'Midday' should be the middle of your day, not a few hours after waking up. And 'midnight' should be the middle of the night, not an hour or less after going to bed.
Those of us not shackled by the tyranny of having to be at a place of work for an allotted time should aim to live within natural rhythms set for us by nature, with sunrise and sunset the reference points, rather than the workplace clock and TV schedules.
With the change to summer time two weeks ago, I've continued in my habit of rising before sunrise. Because it's getting earlier and earlier, I'm going to bed earlier and earlier. Last night I was in bed at half past nine, and up this morning at half past five. Sunrise was at quarter to six. I fed the cats, made myself a coffee, and by half past six I was on the doorstep, dressed for sub-zero temperature (-3.1°C on the outside thermometer), ready for an hour's pre-breakfast walk.
Opening the front door and stepping outside, I became aware of a low, continuous hum to the north. Intriguing. I shall find out what it could be... Once I'd passed the forest and entered the orchards, I discovered what was going on. Automated spraying of apple trees, to protect them against the frost. And I'd soon see that this was happening in all the big commercial orchards across the neighbourhood.
It seems counterintuitive to spray water on a plant when it’s freezing outside; the apple growers are using the latent heat of fusion to protect the delicate buds of their trees. When water changes state from liquid to ice, it releases a small amount of energy in the form of heat. As long as water is continuously being sprayed onto the tree and that water is turning into ice, it releases enough thermal energy to keep the temperature of the plant tissue underneath at exactly 0°C. This is just above the critical temperature that kills fruit buds. Depending on the stage of development (bud vs. full bloom), a fruit tree might not suffer damage until the internal temperature drops to -5°C. By encasing the branch in ice and water, the temperature is locked at 0°C, preventing it from falling to the much lower ambient air temperature, especially if its windy. The ice acts as a thermal buffer and as insulation. Once the bud's encased, it's protected from the evaporative cooling effect of the wind, which can strip heat away from plants much faster than still air.
This method is a high-stakes balancing act for the farmers. The sprinklers must stay on until the ice starts to melt naturally. If they stop while the air is still below 0°C, the ice begins to evaporate. Evaporation brings on a rapid drop the temperature of the bud well below the air temperature, killing it instantly. And then bear in mind that ice is heavy. If the frost lasts too long or the water application is too intensive, the weight of the ice can snap branches and destroy the very trees the farmers are trying to save.
At this time of year in Mazovia, the critical targets are the apple blossoms (kwiaty) and young fruitlets (zawiązki). These tissues are extremely vulnerable. Damage can begin around -2°C to -3°C. Without protection, an overnight frost can wipe out a large proportion of the crop. The ice looks destructive, with branches encased in ice, icicles hanging (below) – but the plant tissue itself is held at around 0°C, not the colder ambient air temperature. Crucially, ice forms outside the cells, not inside them. Cellular damage occurs mainly when internal water freezes, which this method prevents. Looks weird though, seeing all these icicles dangling off the apple buds.
The sprinklers require a massive amount of water. Apple growers have to ensure their reservoirs can store enough water for hours of constant spraying. Fortunately, this winter's long weeks of snow cover has helped.
It’s a beautiful but stressful sight; a race to keep the ice 'wet' until the morning sun takes over. [Update: by mid-afternoon, the thermometer was showing 16.3°C outside.]
Below: Grobice, orchard, transformer. Power and water needed to keep the trees safe from the potential ravages of frost.
Below: earlier, half an hour after sunrise, on my front doorstep, just as I was about to set off.
By quarter to eight, I'm back in my house; the outdoor thermometer now shows +3.2°C. The growers have made it through the night; the 14-day weather forecast suggest that this would have been the last frost for this crucial period (blossom time).
My morning walk today was filled with beauty and wonder, and I learned a lot. It really is worth foregoing late nights and making the most of the morning sunshine.
"...find a new path. As you learn about where you are, new paths will take you further and further afield; the paths closer to home you will have trodden many times already." This advice, offered to me [see previous post], I followed.
"Learning where you are" - deep local topographical insight. Knowing instinctively each path, each field, each waypoint; knowing how to navigate even in the dead of night; intimate appreciation of the land upon which you tread. "Further and further afield" - constantly extending the boundaries of that deep knowledge.
