomatoes, the sun will bring on the rich colour and the sweetness.
'It wasn't working out,' says David. He is drinking coffee out of a mug with a fat brown and white cow painted on the side and is wearing a grey T-shirt bearing the words 'Dowlish and Donyatt FC'. 'He just wasn't that interested in what happens here and when I told him that we couldn't go on employing him, he didn't say anything, didn't say that he liked working with the animals or growing stuff or anything. He just shrugged and said that he'd been thinking about retraining as an HGV driver.'
Charlie and I know that the question of Bob's employment at the nursery has been under question for the last couple of months. 'We don't have to work with him, David does,' Charlie had said to me recently. 'You and I can't interfere and we're not running a charity.' True, but I've been touched by Bob's willingness to give up his Saturdays to stand behind a market stall, dressing up in his best garb to flog herbs to the middle classes, clearly awkward that he isn't gifted with a snappy repartee which can turn the purchase of one herb into the purchase of three or four, but giving it a go, nonetheless. I feel bad that I don't know more about him, that he is going to pass through our lives, disappearing without leaving a trace. Once, when we were out together to fetch some chicken feed, he told me that his jobs never lasted long. As he said it, he shrugged, as though accepting that this would probably be his fate this time around as well.
'We can't afford him,' David says, knowing full well that this will be the clinching argument. He opens a drawer and rummages around for a pencil. 'Look,' he says, writing down numbers on a piece of paper. 'This week we've made £362 from the honesty table and from people wandering down here from Dillington House to buy plants. Plus we're owed money by Rowley for the eggs and we're owed money for the veg that we've sold to the House. We're going to break even this week, but we'd be in the red if we still had to pay his salary. And honestly, Rosie, he just didn't get it. He never got enthusiastic about anything. Me and Adrian, in just one morning this week, we got through more than Bob and I could get through in two days.'
'How are we going to cope at the village open day?' I ask. It is now just two weeks till 24 June, the day when we are opening our garden, selling cream teas, helping to organise a bookstall, a bric-a-brac stall, and a plant and produce stall. Ellen Doble's daughter, Sandra, has organised an art exhibition which is going to be held in the village hall. In the evening, we've offered to hold a village pig roast, with one of our pigs as the star attraction. So far, almost eighty of the hundred tickets have been sold. On top of that, the second Montacute market is taking place the same day and our plan has been that Bob and I will go to Montacute leaving Charlie and the Bellew family to deal with events back home.
'Dennis is going with you.' I shrug. I like Dennis and I know we'll have a good time, but it doesn't stop me feeling sad that Bob has gone.
The weekend before the open day I take the dogs swimming in the pond at the end of the park. There's a rickety pontoon attached to the shore by a couple of wobbly planks which stretch out into the still, green water. The dogs, especially FatBoy, love swimming and they swim alongside me, every so often swerving off to investigate the thick plant life on the banks. Wild mint grows near the shore, and yellow flag irises and cow parsley crowd towards the water's edge, their reflections leaving streaky yellow and white patterns on the softly ruffled surface. Swimming is the only physical activity that has been completely unaffected by my accident and I stay in the water for over an hour, watching the swallows swoop down to feed, the dark brilliant blue of their heads and backs standing out against the sky, the red feathers round their beaks flashing in the sunlight. They fly with an effortless grace, soaring out of the sky, breaking the surface of the lake and scattering droplets of water that break into rainbow colours beneath their wings, then gliding upwards to turn and tumble in the air, as though the entire space above the pond is a playground for their acrobatics.
Every year since we've been at the Dairy House, the swallows have nested in the garage, but this year the roof has been repaired and the old nests have been destroyed. I was worried that they wouldn't return, but they have, to the shed which adjoins the garage, into a newly built nest in the eaves. They are wonderfully cosmopolitan, creatures that connect two continents and two entirely different ways of life, weaving the world together, crossing warring nations and increasingly unstable climate zones. What will happen to them, I wonder. According to James Lovelock, their winter world in North Africa will soon become so hot that they'll have to change their millennia-old migratory patterns, wintering here and spending their summers high on the slipstreams above the Norwegian fjords, hunting for flies in the endlessly long light nights of the Arctic circle.
Fat-Boy and Bingo crash through the reeds on the banks, the tall cow parsley waving above them, as they follow the smells of the water voles and the occasional moorhen. Fat-Boy glances up constantly; it is as though he is checking that he can see me and every few minutes he's back in the water, swimming out to touch me with his nose. When he swims, only the top of his head above his nostrils is visible above the water and his silky ears float out beside him. Using his tail as a rudder, he creates barely a ripple as he crosses the pond; he reminds me of a crocodile. He's so perfectly adapted to swimming, unlike Bingo, who swims in a frantic, jerky style, her head, back and tail well above the water, a nervous look in her eyes. Before we had Fattie, Bingo never went in the water, preferring to stay on the bank and bark at passing ducks. But she's a plucky dog and, even though she looks terrified, she hurls herself into the water alongside FatBoy and expends huge energy trying to keep up. On the bank, Bingo has found a two-foot-Iong thick stick in the rushes and I watch Fat-Boy try to take it from her, holding on to one end with his teeth, locking his front paws into the mud to increase his tugging power. Bingo growls back through her clenched jaws: at any moment, Fat-Boy could whip the stick away from the smaller dog, but it's a game they like to play and he's a generous-hearted animal. I let my feet sink down into the pond, feeling the water grow colder with every inch. Even though the pond is large and very deep in the middl
e and my bad foot has a tendency to buckle up with cramp, I feel safe in the knowledge that Fat-Boy would tow me ashore within minutes of my asking.
