Our darkest hour is now

The orbital tilt of our planet points away from the Sun, for us on Northern latitutes. Today is the shortest day and the longest night. Both from a seasonal point of view, but also from a political standpoint, many things are dark. The only thing that is certain is that daylight will return. Politics is another story. It can get a lot darker yet...

Last week, the Swedish parliament changed the law, so that our government can easier seize power "in case of emergency". The government decides what is an emergency, and they tell us in with so many words that they will of course never use this escalation of powers. Unless it is necessary. During the last thirty years, many laws have been changed to shift power away from the elected parliament, towards indirectly selected bodies like the European Commission and our national government. Some domains have been completely ceded by our representatives to "the market", which will allocate resources optimally. (Optimal for whom?, I always wonder...)

If that was not depressing enough, I broke the shafts of two spades in one day, and a few weeks before another one. Now my three most favourite shovels are out of action.

The first one to break was the glass fibre shaft of my hand forged Belgian root-cutting shovel from the Polet workshop. This shovel has been my go-to shovel for digging out trees for five years, so I can understand that the wear and tear is breaking even the glass-fibre reinforced plastic handle. I bought a replacement handle, I thought, but since it was from another supplier it didn't fit right, so I have contacted the supplier to get an original spare part.

Broken. Understandably so. Just need a replacement shaft.

The second one was the Spear & Jackson 4041 garden shovel that I have enjoyed for at least five years. I did put too much bending force on the shaft and it broke off without warning. The loose part shot up and cut my chin. I am happy I did not get it into my eye. I think I will get a handsome scar, reminiscent of the schmiss- or bragging scars that were popular in early 1900s Austrian culture.

I was digging out some prunus trees that were getting too large for this location.

My chin started to drip of blood. I was cold and surprised, not much pain. Mostly embarrased.

The third and most disappointing spade failure was the Atlas trench spade that I purchased this summer. The forged steel broke off when I was cutting out some turf to plant a tree. The centimeter-thick steel just broke open and the blade fell off. I was so surprised that it took me some time to realize what had just happened. It is a quite heavy spade, so I thought it would be around until next generation. Instead, it broke just six months after I bought it.

This heavy duty spade broke even with a relatively small load.

Looking at the fracture surface, it is clear that there was already an earlier crack that had some corrosion. Production error?

Now comes the next phase - getting new handles and for the Atlas spade, a replacement blade, hopefully reimbursed by the warranty. I have contacted the suppliers, but since the Spear & Jackson is a UK spade, and Polet is made in Belgium and the Atlas is made in the Netherlands it will be some logistics to get replacement parts. I bought all the spades in the Netherlands. Considering that we are quickly approaching Christmas break, I think it will take some time before the spades are operational again.

Fortunately, I am the Jack of spades, and I have at least ten other tools to use in the meantime...

Growing the farm

Tunnel

The polytunnels are great in the winter too. No wind and no rain inside. We moved the mobile chicken house into one of the tunnels to give a cozy protected environment for the hens. The hens find all manner of bugs that they clean out, and they pre-fertilize the soil for the next growing season.

Happy hens.

Since I spend some time in the tunnel, I have been thinking a bit about the tomato and cucumber trellis wires. I have tried several kinds of string.

Tired rests from previous growing season.

Along the top bars of the polytunnel I have strung three parallel lines of 2mm steel wire along the whole length, above the beds. From these steel wires, I have strung strings down to the ground, onto which I have clipped the plastic clips we started using last year. I tried to tie the strings with a sliding knot to be able to lower the top of the plant, but it was too complicated and crowded. Next year I will just plant more.

Some of the lines snapped when the tomatoes start to hang heavy.

The best lines are 5mm jute. They did not snap. The ones that did not work well was 3mm cotton string and 3 mm jute. The 3mm jute was almost good enough, but not all the time. It is a mess when a tomato plant full of fruit falls over and I try to trellis it back up onto a new string.

The worst one is a nylon string that was completly destroyed by UV light:

Useless nylon string.

In the next photo, I touched the wire and a section just "disappeared" into a cloud of plastic fragments.

When I touch the string it turns into a white nano-plastic powder.

Food

In the Christmas time, there are several traditional foods that we make. I like baking seasonal things.

Swedish lussekatt bun, this time with wholemeal wheat and sourdough base. Yum!

In the Laholm town park

We have a great team at the municipal parks department. Anne has expanded the town park to enclose a soccer field, and this time with an edible theme. A dozen fruit trees, three walnut trees and a dozen berry bushes were planted a couple of weeks ago. It looks great.

Fruit trees surrounding the football field.

Some walnut trees. There are already three large walnut trees nearby.

Berry bushes, probably black currant, and lots of strawberries.

It will be interesting to see how the trees will grow and who of the neighbours will harvest.