Archive for the 'Food' Category

The Farm

Published on April 2, 2012 in Food and Sustainability. Closed Tags: , , , .

Having had a very nice raised bed built last year it was finally time to get the lead out and get planting.  If it wasn’t done now, we’d miss the planting season and the raised bed wouldn’t be put to good use for another year.

Unfortunately the bed needed a bit of work first – weeding!  Once weeded I gave the soil a thorough forking to get it ready for plenty of manure and compost to be added.

320 ltr. of compost and 180 ltr. of manure later:

I kept a small portion of the bed free from manure, only adding in compost, so that carrots and parsnips can enjoy a comfortable lie in.  They apparently don’t like manure.  Again the manure and compost were well forked in to the existing soil and hoed as well.  Oh yeah, my arms hurt now.

Once the soil had been prepared the little boss, for whose benefit I’m primarily doing this arrived home and asked ” did you plant spuds?”.  Well luckily no, I’d held off on the spud planting until she’d come home as it turns out that she’s a budding hobby gardener regularly proclaiming “I want to go planting” since Judy helped her plant some flowers in another bed.

Spuds were to be planted in part of the bed as they will dig the soil for me, even though I’ve dug it quite well enough already.  10 cm deep rills were dug with Eve’s help and the spuds were duly planted.

 

3 varieties planted

Carrots and Parsnips planted in their manure free region.

Tomorrow I’ll finish off the bed by planting lettuce, garlic, courgettes and onions.  If I can fit them all in!  I have of course a few books on small holding and gardener’s idles etc. etc. so I shouldn’t go too wrong hopefully.  Next stop – I’ve some large pots which are going to become our herb garden and I want to plant Sweet Potatoes as Eve is partial to them.

Grow it Yourself

Published on March 21, 2011 in Food. 1 Comment

I just purchased Michael O’Kelly’s book Tales from the Home Farm.  I’ve long harboured a desire to follow in Hugh’s River Cottage footsteps of becoming a small hold farmer, growing my own veg and rearing my own animals for meat.  This has become even more important to me since the birth of my daughter, Eve.  And now thankfully there’s an Irish book on the subject.  Along with his first book Trading Paces, I should have some interesting reading for the summer.  Watch this space, I could have some livestock and a polytunnel before it’s all over ;o)

GM Crops? What about our meat?

Published on March 17, 2011 in Food. 1 Comment

I just watched a program on BBC called Great British Food Revival.  Continuing in the current saving traditional cooking/food tradition of Hugh, Jamie et. al. (a great initiative in my book btw as it introduces the current generation to real food and reminds the older generations of what they’ve forgotten), tonight’s program featured Clarissa Dickson Wright of Two Fat Ladies fame speaking about pork and what classes as pork in our supermarkets.  Basically, following a report in the mid 50′s which, for the sake of economies of scale, recommended that the diversity of pig breeds in the UK be dramatically cut to a handful of breeds.  Subsequently these breeds have become specialised and bred to suit the requirements of the supermarkets, namely fast growing.  This ensures a pretty tasteless meat when it hits the shelves.  Now you might say that the pork chops you recently purchased at your local supermarket tasted great and the cost was quite reasonable.  Tasted great compared to what though?  Have you ever had a pork chop from a traditionally reared pig (nowadays they’d probably be called organically reared – so they can sell it to you at a serious premium, even though that still doesn’t live up to a traditionally reared animal)?  A pork chop from such an animal simply tastes out of this world.  The supermarket stuff isn’t even in the same general classification.  And it’s not just pork chops.  No no.  Look at chickens – we now have broilers and layers, a distinction which never existed in the past.  I won’t even go in to how they’re reared or selectively bred, again to suit the needs of the supermarkets as opposed to the stomachs of the consumer.  Back in the day (BITD) you didn’t have the broilers/layer distinction.  You simply had a few hens scratching around a patch in your back yard, consuming the food waste from the dinner table.  Probably next to the pig, happily mucking around in it’s pen (if you were very lucky).  The thing is we’ve forgotten these things.  It’s too problematic, doesn’t fit in to our life style.  How difficult would having a few hens make taking two weeks in the sun every year?  There’s no such thing as boarding kennels for hens.  Unless you count the local fox population. They’d certainly look after your few hens for you.  So in the quest for convenient meat which we can have on our dinner table every night, we’ve slowly surrendered the notion of quality, good tasting, healthy food for selectively bred animals which produce the maximum amount of saleable product in the shortest possible time.  And people are worried about GM crops.  The meat you eat tonight has in all probability been manipulated in some fashion, probably through selective breeding, at the very least, to suit the needs of the supermarkets.  It certainly isn’t as tasty or naturally nutricious for you as meat you would have traditionally reared yourself.  In your own backyard.  I’m not going to worry about GM crops for the moment.  That threat is coming to a store near you soon.  I’m more worried about the meat that’s on my plate right now.  Eat less but eat better.  And stay away from monoculture or highly specialised, highly bred items as they haven’t been bred with your best interest at heart.  Only the profit margin of the company that sold it to you.