Under the overhanging branches of an alder tree, there's a cloud of brilliant-blue damsel flies whirring like small helicopters. This last week, from 12 to 19 June, the nursery has, more or less, broken even for the first time. Earlier today David went through the invoice book: even though he's exhausted, he's clearly thrilled. This is what we sold:
Monday 12th: Dillington House bought 23 eggs, 12 lettuces, 5 kilos of rhubarb, 7 kilos of broad beans, 4.5 kilos of peas, 12 bunches of spring onions, 6 cucumbers and 5.5 kilos of flat beans. Total: £107.30' We also sold them 8 lavender plants for their garden: £16.
Wednesday 14th: 300 eggs at £37.50'
Thursday 15th: 246 eggs at £30.75.
Thursday 16th: 12 lettuces, 8 spring onions, 6 cucumbers, 7.5 kilos flat beans, 6 kilos of Swiss chard, 3 kilos of turnips and 6 bunches of parsley. Total: £83'05. David's mother, Anne, bought £19.50 worth of plants for her garden. Mike Fry-Foley bought a tray of eggs, I kilo of courgettes, I kilo of baby carrots and 3 lettuces. Total: £7.35. Two village residents bought eggs, plants and herbs totalling £44.70. Dillington House ordered another 200 eggs late in the day: £24.99. Rowley Leigh at Kensington Place took 250 eggs: £30. The honesty box earned £108.
We add it up on the calculator: £509.14.
We have spent: David £250, Dennis and Anne £60 each, plus £140 for a new electric fence for the pigs as the little ones have been escaping under the existing fences and wandering off to the car park, acting like schoolboys playing truant. Total: £490.
The cost of animal feed takes us over our break-even figure by about £50, but nevertheless it's the best week we've ever had and there's comfort in knowing that, for the next two months at least, we'll have even more vegetables to sell. This week, plants are being delivered to the flower shop in the nearby village of South Petherton and David is optimistic that we'll earn a steady £50-£60 a week.
I watch two damsel flies mating, the male curving his body into an arc above the female, binding them together so they seem as one, a triangle of flashing blue above the water. They move like creatures from an animated cartoon, in one place, then another, without ever apparently travelling in between. They don't make a sound, but they ought to, a sort of snapping sound as their bodies twist, turn and jolt. Up above, the swallows are rolling and diving through the sky, their fast, chattering speech sounding strangely human, like stutterers on speed. The Chinese believed that if you administered a broth made of swallows it would cure a person's stutter, but then there was also a cure for epilepsy that involved one hundred swallows, white wine and an ounce of castor oil.
The coming of the first swallows is universally regarded as a sign that the spring has detonated, as they begin their journey north only when the currents that carry them towards our shores heat up to 48°F. There are always the first birds, the outriders, who forge ahead a couple of weeks earlier than the rest and who often suffer because they get caught by a late frost. It proves the old saying, 'One swallow doesn't make a summer': one week of more or less breaking even doesn't mean that we're out of the woods but, like the single swallows of early spring, it is a very good sign.
Ten days before the pig roast, David phones Snells to book in one of the pigs. Too late. Snells are overloaded with work and they can't fit in a single extra pig, however much of an emergency. Fliers have already gone out advertising the weekend: open garden, plant stall, bric-a-brac, cream teas, guess the weight of the pig, produce, the art show and in the evening the pig roast, where for £5 you get a hunk of pork, apple sauce, stuffing, salad, strawberries and cream. We were planning to eat Lobelia, and though I am relieved that she's had a stay of execution, this is a potentially embarrassing turn of events. By the time David tells me, he's already ordered a whole pig to be picked up from a farmer in Barrington, which will arrive boned, roasted and ready to eat. It will cost us £190.
