Maple Field

KENSON ORGANICS (VEG)…………THIS IS IT !

From the cheerful corner of Salisbury Charter market that is Kenson Organics ,under that colourful awning, I buy from ever- cheerful Russell, his glasses with the sun visors open like the upwardly opening doors of a sports car ,   two generous bundles of asparagus,suddenly and abruptly poking up through the parallel mounds of Nadder top soil back at the farm,  to break the ‘hungry gap’ (February to May) when winter crops run out or customers get fed up with stews and winter soups;   I add a huge bag of five different salad greens;   two bunches of freshly pulled ‘this season’ onions complete with a forest of greenery to use as onion garnish;   a bunch of fresh garlic also waving its full quota of green leaves, to put sandwich flavours into the stratosphere for a week  –   and with my package of organic delights including a bag of apples,  I catch the X3 bus home with a warm afterglow and a Full- English of Nadder River nutrients to pave our passage through another week.

And this not a ‘flash visit’   –  These generous people are there every Tuesday and Saturday, sometimes the whole family,  always two of them;   and you notice the people they attract around them,  you feel the energy behind this 24 year old business,  the love of it,   the devotion and such human-ness attracts other great humans to join in as customers and as Co- connectors with the earth beside the river Nadder,  and all its outcomes. These people,  Hugh and Liz,  have chosen to occupy a piece  –   their piece  –   of common ground in the centre of Salisbury City,  two days a week every week of the year around which we are invited to cluster and, with I, we can reunite with the land and briefly acknowledge our co-dependence  –   and to say thank you for the chance.

The onions and the garlic went into the chicken Curry on Saturday night with asparagus, lightly steamed,  as an aside and our wee smelt metallic and weird after,  as if the waters of the Nadder had expressed- trained through us and left us with a final reminder …….. to go back to the charter plot in the market,  guarded for us by these great farmers.