And so, I walked to the nearest point from my działka beyond which I have not yet walked. This is the path running parallel to the DK 50, which then turned left into the village of Lasopole (population 84). I've not been here before - neither on foot nor by motorbike. Below, a view of Droga krajowa nr. 50, the southern part of Warsaw's de facto ring-road - as it rises above the embankment, just one lane in each direction. At the top of the hill, go down to to the next crossroads and turn left.
Below: having turned south away from the DK 50, a zig-zag road leads into Lasopole. There's a well-invested orchard to the right, complete with hailstorm netting. But as I'll come to see, the land between Lasopole and Drwalew, the next village to the west, is home to few orchards; the landscape is to take on an entirely different appearance...
Below: this wayside chapel stands at the centre of Lasopole. The road running off on the left soon loses its asphalt and turns into a footpath running through a field, ending up by the Czarna river. Sadly no convenient crossing over it to connect (even a small footbridge) to the centre of Chynów.
[Update 6 February 2024: I discover that though no online map, not even OpenStreetMap, shows this, there's a fallen concrete post placed across the Czarna, allowing pedestrians to cross in relative safety.]
Below: looking south from the centre of Lasopole, a long straight road leading to the old DK 50, that carried all the east-west traffic transiting central Poland before the bypass was opened in 2009. A different landscape beckons.
Below: looking west towards Drwalew and the remaining buildings of the PGR (state farm). Large fields - not narrow strips; the corn crop has been partially harvested. The PGR works the land to a different scale than the local farmers' smallholdings. Hundred-hectare (250-acre) fields like this are rare in Mazovia, where, according to Poland's agriculture ministry, the average farm size is 8.9 hectares.
Below: medium-tension electricity lines leading towards the buildings of the PGR.
In the 1920s, this used to be a large estate belonging to one French landowner, aptly, a M. Longchamps (lit. 'Longfield' or 'Długopole'); he sold it in 1928 to a successful Polish pharmacist, Stanisław Klawe, who established a pharmaceutical plant on part of the property. After the war the pharma plant was nationalised to become Biowet, a manufacturer of veterinary medicines; the surrounding lands were collectivised as PGR Drwalew rather than be broken up into smallholdings. Below: the road from the wayside chapel at Lasopole to the old DK 50 forms the eastern boundary of the PGR.
Googling PGR Drwalew, I discover that the Polish state still has thousands of state-owned farms on its books - there are ten of them registered in Grójec poviat (county) alone! [Full list here for download as an Excel file.] Seven are state horticultural farms (Państwowe Gospodarstwa Ogrodnicze); two are state fish farms (Państwowe Gospodarstwa Rybackie); PGR Drwalew is the only classic arable farm in Grójec poviat in the Stalinist sense of agriculture - land owned and worked by the state.
Interestingly, three of the PGRs ('Danko HR') are part of a state-owned company, Danko Hodowla Roślin Sp. z o.o., belonging to the National Support Centre for Agriculture, of special importance for national agriculture, focused on breeding new varieties and the production of seeds. PGR Drwalew, however, has no such 'special importance' status.
According to the Chynów gmina (commune) website, PGR Drwalew was connected to the town sewerage system in early 2019, and was at that time home to over 200 people (Drwalew's total population is around 900). Other than that, there's no mention of ths PGR online. Below: the gmina's official map, showing land ownership. PGR Drwalew is marked in pink, note how surrounding plots of land, privately owned, are far smaller...
Below: the old DK 50 between Drwalew and Chynów; since the bypass opened, it's very quiet here, only local traffic, which is good, as I have to walk this road all the way into Chynów (from the bottom right of the pink field in the map above). Cars were mercifully rare, and being local traffic, drivers tended to treat a pedestrian on the verge with due respect, slowing down and indicating.
Below: after the apple harvest, it's time to cut down old orchards before they become unproductive - typically nine growing seasons. Five rows of trees have been removed, roots and all (wykarczowanie) on the corner of ulica Działkowa and ul. Słoneczna, Chynów, yielding completely new vistas. It's a sudden shock, when a view that you've been used to for years changes. Old familiarity evaporates.
Below: back home, looking up the street towards my house, up the hill and into the trees. Solid fuel being burnt to warm homes.
