Ces carottes sont cuites

Sunrise over the Forest of Preuilly at about 6.15 am.

Actually, the carrots are only 'cooked' in the sense of the French saying which means 'it's too late now, we can't recover the situation'. The real carrots in question were 29 rows of little seedlings at the Jardins Vergers de la Petite Rabaudière that needed weeding. But due to staff holidays there was no one to do it. A call went out for volunteers -- a couple of hours of weeding would earn you a veggie box.

The weed infested carrot bed. Either side of the cultivation are strips of rough fallow to encourage biodiversity and allow crop rotation.

So right in the middle of the heatwave, Dotty and I drove out at 6 am to do our weeding shift. Sylvain, the farm owner, had decided that the carrots were now too weedy to be saved. Only two rows had been done in time. He was going to cover the carrots in black plastic to kill the weeds and resow those rows later. Dotty and I were put on celeriac seedling weeding instead.

Crown Vetch Securigera varia (Fr. Coronille bigarrée) growing in the fallow strips.

At that hour of the morning, the temperature was pleasant and the birdsong raucous. No other sounds disturbed my two hours on bended knee. Dotty and I started at opposite ends of the rows, so there wasn't even any conversation. Very meditative.

Dotty weeding the celeriac.

After about half an hour Dotty went off to do some admin work in the office and I was left alone in the field. At around 8 am she texted me to say she was ready to leave. The farm interns had loaded up the van with crates of vegetables for the market and we needed to go set it up in the Place des Halles in Preuilly.

Newly hatched Fox Moth Macrothylacia rubi (Fr. Bombyx de la ronce) caterpillars in a fallow strip.

An early morning well spent as far as I was concerned, as I helped myself to chard, new potatoes, beetroot, kohlrabi, green beans, peppers, tomatoes and a lettuce. I hope there will be other opportunities to help out at the farm.

Some of the veggies we took to market.

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