Sophy Gairdner interview

I took on my first allotment in 1976, the year of the huge drought. Someone came up to show me the plot and it was covered with couch grass, completely, like a crop of wheat, and the ground was like concrete with fissures. I was just opening my mouth to say, ‘Have you got anything else?’ when a strange figure hove into view, boots and gabardine and a beret, and he must have been a great age already because he told me he’d been at work before WW1, and he said, ‘You’re going to be fool enough to take it, and I’m going to be fool enough to clear it for you’. So, he would come every morning and clear it, his name was Tom Anglin and he was Irish, and he’d go home to his wife and have the same meal every day, which was brown stew. If anybody was in a predicament, say a husband died and a wife couldn’t keep up their plot, he would do their plot, so he supported a lot of other plots. He used to give the produce, like callaloo, to the old people’s home in Mina Rd., Mary Seacole Court.

My grandparents had a few cows for milk and butter and a kitchen garden, in those days it was much more common, I suppose because of the war. I was in a wartime nursery from the age of about two, and I remember we sang ‘the farmer’s in his dell, the farmer wants a wife’ and so on, and I understood from that that a woman couldn’t be farmers, despite the fact that, because of the war, women were actually running farms. And so, when asked what I wanted to be, I said I wanted to be a farmer’s wife, but that’s not what I meant! The feeling was always there.

The committee was all male and elderly, and in effect Bob was really carrying it. I went down to the AGM, and it was patently a one-man show. We rattled thought the agenda and when I entered the discussion, Bob said, “Miss Gairdner, you can have your little say later.” I was silenced! Bob told me himself that he was reprimanded by the council for his sexism, as if it were a badge of honour!

Mr Martin had the plots that are now under the poly tunnel, he had eleven plots. He was a one man social centre, everyone came and sat on his benches under his plumb trees, and had a drink and he was convivial and there was lots of laughter. He had a dog that bit us all, he’d chomp on your laces and then when you went away, he got the backs of your legs rather alarmingly.

There’s a new spirit and a new flavour now. There is knowledge of gardening, there are some very good plots, I think it is also true that some of the young people coming on, there is a break in culture and they don’t know very simple things. Many people come and go because they get defeated. Another difference is that people want their plot to have a place to sit and socialise. I notice that people come and the first thing they do is make a party space.

I had three very happy years in West Africa, and I was stunned by the carry over in farming techniques by the Jamaicans here - it really took my breath away; triple planting, and putting things at the bottom of a cavity to collect dew, and not planting things in rows. I remember Mr Forester, who had the plot next to me in the 70’s. I was ruling out space between rows for planting purple sprouting, and I suddenly saw his feet, and he was looking at me, and he said, “If God had wanted things in rows he’d have put your hair on your head in rows.” The West Indians were actual farmers, they’d done it man and boy. They come from the tropics, their growing season is short but very effective. They produce more food on their land than almost any of the rest of us. They don’t on the whole use winter, except for garlic and shallots. Because I’ve identified with them I’ve noticed these things. There’s a cultural difference, and I am very sympathetic.