I realise that it is six years since I bought my działka. Good to be far from the madding crowd, far from the hustle and bustle of a society hell-bent on sales and consumption. Scale back, withdraw, and slow down. De-materialise.
What with COP26 going on in Glasgow, and the pledges to cut global methane emissions, preserve rainforests and limit coal-burning, it's time to reflect on our own individual behaviour with respect to the planet that we all share.
Are you painfully aware that manmade climate change is real, and that the likelihood of a 3C global temperature rise by the end of this century would be catastrophic for humanity and for the environment?
Or is this just something you accept and brush off with a "meh" before scrolling down to the next news item or turning the page of your newspaper?
Or do you deny that such as thing as anthropogenic atmospheric warming exists, believing this to be nothing more than a conspiracy?
Has the reality of climate change altered your behaviour as a consumer, as a householder, as a commuter?
Do you have a nagging sense of guilt that you should be doing more as an individual to hold back the inexorable heating up of our planet? Or do you think that this is exclusively the role of governments and corporations?
What are you doing to cut your CO2 footprint?
Let's start with travelling to work.
Do you subscribe to game theory, thinking "why should I make sacrifices to my lifestyle, why should I give up comfort and convenience, if others continue to live as they always have?" Game theory is central to the conundrum of driving to work in traffic jams. Whatever incentives and disincentives the authorities devise - cheaper, better, public transport, road-pricing, higher fuel duties - the net result of getting more people out of cars and onto buses is... more people driving to work because the roads seem less congested. The average car in cities of the developed world is used to drive 1.2 people an average 11km (6.8 miles) to work,
I gave up driving to work in 2011; I did not replace my 20-year-old Nissan Micra 1.0 when it reached the end of its useful life two years later. I do not own a car. I do, however own three 125cc motorbikes, cherished and ridden only on warm sunny days, no more than a couple of thousand kilometres per year in total. I walk to do my food shopping. By not buying more than I can carry, I do not waste food. I recycle waste into six streams (general, paper/card, plastics, steel, aluminium and glass). Vegetable stalks, peelings, coffee grounds etc go into the garden. Radically, since 2011, I don't use the toilet at home to wee, instead I store urine for use as mole-deterrent and fertiliser (but then I have a big garden). This saves between 10 and 15 tonnes of clean water a year. I do not mow my lawn, allowing a meadow with wildflowers to grow back, attracting bees and butterflies. I use a scythe to maintain a small lawn around the house.
My diet contains little meat, the occasional beef steak as a rare treat. I buy second-hand clothes wherever possible (though, I must say, all of them were bought in London - see below).
My father's death and Covid have effectively curtailed my regular flights to London. According to ICOA's Carbon Emissions Calculator, each return flight from WAW to LHR contributed 276 kilograms of carbon dioxide - over a quarter of a tonne. Times ten such flights a year, that's nearly three tonnes. Just me flying, no suitcase, just hand luggage. To put into perspective, driving a large diesel-engined SUV 16,000km / 10,000 miles a year produces five tonnes of carbon dioxide.
At times I feel I am an outlier. Do you think it's weird to take such steps to reduce to a minimum my environmental footprint upon this planet? Human life in the developed and indeed developing world cannot continue as it has done. If every human had the living standard of the average American, we'd need the natural resources of between four and half planet Earths. My consciousness plans to return after the physical demise of my body, so I feel a long-term stake in the future.
On my way back from Machcin the other day, I noticed a sign that I would have seen I had I come up from the other way - 'Tree-felling in progress - Entry forbidden'. What's going on? I check.
Tree-felling is indeed in progress, thinning out the forest at the top of my road. Too early to say how much of the forest will go (this has only just started this week).
The fact that the John Deere forestry harvester is parked up here over the weekend suggests the work is far from over, and that plenty more trees are destined for the chop.
Below: big trees on their way to be processed into timber. As building materials go, wood is more environmentally friendly than concrete. And why, the Norwegians are even building wooden skyscrapers. The way forward? Wooden towers at the expense of forests?
Also for the chop is this cherry orchard across the tracks. Cherries (in particular the sour variety) are not a good crop for farmers - market prices are mercurial and kilo-for-kilo they are far more expensive to pick compared to good old apples. This particular orchard went unharvested this season. My guess is that these will make way for apple trees.
