Happy New Year 2012

Happy new year to everyone

As promised I’ve added to my New Year Resolutions to blog more often.
For January I’ll be:
planning the garden
Bottling up the Apple and Damson wines
General smallholding chores
Kieran is also going to be making more of his oatmeal stour (yum) and bottling his beer.

Our Goats also got into our apple trees and killed some 12 year old trees that were harvesting really well so I tink I’ll have to shop for some new ones (BTW I’m now down to just one goat).

I’ll get the info up as we go & I’m really looking forward to a new year.

All the best,
Róisín

Trip to Tip

Well we went to tipperary to Eugine to have our broilers killed today.

It’s our first time out with birds as we normally do them at home & I have to say I’ll be going back, time wise we ran over but the people were lovely & you see your birds being killed very efficiently.

The birds are killed, plucked, eviscerated, chilled and bagged much quicker than we’ve ever managed. Currently we have 24 birds in our freezer & I’m looking forward to the first Roast.

Cost of killing them was €2 each, well worth it for our lovely free range birds – we also left them get big the smallest was 2kg dead weight, which means we should get a couple of meals from them (although I try for 3, 2 main and then boil the carcass for Chicken noodle soup).

Have a lovely evening everyone – I’m off to finish feeding the pigs.

All the best Róisín

Ooops I did it again!!!

I think that’s the start to a song?

Anyhoo who would’ve guessed that moving a couple of chicken houses by myself could wreak havoc but yep I put myself out of action for a couple of months because I damaged my back – The Doctor asked me what I was doing when it happened & I didn’t think it was much until I listed what I had been up to that day & his jaw hit the floor.

He called it Gardeners Back & I was on the flat of that back for 6 weeks, stir crazy was a given & himself had a stir crazy wife to deal with so in order to avoid all future episodes I now “salute the sun” (yoga move) most days and am also trying to teach myself how to dig correctly – You have to fall forward onto your spade & use your weight to dig, mmm think I’ll root up a link & put it up.

Anyway the long and the short of it is that my blogging was neglected for a while – I did start back but haven’t got them up yet – I’m playing catch up at the moment.

I’ll head off now and get cracking

Tips for getting small people gardening

We have a great wee gardener in our son, for a few years now he is growing using the square ft method & He’s trouncing us in the return ie weight. (although we do give him our best beds & himself spends a lot of time building the soil up)

I’ve had a few people ask how did we get him interested & now currently we have our girls getting started – Our methods were simple & when you think of it can apply to anyone.

1. Start small – we gave him 3 x 10 feet

2. Use plants rather than seeds – quicker results

3. Include something fun – Sunflower or strawberries

4. Company, okay I know this is a no brainer but in case you forget, be out in the garden with them discuss how their plot is going, give them a hand where needed & lots of praise.

5. Use what they grow-Our son had the first crop of early salad potatoes in his second year & those potatoes steamed and tossed with butter and herbs were a serious delight.

That was it & for us has worked – Oh & for anyone with small people for the coming year invest in wellies, you’ll need them.

Happy New Year!!! – Plots & Plans for 2011

Happy New Year!!!!

May 2011 be a productive & happy one for all…..

Woohoo, it’s time to peruse my gardening seed catalogues that have arrived in over Christmas (& look up my favourite sites).

Now there is actually a knack to this (well for us it’s more of a wierd habit… LOL but it’s fun).

1. Kids to bed

2. Roaring fire

3. Pot of tea & your best comfort food

4. Sit down with your new reading material, blank pages, biro or pencil & reference books. This is definitely a job for the kitchen table….

5. Start plotting what you’re going to grow for the coming year

The above could take a few hours (or days!!) to do but have fun…

We will be doing ours over the next week. It will be a plan for a family of 5 2 Adults & 3 Kids. Will pop it up online as soon as it’s finished.

BTW while above may sound a bit detailed there is nothing wrong with newbies starting with lettuce and scallions or buying plugs of plants to pop into the ground. The important thing is to get growing.

All the best,

Róisín

What we’ve been up to

We’ll we said goodbye to our mobile home which we spent 6 happy years in (part of a 10 year battle for planning – which we eventually got).
I must admit I didn’t think i’d be as sentimental seeing it go but I can admit that later on that night out came the pictures and a bottle of our wine while we poured over the many years we spent in it.
We also started in on some more guttering and down pipes (nearly finished this bit thankfully).
I try to pull a few pictures and get them up

Why Open Pollinated Seeds are so closely linked to our success.

Modern seeds are bred for uniformity in size and colour. There have been numerous papers & research done on the drop in levels of vitamins and minerals in our vegetables.
Why is this happenning?
Why do older breeds of seeds have more vitamins and minerals in them?
Our ancestors couldn’t have planned this as the very idea of Vitamins and minerals is only a recent one, so how did the improve their seed?

Kieran told me of a recent article/paper he was reading & talk about a light bulb moment going off in my head!! Just had to share it.

Over thousands of years we have grown our own vegetables so imagine 2 farmers side by side.
Farmer A – Uses a bad quality seed (quality being poor in Vitamens and Minerals). Less of her children survive, those that do have multiple problems.

Farmer B – Uses a better quality seed, more of her kids survive, are stronger (physically & mentally).

The variance between the two is probably small but now imagine this….

Farmer A’s passes on her seed to her children, they go and now form familys using the poorer seed. They do survive but don’t thrive…

Farmer B passes on her better quality seed to her kids (which are now more numerous, stronger etc.) And they multiply and thrive at a greater rate.

Farmer A & B are a quick view of probably what happened over generations. At some stage (because we are a community based creature) the seed of Farmer B was probably shared with the Farmer A desendants.

Through more and more of these wee branch offs and improvements both the seeds and humans themselves would have improved and become what they are today.

Modern Seeds have none of these important links with us & what you buy in the supermarket is concerned with uniformity and quick growth only.

Modern Open Pollinated seed are the best that there is although they are not longer as closely associated with our success (we have access to food now that we no longer grow).

I really would like to see someone doing research on the food value of different seeds. I’m sure there must be someone researching the vitamin and mineral content, so if anyones does know please drop us a line.

Brings a new meaning to You are what you eat.