A British smallholder's first time farming, a first taste of exhaustion

Whenever we mention to friends that we want to rent a plot in London to grow vegetables, it is always taken as a joke. But driven by our ever-expanding fantasy, we still feared no challenge and rented a plot of farmland from the local household registration and city office.

No wonder our friends mocked us. Neither Mr. Buffalo nor I have any farming experience. The two of us have each delved deep into our own academic fields, facing either a computer or thick books every day. Until one day, when we accidentally switched to the BBC gardening channel and saw the green-thumb activity of "Allotment." Right then we found it extremely interesting, fantasizing about blue skies and green fields, a beautiful life of hand cultivation, and we two urban laymen immediately decided to give it a try.

So, in the early autumn of 2017, Mr. Buffalo and I readily paid a full year's rent and began this life-changing green journey.

It was just that the experience of going to the farmland for the first time was very different from the LOHAS life we had imagined. There were no birds singing and flowers fragrant, only weeds growing everywhere. In fact, the newly rented plot was much bigger than we had imagined, covering 100 sq m, about three times or more the size of an ordinary family's back garden. Mr. Buffalo and I exchanged a glance, and finally understood why our friends had advised us to back out, but it was too late, so we had no choice but to brace ourselves and start working.

 

(Image source: Royal Horticultural Society RHS website)

 

London is damp, cold and rainy, and the soil is thick and heavy. The clayey soil has poor drainage but high nutrients, except that when digging it up, the whole clump of soil often sticks to the shovel, making the already heavy iron shovel even more laborious. Every time we lifted it, it was two or three kilograms.

Although it was early autumn, the air was quite chilly, but under the intense first cultivation, our shoulders, necks and chests were slightly beaded with sweat. Repeatedly swinging the sickle and shovel, before we knew it our minds entered a blank state, and our bodies honestly cleared away the unnecessary distractions in our heads, a bit like an out-of-body experience, truly quite an unbelievable experience. It was just that when we had not even finished tidying one tenth of the farmland, the sun had already set. Looking back, the pulled weeds were piled up like a mountain; looking down again, we could finally slightly see the original state of the farmland, and in our hearts there was an indescribable shock, as if everything had taken on a new order.

The first time farming, after returning home we were ravenously hungry. Picking up chopsticks to eat, our hands trembled uncontrollably, and a mouthful of scooped rice could not even be brought to our mouths. It reminded us of how Eileen Chang described the feeling of hunger in The Rice Sprout Song, somewhere between a toothache and heartbreak. After a day's labor, the body felt real hunger and fatigue, but the heart got full rest, which could also count as an unexpected gain.