Meanwhile, the apples are doing well again this year. Different varieties, growing in different orchards, mature at different times - the last apple-picking is still three months away, but the very first ones are already on their way to market (below). Photo taken between Dąbrowa Duża and Widok.
Below: these are looking good. A modern orchard, low, young trees, concrete posts, rows as close together as a mechanised equipment will allow. A far cry from the mature orchards with large, spreading trees bearing traditional Mazovian varieties - these are disappearing fast. The margins are to be made in supermarket-perfect fruit with the right sweetness.
Meanwhile, on the działka, my oak seedlings are doing well (about one in four of those planted have got to this stage).
Pines not doing so well - at the seedling stage, their growth is slower than the oak.
This... is a leek! I had a hunch that this might work - rather like the carrot tops we used to plant at Oaklands primary school infants. I made a leek, lentil and sorrel stew the other day, and rather than throw away the end, I replanted it in a jar from a failed oak or pine planting. This seems to be working! I will pop it into the soil soon, and hope it soon grows big enough to eat!
Bonus shot - a past-life familiarity event in Widok - wow, does this look like mid-'50s America! Note the lovely lawn... No longer environmentally acceptable, but it does makes an impression...
A follow-up post to a recent one in which I puzzled over why I can't buy local village produce in my local village shop.
What will it take to change that?
The model that Poland is heading towards looks like this: big, successful farmers buy up ever more land from those who can't make a decent living from it. Then they invest in machinery and logistics, and strike ever-bigger deals with the buyers from the large supermarket chains (and from the cash-and-carries that supply most independent rural grocers). The trend toward disintermediation in the food system has been removing middlemen and their margins, giving consumers lower prices in a competitive market. Farmers understand very well that they have no leverage if they are small.
The result of this process is that village shops are selling products bought wholesale from distant distribution centres, rather than from farms close to the villages they serve.
Strolling around Chynów, I see this. Large trucks, with trailers, are taking the apples away from the local punkty skupu, the purchase points where farmers get cash for their harvest. These trucks will take the apples to chilled warehouses, where in controlled conditions, apples last longer. Economies of scale kick in; consumers can look forward to buying perfect apples next August from this year's crop. This makes economic sense, but the process of scaling up agriculture is not wholly beneficial to society.
And yet there are around one million small Polish farms (down from 2.7 million in 1987), many of which are struggling financially. Only now are they beginning to be recognised as a national resource and an opportunity, rather than a burden and hangover from a defunct and inefficient system. In part, this is because consumers are on the lookout for fresh, tasty food that's chemical-free and affordable. And from their own neck of the woods, rather than trucked in from some distant province. Buying from your neighbours is good for your community. The pandemic is fuelling demand, but small farmers haven't yet been able to take advantage, focusing on their own immediate needs.
Unlike the UK, where unemployment is highest in inner cities, well over half of Poland's long-term unemployed are rural (not even small-town). If you're an energetic, able farmer, understanding market trends, investing wisely and growing your business, you have an asset that your children may well be interested in taking on. If your abilities to manage are less good, chances are your children will leave for the city or emigrate in search of a better life and consider your hectares as a millstone rather than as an investment asset.
And so the spiral accelerates; elderly farmers sell their land to ever-greater consolidated holdings, and big agribusiness changes the rural landscape and rural society. This process has, however, slowed down as a result of the Polish government making it harder for foreigners - and non-farmers - to buy agricultural land. This has led an increasing areas of farmland not being farmed at all. But it's also giving birth to a new interest in shortening food supply-chains. Herein lie the seeds for a different vision. And not just here in Poland, but across the EU.
But here's another vision of a more sustainable food system.
Small farmers get together online to share equipment. A tractor not in use for a week or two need not sit idle - it can be earning its owner money working another field. A barn not in use to store one crop between harvests can be rented out to a neighbouring farm as its crops are gathered. This may smack of collectivisation and equipment-sharing schemes from communist times - but it isn't.
This is because tech is helping us decentralise, bringing autonomy to the individual, enabling joint action. It's not top-down diktat from the party. Consumers increasingly want to know who produced each product and how they did so. We are no longer happy with anonymous, centralised industrial-scale food production and distribution. Generating new value that seeks to make better use of existing resources through networks where no one is in charge. That’s what local markets for locally-produced food are all about.
