🌱 Archers thread #131: A time to plant, a time to reap. Discuss The Archers here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads.

All views on The Archers welcome here! New blood welcomed. We don't all agree on all points and most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that you also have a few millions lying around you're not sure how to invest, or other unusual things.

Spoilers: not on this thread, please. We don't wait for the omnibus to discuss the week night episodes, but we do try our best to avoid cross-contamination from www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/4197199--The-Archers-spoilers-thread-6-Cant-wait-for-7-02pm-Join-us-here, where spoilers are positively welcomed!

For newer listeners, lurkers or those who just have no idea what we're talking about, @DadDadDad has created this useful thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3557323-For-Archers-fans-a-guide-to-acronyms-on-the-long-running-discussion-threads-and-any-other-meta-thread-questions-you-may-have - BOOP point for him! (See thread for explanation.)

Thanks to @Roysnewshirt and @Edmontine for title suggestions, and apologies to anyone I’ve missed or forgotten. In the end, inspired by Edmontine's idea and a brief discussion at the end of the last thread, I remembered that it's autumn now and the Ambridge farmers are presumably sowing barley, winter wheat, potatoes etc, so I found myself recollecting Ecclesiastes 3 (King James version) - my Church of Scotland upbringing has a lot to answer for. This led me back to one of my favourite numbers by The Byrds (written by Pete Seeger):

Roysnewshirt suggested Prayer cards, rehab, a glass of scotch, a bowl of chilli or even a dish of lasagne…we offer a range of solutions here to help you solve any Ambridge problem - large or small etc etc, which is as good a point as any to start this thread. Do we think Neil and Susan are solid again? Will Alice relapse? Will Shula confess all to the Bishop?

Reflecting on last night's offering, Edmontine said I’m musing on Baby steps … - but we need the culmination of Alice’s story this week. We have a new nurse in training, a possibly resigning midwife settling in Ambridge, Xander, Martha, Alice somewhere trying to find her feet sans grog, Shula trying to find her saintly feet sans Neil …B(ill)eth & Ben. Lots and lots of newness. Stir in Three’s blood and jam …

The blood and jam made me laugh. A lot. Just as well, as the storyline that line inspired is pants.

Over to you!

@EdmontinaDonsAutumnalHues

Shades of HWMNBN …

Oh dear gods, don't let Smugula happen across him!

No doubt sodding Monty, given the merest sniff of Blake's napkin, will, like the bloodhound he isn't is, reliably track the fugitive down.
I'm hopeful about the 'strong painkillers', but only slightly

Poor child probably found the Winter shed easier than the three course dinner assault course.

@EdmontinaDonsAutumnalHues

Poor child probably found the Winter shed easier than the three course dinner assault course.

I very much hope that he will turn out simply to have gone back to the hostel, where he was happy because the bed was soft and they let him have a big breakfast without all the kafuffle. And the staff were not pretending anything. He was very strong on that point in their favour.

that way they might only have to sell 30 acres or so, definitely not the whole farm. I think what Brian was saying was if they had to do that, what remained wouldn't be viable as a farm.

Whenever has a nearly 2000 acre farm been dependent on 30 acres? Brian need to give his head a serious wobble.

Have they bought a lot of land and kept it, since 2012? I know they bought some just before the pollution SL, but they then had to sell it again to pay for the clean-up.

In 2012 Home Farm was said in the printed Who's Who to be "1,585 mainly arable acres".

I’m afraid AQATT when I googled it I took the first answer. I shall bow to your definitely superior knowledge, but even 1,585 acres is still a very substantial farm.

I'm going back a couple of episodes here, but if money is so tight, how did Tracey afford to add Chelsea to her car insurance? That's usually an arm and a leg isn't it?

@Molecule

I’m afraid AQATT when I googled it I took the first answer. I shall bow to your definitely superior knowledge, but even 1,585 acres is still a very substantial farm.

I don't think I have superior knowledge on this; I simply looked at the place I knew it to be written down, and tried to remember any land added to the farm in the past eight years or so.

Perhaps the figure you got was the one when they had bought the land from BL and not yet had to sell it again? That would explain it.

I’ve just re-googled and it came from Wikipedia. No idea where they got the figure from.

Looking at the Wikipedia page, they give the acreage of Home Farm as 1,992 acres; but they also say that "in recent years, Home Farm expanded into soft fruit and deer farming" which is accurate as to the deer (I assume they still have those, we haven't heard that they got rid of them) but not the soft fruit, because one of Adam's recent decisions was to get out of soft fruit and take up fish-farming instead.

And they say Bridge Farm is 168 acres, whereas it is 140 acres plus 32 acres rented according to the BBC Who's Who, and as far as I know, again, Pat and Tony haven't bought any land since 2012: they've sold some, though not much.

And they say that Lower Loxley Hall is just outside Ambridge, when it is in a different village (called Lower Loxley). They say that Willow Farm belongs to the Tucker family, which it hasn't for ages, and that Grey Gables has a golf course, which it hasn't since Caroline bought it in 2006: the golf course was sold separately, to BL, and that was the only reason Oliver and Carline could afford to buy the hotel.

Details like that which I can check on make me doubt whether anything else on that page I feel might not be right is more likely to be what they think than what I think.

Caroline, not Carline!

Shades of HWMNBN just caught up and was coming on here to type exactly the same comment.

Wiki isn't always right.

Bleak will be in the shepherd's hut perhaps.

Going from a shed to a three course meal and Egyptian cotton was always going to be a bit of a stretch. Lynda always seems to know best- except, of course, she invariably doesn’t.

@ScruffGin It doesn’t cost much to put a beginner on your car insurance as they have to be supervised by someone who has passed their test at all times. Insurance becomes expensive once the beginner can drive on their own.

Poor Blake. Such faith in the wrong people.

Bleak will be in the shepherd's hut perhaps
I don't care where he is so long as we don't have to listen to him again.

@ScruffGin

I'm going back a couple of episodes here, but if money is so tight, how did Tracey afford to add Chelsea to her car insurance? That's usually an arm and a leg isn't it?

Maybe she didn’t? And where’s the police involvement? Or is running down escaped slaves fair game?

A possible plot line would be the council or a social care provider building/refurbing a property for people in need of supported living services, such as Bleak*. Cue all the objections about drug addicts and ex convicts from the villagers, and totally echoing what happens in real life when such a plan is proposed.
Bleak is a vulnerable person and eligible for housing and social care help - theoretically at least given council budgets, and possible not something he is willing and able to accept.
*I don't know if Bleak was a typo up thread, but it works.

My typing is impeckable

Bleak is the right name for the lad who was helped by Kursedy

What might be helpful would be someone suggesting to Blake that he wanted to get back together with Jordan and Kenzie, and if he told them everything he knows about Victoria they might be able to find his mates for him.

Who knows about moustache-twirling villain Victoria, though? Did GaVIN tell Kirsty?

Blake does. That's why asking him about finding Kenzie and Jordan so he can get back together with them might be productive of something.