My friends had gotten behind on “payments”.  This is the regular time investment that is required if a vegetable patch is going to deliver. Hip high nettles and weeds had colonised three out of six beds of our friends’ allotment.  Very little had been planted in the new season and my friends had pretty much decided to give it up.  It was too much work for them and their children hated going along.   They were just drifting sadly toward being kicked out because what they did not know was that they were also a few weeks away from getting The Letter, the one where the Secretary of the Allotments Association tells them that they have squandered their chance to have a patch and that they must make way for someone else.

We joined them almost on a whim.  I like gardening, having grown up on farms, with my dad growing a lot of our family’s vegetables.  My children and theirs are friends and we feel that we share a work ethic (not that everyone works hard, more that we work equally hard).  Sociable gardening.  Shared skills, reciprocal pressure.

Now, on Sundays, we usually spend a few hours at the allotment.  All of the beds have been slashed and weeded and raked over; edging planks hammered in.  Three types of beans are flowering white and red; some are winding up wigwam style bamboo poles, some sturdy as small trees.  And this week I planted a large batch of strawberries.

The potatoes had been in when we joined and they stand lush and green and bushy and perfect.  Until I get up close and realise that there is strangle weed slowly wrapping itself around the leaves and stems of half the potato plants.  The potatoes must be growing fat underground because the ground is lifting and cracking.  They can stay there for a while longer but then the weeds need to be controlled.  I disentangled, cleared, pulled.  I tried to do this without stepping on the potatoes and I remember that my dad once grew potatoes when we lived in cold places and he would leave wide pathways between rows, now I know why.  So that he can get in and weed without crushing the plants and the spuds.  I bring my potato experience.

Everything that we put in grows marvellously.  This week I picked some purple lettuce that would not look out of place underwater.  It was delicious.

In business terms, even though we have a good location and the right product, the people in the firm are overwhelmed, the bank is about to foreclose and the landlord is about to kick them out.  But all is not lost – this almost bankrupt business was much more valuable than nothing.  If they were to give it up, pull back and consolidate, getting a foot in the door again at a later stage would be very difficult.  By sharing the equity and the work and ultimately the fruits of our labour, this business can thrive.  We are restructuring, allowing fresh air to course through the lungs.