New software solutions will drive this decentralisation revolution. This is because software solutions, once developed, are infinitely scaleable, with zero marginal costs. Distributed-ledger technology, for example, offers consumers the ability to trace the provenance of the products they are buying. This is important; many local butchers in the UK, for example, have blackboards on which the names of the farms from which this week's meats come from are written down. This has a strong effect of bringing consumer and producer closer together. Apps can to the job of such blackboards, with far greater reach.
The technology exists - it's tech that drives the sharing economy (like Bla Bla Car, AirB&B or Uber).
I know, I know - it's difficult in rural Poland, where distrust of neighbours is the default. But innovations catch on and when proven to be beneficial, tend to be habit forming. Learning that win-win and not zero-sum thinking leads to progress, which in turn hard-wires win-win thinking into people's mentality.
New technology can generate new streams of income, as well as new value, to those participating in a decentralised prosumer (producer/consumer) food system. Online such prosumer initiatives that already bring together farmers and consumers, such as Koszyk lisiecki ('Liszki Basket') near Krakow are booming, proving the concept. But these are still outside the mainstream, often operating informally.
The new value comes with consumers accessing fresh, tasty food products that they simply cannot buy in supermarkets, and farmers gaining regular clients who value what they produce. Cost effectiveness and streams of income come from shortening the social, economic and geographical distance between food producer and food consumer by replacing intermediaries with software solutions. Logistics will no longer require an expensive, centralised distribution system, but a way of making use of the barns, vehicles and storage facilities of the producers and consumers involved, by tracking and trading what is available. Producers and consumers with a vehicle or storage space can provide a service, and so generate additional income. The same is true for settling purchases and extending loans. Banks will no longer be needed to act as trusted intermediaries, if transactions can be settled directly.
If rural livelihoods come to depend on participation in a sharing economy, rather than on government subsidies, then our food system will transform to accommodate the small-scale, geographically dispersed, food producer. In such a world, trust is built by a software solution that can settle many-to-many transactions. Producers and consumers will come to trust that solution, if it generates the value and income upon which their livelihoods depend.
And so local markets could be built and serviced using apps. Sitting here on my działka, I would be able to order a box of seasonal organic potatoes, leeks, tomatoes, spinach, broad beans, corn-on-the-cob, peas and carrots, all sourced from local farms, which I could pick up from a dispensing machine at my local petrol station forecourt or the local school, which could also act as a collection point for produce.
Cloud-based, and using machine learning to optimise collection and delivery, such apps could create new networks that bring communities closer together. Making unused resources usable is the way forward (as I wrote here, and here). Apps would not only allow me to order my weekly shop of fresh, tasty vegetables and fruit on-line, but also offer storage space and pick-up services for neighbours, earning me a few extra zlotys.
'Community' and 'market' were once upon a time entirely congruous; economies of scale have pulled the two apart, making them adversaries. Technology has the potential to bring them back together at the local level. The goal - to make small-holdings profitable by connecting them to consumers who seek quality, value and authenticity from the products they eat.
New communities that generate new value and new income for all involved is within our grasp, if we can bring together the potential of small farms and tech. It’s happening with energy, with transport and with finances. Food is next. For those who are concerned about sustaining access to healthy, tasty food that is chemical free and affordable, this tech-driven, decentralised food economy is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’ but a must-have.
If you wish to help realise this vision, you may wish to help Rafał Serafin, my old friend from West London, make a documentary film about the opportunities of Poland’s small farms and part-time farms. The project requires the raising of €55,000 through crowdfunding; 5,000 people each donating €10 could make it happen (link to Zrzutka.pl here and below).
Here are three of Rafał's films that set out the vision:
Out on the działka, my nearest shops are in Chynów. There's a Mirabelka and a Top Market to choose from. Despite being located right in the heart of the garden of Poland, there's a dearth of local agricultural produce on sale. I was amazed to see Top Market selling fruit from South America, North Africa and the Far East, yet very little from Powiat Grójecki, our county.
Chynów has no farmers' market. If you open Targeo.pl, you'll find that all Chynów can offer is 'sprzedaż przydrożna' - roadside sales. Every Saturday, a number of pop-up stalls appear on the top end of ulica Wolska next to Top Market's car park, selling clothes, shoes and household goods.
