When the Babalskis’ fields are covered by a featherbed of snow, and the land underneath it is hard as rock, the life of the soil sleeps, and can rest easy until spring. But recently the winters have been warmer and warmer. And the soil really doesn’t like that.

“The balance gets disturbed,” Farmer Mieczysław explains to me. “I remember how we used to get two to three metres of snow and Pokrzydowo was completely buried. Fortunately everybody had horses, and we’d get around on sleighs. But since the end of the 80s, the winters have been getting milder. Now it can even happen that the ground doesn’t freeze. The weeds germinate, in the spring there’s more diseases, pests; there’s no frost to regulate it. The vegetation is disturbed. That’s the same reason why you can’t touch the soil in the winter. There’s a saying: ‘Who the earth in winter tears, his ground will be ill for seven years.’ Tear it, meaning ploughing it.”

“But Advent ends in December, and the winter’s still going on!”

“Gardeners plant and sow in plastic