The Weather Vane

Again, our dear Sugar Factory.

We have northerly winds today. I know that for two reasons.

The first is that you can smell the sugar factory, the rich, organic and earthy sweet smell of roasting / refining / whatever the hell it is they do sugar beet. It lies to the north of the town, on The Great North Road, a retro looking mass of belching pipes and chimneys, and when you can smell it, you know the wind is from degree zero.

The second is that as I sit at work, watching the twilight behind the dark clouds of smoke it emits as I plan my journey home, I use it as a weather vane. When the smoke blows to the left, it means it is indeed a northerly wind, usually a cold one although not today, and will not be into my face.

Every day in autumn and  winter I check it, until the campaign ends in March, when warmer weather means I fear the wind less.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 11.01.19

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