At first sight it's odd that living in the Polish countryside, one cannot easily source local products from a local shop. If I want spinach, I have to buy Hortex-brand frozen spinach; even in season neither Mirabelka nor Top Market sell leafy fresh spinach. I can, however, buy leeks, nice tomatoes (malinowe - the best) and potatoes, but little more. No herbs in pots, no seasonal asparagus, no bundles of fresh szczypiorek...
Meanwhile in Warsaw (in particular in big suburban hypermarkets), the selection of food stuffs is mind-bogglingly huge. Whatever you want, in or out of season, local or exotic, you can find it easily. Why is it that agricultural products gravitate to the cities, whilst being unavailable in the places they are grown?
A simplistic answer is that this is due to an imbalance in the supply chain, caused by changing market demand, changing demographics and the response of the big retailers and wholesalers.
Agriculture in Poland is reshaping itself around the demands of modern retail. Here in Jakubowizna, my neighbours who are running efficient orchards have learned exactly what to do to maximise yields and crop quality, and get top zloty for their apples. Yet the left-behinds, who have not invested in manageable orchards, irrigation, crop protection or machinery, and still grow traditional apple varieties rather than those wanted by the supermarkets, are failing to make ends meet.
Beauteous apples destined for the tables of Warsaw
The gulf between rich farmer and poor farmer is opening up quickly. The former are buying up failed orchards, and consolidating them into ever-larger acreages, making it easier to negotiate directly with the buyers. But in the medium to long term, this will lead to falling biodiversity, lost varieties and an ever greater dependence on agrichemicals.
There is an answer. It is for small farmers to go organic and go local. But this needs a greater degree of organisation and sophistication than they can generally muster. Technology has part of the answer, using the tools and apps of e-commerce to make it easier to connect local grower with local buyer.
There is a demand. Everyone who has tasted the apples from my old trees says that while they look far worse than the perfectly uniform jabłka deserowe from the supermarket, they do have a taste which takes them back to childhood - and they are guaranteed 100% free of chemicals. But no supermarket buyer would ever buy apples as blemished as mine. And here's the problem.
It's not just about apples, potatoes, carrots and berries. Locally made cheese and sausage (kiełbasa) is starting to make its way to the big cities, where urban sophisticates give such artisan fare pride of place on their tables when entertaining, along with premium Polish wines. Again, the supply chains run one way - from field to the cities' forks. Na wsi there's little demand for a good, mature goats cheese, fine poultry-liver patés or gamey kabanos made from wild-boar meat. Certainly, the convenience-store chains, whose networks are penetrating deeper and deeper into the countryside, have no mechanism for dealing with individual producers at the local level. For them it's easier to sell packaged cheese slices and generic smoked-meat products from the big players. Add sliced-white toasting loaves, frozen vegetables, beer, vodka and cigarettes, and you have a reliable business model that ticks over nicely right across Central and Eastern Europe.
But it doesn't help the several hundred thousand Polish smallholders who are just a step up from subsistence level.
Technology can play a part. Imagine an app which tells you where the nearest 'wild' orchard is, what traditional varieties of fruit you can find there, and how much a kilo costs if you pick it yourself. Enter the orchard, switch on the GPS-enabled app, the farmer can see you're there, you pick as much as you need, and you pay the farmer directly to their online bank account.
But here's a scheme already up an running, founded by an old friend from Polish Saturday school and from the legendary Błękitna Trójka scout troop, Rafał Serafin. The film's in Polish, but it explains how local food from local producers is ending up on local tables. The pilot project is being replicated, but it needs to scale up to become a systemic solution for left-behind rural Poland. As Rafał says, subsistence farming in Poland is on a scale that tips elections. Read about the EU-funded Prosto od rolnika ('straight from the farmer') project in English as well as in Polish here.
Initiatives such as Koszyk lisiecki and Wiejska e-skrzynka have a big part to play in the EU's Green Deal, to spur recovery after the economic battering that Covid has delivered. This is win-win-win-win. Win for local producers who can get their food directly to consumers, cutting out the middleman. Win for local consumers, who get access to a wider choice of quality fare, produced locally. A win for the environment; less transport, less fumes and traffic. And a win for society, as an entire swathe of the population is lifted out of rural poverty (and thus less likely to vote for populists selling answers that sound simple but are wrong).
