At the beginning of the year we decided to expand the area we put down to vegetabels and looking at the new orchard we thought this would be a good place to start.

Firstly to turn over the soil and then to incorporate loads of manure. To do this we needed a machine that could cope with the heavy soil and after taking advice from Ray Smith, a friend in the Somerset Smallholders Association we tracked down a Howard Gem. This piece of vintage kit is as old as I am but it is certainly up to the task.

We turned over the area and left it for a week to let the grass die off and then we spread a good few trailer loads of well rotted manue, collected from Roger Francis, a dairy farmer friend, and then we rotovated again. This left us with a fine seed bed ready for sowing.