The Beets are Being Harvested

It's that time of the year in Newark again, the time when the giant sugar factory belches back into life, belching its clouds of smoke into the air - these help me judge the wind direction when I'm cycling home - and wafting its thick organic order over the town.

Sugar beet time, the time when you find their lumpy brown corpses littering the roads like velociraptor droppings, the time when you find piles of them walled around fields like ancient fortifications, the time when you wonder what it would taste like if you made one into chips and fried them.

Came across the harvest on a Hawton farm being loaded up into a trailer today, ready to be taken a couple of miles across town to be made into smells for autumn.

Immediately after on my 9km plod, came across a Nottinghamshire County Council logo on a park bench that was sinking back into a mass of lichens. Thought it was wonderful.

Saw one last house martin over a field today, swooping around feeding, probably having migrated from further north. I wish it well.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 02.10.17