Rafał is looking for crowdfunding for a documentary film that will show how to get there in practical steps. One target group that he identifies is the children of smallholders, many of whom emigrated to the UK seeing few prospects for themselves in rural Poland. Rafał wants to make them think of the family farm as an investment opportunity with potential - and offers them a route map to do it.
[I'm amazed how much has been done in the past 12 months, especially given Covid! Czachówek-Warka is nearly ready, still much work to be done on the Chynów station passenger tunnel.]
I'd started the weekend early in anticipation of a bit of motorbiking - the weather forecasts showed a hot dry day, so I took the train down to the działka to go for a spin. But by the time I arrived yesterday afternoon, it was clear the bike would be going nowhere. Massive clouds were gathering in the sky to the south and east. By five pm, four hours before sunset, the land was plunged into near-darkness. Lightning was followed by ever-louder and ever-nearer thunderclaps, and the wind - the down-draft that's a harbinger of the coming deluge, whipped through the trees, snapping twigs and small branches.
The rain fell with a vehemence. After ten minutes, the electricity cut out. Usually, power outages on the działka, of which I'm informed by my alarm app, last a minute or two. This one lasted over two hours. No light, no internet - but a full battery on my laptop let me get on with office work. The storm passed, the lights came back on. It was quarter to eight. Time for a walk. Sodden fields, broken branches, impassable footpaths.
These summer storms are literally unpredictable, as I wrote recently. Water vapour rises up from the wet soil, heated by a hot sun near its zenith, builds up quickly into towering clouds that hit cold air and suddenly condense back into rain. This cycle can happen two or three times on a hot, damp day. Advancing weather fronts can be modelled by supercomputers with a fair degree of accuracy, but thunderstorms are difficult to pin down.
Below: after the deluge, a wet walk. Because my Loake walking boots are locked down in London, I'm wearing my winter boots - suede and fur-lined, ideal for sub-zero and snow; not so clever when puddle-hopping on a humid summer's evening.
The orchards are waterlogged. I hope this wet spell - following on from a snow-free winter and dry spring - will not harm the apples. The cherries are around a week and half late this year, and smaller than last year's beauties.
Wake up this morning to the sound of intense rain. Coffee, wash, breakfast - check weather forecast. Intense thunderstorms with off-the-scale downpours predicted for around eight, nine pm. It's now around 11am, the rain has stopped, the sun is out - into the garage, start up the bike, head off to the BP station at Grobice to top up the tank, and I'm on my way. My intention is to get to Warka, cross the Pilica river and drift south a while...
Below: between Widok and Piekut. Lovely stretch of road - hardly any traffic, bucolic scenes... but look out to the left - the clouds are building up...
I get to the crossroads past Krężel and decide to turn back. Below: I'm back in Chynów - any minute now... and sure enough, the heavens open. I'm close enough to base to make a run for it; bike back in garage, into the house - and hail. The lawn outside turns white - whiter than at any time over the winter. Two hours of intense rain, thunder, lighting and hail.
At least this time there was no power cut; I have lunch and await the storm's passing... It passes.
The clouds have emptied, the sun's back. Water vapour rises visibly from the sodden earth at first; time for a walk. It's wetter than ever. Footpaths become impossible to cross without getting my feet wet. Fallen branches suggest that agriculture has taken a belting. This, dear reader, is the climatic new normal. Extraordinary weather events become commonplace. Farmers will have to invest in drought- and flood prevention measures. Food will become more expensive.
Hoping for a settled spell of dry weather before this summer's through. But there's still walking to be done; this evening another stroll to see how badly the soaking affected the other side of the tracks...
Below: this is ulica Działkowa in Chynów; wet all the way up. I could hear many petrol-powered pumping engines in the neighbouring orchards, sucking up water and piping it into fields next door or out onto the street. The damage has been done.
More is to come; on my way back home to the działka, I could see more clouds to the east. The sun was setting, the light has come off the houses and fields but continues to brighten the cloud-tops.
Anyone know of a real-time weather radar covering Poland that I can use to check where the thunderclouds are right now (rather than a forecast from a few hours ago that's invariably wrong in these conditions)?
