Human digging machine

In January 1994 the following article appeared in Amateur Gardener

 

You may just recognise a much younger looking Jan. It really is a wonder that he mixes with the likes of us after his fifteen minutes of fame!

 

Tom Montgomery reports

 

How fast can you dig an allotment? A day? Half-a day? Jan Olenczyn, who is 33, can do it in 50 minutes, which must be something of a record. He claims to be faster than a rotavator.

 

 

When his father, also Jan, got to work on a similar-sized plot with a machine, Jan junior started making the soil fly with a spade. Jan senior turned his plot over twice, to break up the earth, but his son finished before him.

 

 

"I couldn't do it if the earth was hard, it's got to be land that's been cultivated," said the one-man-digging machine, "but I don't hang about once I get going with a spade."

 

 

Father and son are no slouches when it comes to gardening, either. They have won their section of the Wakefield Allotment Gardens Competition for the last six years and were gardeners of the year in 1986 and 1991. They would have won the title more but they can only compete every five years to give others a chance.

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Digging is child's play to body-builder Jan Olenczyn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They are the only gardeners who enter three allotments which are judged on neatness, straightness, quality of plants and lack of weeds. It's a pity the judges don't hang around to sample the vast amount of produce they grow because they might get an extra award for taste. Their cabbage melts in the mouth.

 

 

Carrots, parsnips, potatoes, sprouts, beans, peas, sweet corn... what they grow feeds four families, friends, neighbours and some pensioners living nearby. "We all have big freezers full, plus the winter vegetables including 600 leeks. My wife never visits the greengrocers," said Jan junior.

 

 

Dad is no slouch either when it comes to prize veg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sadly Jan's dad is no longer with us.