- Unearthing the first new potatoes of the year and the excitement of discovering that despite the odds there is a crop there waiting to be unearthed and taken home. With first early potatoes, I remove a few at a time, just enough for one or two meals, as they do not store well and taste really nice when 'freshly dug' just a short time before cooking.
- Seeing the grow your own fruit form on the trees and bushes and eventually ripen and then picking them ( this can be time consuming if the crop is abundant that year). I like to see the days fruit picking on display in the kitchen.
- Just, being in a space that has the peacefulness of being somewhere which is timeless... which my allotment is.
Slightly downsides -
Number One. No matter how careful I am, having an allotment results in more cleaning to do at home.
This means - more clothes to wash, kitchen floor needs sweeping and washing more often, as some of the fine particles of the soil on our allotment have a tendency to make their way home with you and get taken into the house on clothes and produce.
Number Two. Carrying water between the tap and the allotment - is tiring and hard-work especially when it is most needed i.e. doing spells of hot dry weather.
And the third one is - not the rent, or time I spend on the allotment or the crops that sometimes fail -
I could say the battle with the weeds or with the pigeons or the weather but in the end they are all part of what running an allotment is about. So the third negative one is still undecided.