Outside our gate, David has mowed a rectangular space where a marquee will be erected. Our own village marquee has been put up outside the village hall. The plan is that the pig roast will take place by the hall where the art exhibition is on display and that the rest of the events - cream teas and stalls will happen in the field beyond our garden fence. Mary Rendell gave me the name of the keeper of the Barrington village tent and at two o'clock on the Friday afternoon six men, like characters from Last of the Summer Wine, disgorge themselves from two tiny cars and bang in poles and ropes and bright red strapping and the tent is up. Cars and vans bustle to and fro from the village, carrying trestle tables and grey plastic chairs, benches and tea urns, cups and saucers, plates, cutlery, extension leads, paper napkins and two large teapots. I haul boxes of old books out of their storage place in the garage and lay them out on tables. Old clothes are hung up on a portable clothes rail. David and Adrian drive to and from the nursery, delivering plants which we arrange on another table inside the marquee, sheltered from the hot sun. I position a small, sturdy, square wooden table by our gate and write out price-ofadmission labels and arrange the raffle prizes - two bottles of Vladivar vodka, three bottles of wine, a plastic flagon of local cider, a box of Fonte Verde spa treatments which I was given after a visit to an Italian spa two years ago, a wooden picture frame, a large box of After Eights, a mechanical appleslicer and corer, and a huge bowl of fruit wrapped in clear plastic and topped with a huge green and red ribbon which John Rendell has donated. I pin up a sign saying 'Garden Open - £1'. Manning this desk is to be Charlie's job for the day. Inside our house myoId friend Sophie is at work in the kitchen, making the stuffing and the apple sauce and preparing food for the lunch party we've decided to hold on the Sunday.
Sophie lives in Norfolk and she's cooked for Charlie and me at every occasion in our married life when we have reckoned we can't cope. Our wedding, our birthday parties, our big parties which are just for the hell of it. The dogs are devoted to her and greet her when she arrives like a long-lost relative. My stepson-in-Iaw, Charlie, husband of Miranda who is David Leitch's eldest child, has arrived to take photographs of the pigs and the garden and the preparations. Miranda and her two children, Fen and Jessie, are due to arrive tomorrow, when Daisy is also coming in on the morning train.
As the sun sets into a vivid red and pink work of art beyond the vegetable garden, I feel a rare sense of comfort and ease. We've been at the Dairy House for just under four years and the coming weekend feels like a celebration of all that Charlie and I have made together here. I walk round the garden, conscious of its loveliness in the fading light, the scent of roses heavy in the hot night air. In the wood, a lone green woodpecker is still hammering away in a branch above my head. The old oak by the pond is silhouetted against the coming night, the five-foot bamboo wind-chimes that hang from one of its branches still and quiet. Somewhere an owl hoots and another answers back. I sit down on the bench by the oak, leaning back against its gnarled trunk, and watch the still water of the pond grow steadily blacker as the light leaches from the sky. In the undergrowth beside me I can hear the rustling of some small creatures of the night, and out in the fields a cow is lowing. I look out across the pond towards the park, where the oaks are slowly being swallowed up in the darkness, their shapes becoming increasingly indistinct until they are just a blacker part of the blackness. It would have looked the same to someone sitting under this oak tree for the last few hundred years, the continuity of nature which feeds and nourishes the soul. The owls start hooting again, several of them this time, calling and answering each other, their eerie cries carrying through the stillness. I imagine them swooping down through the darkness to find mice or frogs or other small creatures who haven't managed to get home in time. In East Anglia an old chimney stack was recently opened for the first time since it had been capped in 1913. Barn owl droppings revealed an exotic and varied diet: bats, water shrews, dormice and weasels, bits of frogs, swallows, yellowhammers and a great m
any different insects. Then the darkness is broken by the lights of Charlie's Land Rover travelling through the park and within minutes the dogs are racing noisily through the garden, barking wildly as they charge through the flower-beds.
Fat-Boy wakes us up at five o'clock, leaping on to our bed and lying down above the pillows, more or less on top of our heads. It's a position he favours, since, once in situ, he is impossible to ignore. I heave him off but he keeps padding around the bedroom, sticking his nose into my face, until I have to get up, kick him out of the bedroom and shut the door. The reason for his early morning energy is apparent as soon as we get up. The previous afternoon, Mr Bonner delivered eight chickens, two small truckles of Cheddar and a whole Somerset Brie for our lunch party. They have all been stored in the spare fridge outside in the shed, but dear Mr B also included a whole Cheddar, 56 lbs of it, a magnificent circular wedge covered in cheesecloth, yellowed and stained from the fat which seeps from the cheese. He sent it along as a loan which he thinks we might like to display on the table. The unexpected gift has been placed on the floor of the back kitchen, well sealed in a brown cardboard box. It was too heavy to move on to a shelf, so I left it there when I went to bed. But I forgot about Fat-Boy. Overnight, he's bitten his way into the box, ripped a hole through the tough cheesecloth and eaten a large circular chunk out of the cheese. Charlie is less than amused and he sets off to town to tell Mr B of the disaster that has befallen his cheese, which, we reckon, would have cost over £400. Fat-Boy goes too, sitting in the back, looking terribly pleased with life. I set off to Montacute with Dennis, the back of the van full to the roof with herbs and flowering plants, brown bags of beans, peas and beetroot, bunches of freshly picked carrots with long green feathery stalks, herb biscuits in small clear bags, and recipe leaflets jammed in wherever there is a spare inch.
Spotted Pigs and Green Tomatoes Page 26