This year - like 2016 and 2014 - will be a bumper year for Polish apple growers. Great news for consumers - better produce at lower prices, more apple juice (pressed, not from concentrate), more cider (despite Polish government's insistence on excise bands and an advertising ban). But growers are likely to protest. There have already been two large protests in Warsaw from potato growers and soft fruit and berry growers; the scale of Poland's apple growing industry is such that as more and more produce reaches the markets, the price will plummet and the pain will be felt.
It will be felt in different ways by different growers. Down by my działka in Jakubowizna, the neighbourhood is crammed with orchards. And there's a huge difference between them.
Some orchards are modern, like the one below, with rows of trees spaced so that a narrow tractor can drive between them. Rows held upright along concrete posts, trees pruned so that pickers can easily get at all the fruit. Pesticides sparingly used (on the basis of computerised measurement of pests and optimal dosing). The orchards are fenced off to prevent theft and malicious intruders. The owners of such orchards spend the evenings learning online about market trends and prices from portalspożywczy.pl or from producers of agri-food supplies (everything from seeds to tractor-trailers).
Some orchards are almost wild, overgrown, trees bearing apples speckled with blight, unfenced and yet fecund; who will pick these apples? Pickers can afford to be picky - why work here when the modern orchard across the road offers a better and safer working environment? Reminder - the Grójec poviat (district) has the lowest rural unemployment anywhere in Poland. Last October, registered unemployment was 2.2% (compared to 2.1% for booming Warsaw). My guess is that these gone-to-seed orchards will either be harvested by their elderly owners or will be left unharvested.
I feel sorry for the farmers who've done the right thing - they've invested in modern methods, they understand the market, and yet over-supply this coming autumn will mean that they will not be able to get a good price for their quality product. The farmer who has failed to invest, who has no bank loans to pay off, will be faced with the decision to harvest the apples and take them to the local punkt skupu (collection/purchase point) for a derisory sum (10 grosze a kilo I've seen!) as jabłko przemysłowe ('industrial apple', destined for processing) or let them fall off the trees and rot.
It is all about the marketing. Not putting premium apples and selling them in five-kilo bags, but in trays of four (ideally eco-friendly trays). Looking for novel varieties, or resurrecting old varieties, bypassed in the rush to standardisation. Several years ago, not-from-concentrate pressed (NFC) apple juice found its way into three- and five-litre boxes containing vacuum-filled bags. This solution, introduced in the 1980s as a way to market cheap Spanish wines, created an entire new market segment.
Last week, I bought one of these (left), a two-and-half litre (with an extra 250ml for free) presentation of NFC apple juice in a stand-alone bag, which dispenses with the need for the cardboard box. Innovation helps by creating new demand, but at the end of the day there's only so many apples we can eat and so much apple juice and cider we can drink in a day. Poland needs to step up its apple exports.
With the Russian market subject to sanctions, Poland's apple growers need to find new markets. India is a good example. India? you ask. Did you know the largest source of apples exported to India comes from the US and is subject to 10% duty? And that the Indian government has reacted to Trump's tariffs by raising the duty to 25%? Wow! What a market for Polish apples! But are growers ready? Is the transport infrastructure there? Do they understand the Indian market?
Remember this: Poland is the world's number three apple producer. Only China and the US produce more apples than Poland - and the US is not that far ahead. Poland is the world's number two apple exporter (by quantity) after China - but when ranked by value of those exports, Poland is only eighth. American apples are six times more valuable than Polish ones!
Yet Polish apples are superb. They have the right balance of sweetness and acidity and close texture. The climate is ideal, with plenty of late-summer/early-autumn sunshine and early frosts. What's needed is a marketing push. Anyone around in the UK in the 1970s will remember the 'Le Crunch' TV ad campaign for French Golden Delicious apples ('delicious' they are not). The campaign was so effective that France is the number one exporter of apples to the UK to this day (followed by South Africa, Chile, New Zealand and the US). Where's Poland?
While waiting for this season's apples (the first are being harvested now), I'm gorging myself on berries. On Friday, I bought half a kilo of finest blackcurrant (no tiddlers or weeds) for two and half złoty (5zł/kg). That's 50p a pound more or less. That's ridiculously cheap. The farmer's probably getting 1.50zł a kilo - and it's notoriously difficult to pick blackcurrants. (Poland's the world's second largest producer of currants after Russia.) Stats from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) - website tables here, browse around, it's addictive!
This time last year: My 20 years in Poland
(hey! It's another anniversary - 21 today!)
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