[solway cropper]

For those of you not from the wild north-west, ratching means basically looking around for something or anything that might come in useful. Anyway, a glorious spring day so I put doggy, shovel and a load of fertilizer sacks in the car and set off for a drive around the back roads. All along the verges the moles have been active so I collected 3 sacks of molehill soil which I'll use to make up potting compost. Further along someone had been cutting back the gorse and burning it in a big heap. Net result, one sack of wood ash...good fertilizer. Then on to a spot where the high tides often wash up all manner of stuff. Got two large plastic tubs and some heavy duty netting for the cukes to climb up. To top it off I filled the last 2 sacks with seaweed that the high tides had dumped and that will go into the compost bins. Who said you don't get owt for nowt 

[arugula]

That was a good haul SC!

[madcat]

It weren't for nowt!  You put your time, energy and ingenuity (and petrol) in and got something good out of it!   

[Slowgrind]

Ratching round here was the term a miner used  for the amount of coal won to earn a days pay! I often heard my miner father in law talk about getting a ratch out.