Something for the weekend

Today is the feast of St Francis in the universal church and tomorrow Harvest Thanksgiving in the local churches. Here are some non PC views for the weekend from a local clergyman in his parish magazine (Cayton):

Fighting the Forces of Nature

Someone once likened me to Saint Francis of Assisi. The facial resemblance might be striking but there it ends. Since keeping poultry, I have considered that foxes should be hunted to extinction. I hate pigeons, rabbits, moles, and every animal that is a vegitarian. Hedgehogs are OK because they eat slugs.

Many years ago I bought a house with no garden. So began the long experience of having an allotment and fighting the forces of nature. I've seen it all; pigeons that ate the tops of the sprouts,pheasants that ate the bottoms, rabbits that devoured the lot. Slugs, snails, eelworm, caterpillars, a mole that burrowed under the onions and destroyed the whole row, a rampaging herd of pigs that escaped from the farm, a Billy goat that chomped through the brassicas, and thieves who came in the night and pulled up a whole row of potatoes.

How lovely, people say, to be able to eat vegetables fresh from the garden. They don't know the half of it. Supermarkets sell perfect stuff; no holes in the potatoes, where the slugs have had a go, no carrots infested with carrot fly, no cabbages with a hawk moth caterpillar in the middle, blinking in the sudden light, no sprouts with cabbage white droppings, no parsnips with rust, no broccoli bristling with white flies. I once had an orchard. I learnt not to bite into a juicy apple because the odds were that there would be a wasp in it. Farmers spray with herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, and anything else that they can lay their hands on so that we have unblemished produce.

October is the month of Harvest Thanksgivings. People with twee middle class gardens with serried rows of pretty flowers, and who buy their food from a shop, really have no idea of what we should be thankful for, but I do. Every potato that comes up undamaged is a cause for celebration. When I see a thrush in the garden I know that the snails are in for a battering, and rejoice. The sound of a wood pigeon cooing anywhere near my greens throws me into paroxysms of rage, and sends me out, wildly waving my arms. People who feed these rats with wings should be put in the stocks. We can be heartily grateful that we are so well fed, and thank God for it.

May God bless you all,

Fr Allan.