Today we're going digging with Naomh Turton, one of our brilliant bar staff.
On our conquest to bring a little light into this crazy world we’re experiencing, we started an allotment. Partially as ode to our ancestors before us, and to find a sustainable food source that’s slightly more dependable than the ASDA delivery service!
Getting a taste of what a green thumb feels like, and the smell of that neighbouring chimney that burns turf on the daily, truly has given us a bit of a haven. I’d encourage you all to use God’s gift to us, get outdoors in this glorious weather and get planting! Small or large, I can guarantee it will give you a great sense of purpose.
Get digging!
Digging - Seamus Heaney
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
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