Poo!

Up in the vineyard, a mile from the nearest main road, is our vegetable garden. The soil is heavy red clay that dries to concrete the moment the sun shines on it. It needs tons of fibre and compost to lighten and feed it ahead of the tomatoes going in.

We've only just got our trailer back after a winter loaded with a thousand empty wine bottles. Now that it's free we could go off to fill it with pony poo from the local stables this morning. The deal is that you pitch up, reverse your trailer to a stable and muck it out. They ask you to leave a present in exchange - like a cake, or wine, or cans of pop. Seems a very good deal to me.

So now we've spread it on one of the beds. Next I'll add leaf mould and well-rotted chicken poo. Finally I'll dig in some perfectly rotted compost from the compost bin. By mixing all this in the soil the fresh pony poo won't cause any damage. It rots down very quickly and my tomatoes won't be quite ready to plant out for another two or three weeks.

A very pleasing morning's work. Oh yes, and that was after doing breakfast for a group of twelve lovely writers who are staying.