Green under the ground: the Mile End tunnel farm rebuild

The Mile End spur flooded in March when the old station pumps finally gave up. For five months it was a black canal with a platform sticking out of it. As of this morning, it is a farm again, or the beginning of one: two hundred metres of racks under pink light, and the sound of water running the right way for once.

How we are doing it

Spanner cell pumped the southbound side dry with a hand-cranked bilge pump and a lot of shift rotas. The racks are old supermarket shelving, bolted to the tunnel ribs. The lamps are red and blue LED strip salvaged from shop signs, dumb as bricks, with no driver chips; I checked every metre myself with a loupe. Power comes from a salvaged diesel and, when the diesel is thirsty, a bicycle gang of twelve on a dynamo rig.

The seed came from the vault under the Sector 9 stack, the same stack that feeds a third of the eastern warrens. We asked for lettuce, beans and herbs. We got lettuce, beans, herbs and one packet labelled 'Fun', which turned out to be radishes.

A tunnel that grows things is harder to take from us than a tunnel that just hides us. The Continuance can find you. It cannot make you stop planting.

What we need

• Hands and buckets for the northbound side, which is still knee deep. Pedal crews for the dynamo rig, four-hour shifts, and Bunny's kitchen says it will feed anyone who pedals.
• Copper wire, jam jars, and any aquarium pump without a chip in it. Bring them to the Mile End hatch and ask for Spanner.

First lettuce is due in five weeks. When it comes, it goes first to the school at Hollow Deep and to Hanna's sick bay. It is not much. But it is green, it is ours, and it grew twenty metres down in the Undercroft, under a machine that thinks it owns the sun.