Again, I think that looking to the past needs to be part of the solution for the way forward.  Just don’t let them sell it to you as something new and amazing.  It’s not.

Food miles

Published on February 21, 2011 in Economy, Food, Humour and Sustainability. Closed Tags: , , .

So, thanks to the global economy and modern refrigeration and transportation methods we can enjoy all sorts of different foods here in Ireland which we previously barely knew existed.  Take this for example:

Consider if you will the following facts:

Surface area of the Earth:  510,072,000 km2 of which 148,940,000 km2 is land.  But how far does Santa have to travel each year to deliver all his presents to all children on earth?  The best reported figure was found by by Keld Helsgaun using a variant of his LKH heuristic algorithm. His tour of length 7,515,947,511 meters was found on November 27, 2008.  This equates to 7,515,948 km’s.

Male Reindeer can live to over 10 years, but let’s assume 10 years for the purpose of the exercise. 

Let’s assume that Rudolf was at least 3 years old when he took up his position at the head of Santa’s sleigh and continued in that role until he expired, so a total of 7 years.  That means that he has traveled approx. 52,611,633 km’s in the employ of Santa.

Furthermore, let’s assume for arguments sake that a Reindeer covers 500 km in it’s migration from winter to summer lands and a further 500 km back again.  As Rudolf only flies for Santa on one night a year, it is reasonable to assume that for the other 364 days of the year he would follow the normal pattern of Reindeer.  That’s an annual distance of 1,000 km’s for 10 years, so that’s 10,000 km’s

These are just the big ticket items in the typical life of a Reindeer.  Now add the distance of his migratory journeys to the distance he covers on Christmas every year and then also add in the distance from Lapland to Ireland (Dublin to be precise), approx. 3000 km’s, and you come up with a grand total of 52,624,633 km travelled by that meat before it ended up in the shop in which I bought it.  Now that’s serious food miles.

But let’s be serious for a moment.  I make an effort to look out for and where possible to buy Irish sourced meat and vegetables when we go to the supermarket.  But most of the fruit that I buy has come from afar, as has some of the meat, and has covered a not insignificant amount of mileage in order to get here.  By supporting local farmers and markets we can get top quality produce here in Ireland but we may possibly have to sacrifice some variety.  Some of the variety penalty we would have to suffer could be subsequently made up if Irish farmers and food producers see that there is a market and demand for Irish produced goods.  We’re also supporting a local industry which has been in decline for a number of reasons (some of which we need to look to the EU as a reason for).   There is much talk in the media about a new breed of educated Irish farmer which I think we need to give a chance to and who can help us to utilize our country’s land better and more sustainably.

Sustain – the alliance for better food and farming

Published on January 27, 2011 in Food. Closed Tags: , , .

Another topic other than transport which is near and dear to my heart (or should that be stomach) – Food!!!

http://www.sustainweb.org/

From their website – “Sustain advocates food and agriculture policies and practices that enhance the health and welfare of people and animals, improve the working and living environment, promote equity and enrich society and culture.”

I came across this crowd through Hugh’s Fish Fight site.  There appears to be a huge number of real world project and campaigns that they are working on.  And they have some interesting, and in some cases downright challenging, recipes and publications.  How does “Bake Your Lawn: Grow it, mill it, bake it, eat it” sound?  I’ll let you draw your own conclusions on that one.  I need to read the site a bit more to get a handle on what exactly they’re involved in, but I do fully support Hugh’s Fish Fight.  It’s not bad enough that we, the Irish, practically gave away our fishing rights in our own waters so that foreign factory ships can come in and plunder the fish stocks here, we also have the fish quotas and practice of discards affecting the fish stocks. 

Returning to a system of landing what you catch as opposed to dumping everything that you catch but don’t have a quota for and broadening the range of fish which we consume is extremely important to the balanced survival of all fish species, not just the 5 or so species which we regularly consume.  Try some Pollock, with a little Thai fish sauce and dill herbs, wrapped in tin foil and popped in the oven.  It’s beautiful and best of all really cheap as Pollock is regarded by many as a fish you can’t eat or with no taste, which is just a stupid old wives tale.

Hugh’s Fish Fight – Half of all fish caught in the North Sea is thrown back overboard dead

Published on January 24, 2011 in Food. Closed Tags: , , .

Hugh’s Fish Fight – Half of all fish caught in the North Sea is thrown back overboard dead.