1. Wait until it snows. A lot.

2. Then wait a bit longer, until a good smattering of sleet and near-Arctic night-time temperatures have frozen any would-be slush entirely solid.

3. Set off to collect your Christmas dinner veg in a large and unwieldy Mercedes estate car with less-than-ideal traction in icy conditions.

4. Abandon said estate car after several attempts at the humpback bridge on the way to the allotment, nod politely at the small but appreciative crowd that has gathered to watch your efforts, and walk/skate the last quarter-mile.

5. Arrive at allotment, march up to parsnip bed armed with large border fork and drive it firmly and confidently towards the ground where you last saw your parsnips (now, of course, merely tufts of green poking up from the snow due to your diligence in following instruction 1).

6. Nurse large bruise on chin where said fork ricochets off the iron-hard earth and bounces right back up at you again.

7. Wish you’d remembered to bring the crowbar as you’re clearly not going to manage this in the conventional way without major injury.

Yep, I’ve forgotten to straw up my parsnips again. Every year I promise myself I will remember to put a thick layer of straw around the parsnips so they don’t freeze into the ground before I can get them out in time for Christmas. Every year I forget.

Luckily when I went back up this evening it had started raining rather than sleeting so from last night’s -7°C it was above freezing for the first time in a week and the ground had more-or-less defrosted again. This year I’ve managed parsnips, sprouts and a few slightly bedraggled carrots for Christmas – next year (also on my must-remember list) I shall have hidden some of the maincrop potato store in an obscure and inaccessible place so we don’t eat them by mistake again.

So I’m looking forward to a wonderful mostly-home-grown Christmas, and to all who pop by here from time to time – very, very happy returns of the season and may all your parsnips be straight in 2010!