A Cardboard Box Of Seed Potatoes And A Couple of Bags Of Onions.

Did you plant your seed potatoes on St Patrick's Day?   No we didn't either.  It's the first time in twenty plus years of growing vegetables that I couldn't get on the land to plant them.  I honestly think climate change is playing a big part in giving us milder and wetter winters.  Saying that there was sleet yesterday.  March is an exceptionally cold month this year.  There is nothing you can do, you just have to wait.

What seed potatoes are you planting this year.  We are growing 'Home Guard'.  They were first bred during the Second World War and are named after the Dad's Army "Local Defence Volunteers".  They are a first early.  Why are our new  potatoes always ready to harvest when it's too hot to eat them?  

A Des Res In The Country?

I found this postcard in the cupboard/press the other day.  Rural Ireland and parts of Europe have lots of such properties.  Properties for sale for under 50000 Euros.  I saw a ruin on the Internet in the Algarve for 16000 Euros the other day.  In Ireland I saw a cottage with an acre of land for 25000 Euros.

Could you live in a caravan and renovate such a property?  I think I could if it was somewhere warm like Portugal.  Or would you just buy somewhere already renovated?  My dream would be somewhere with a little fishing pond.

Characters That Make You Smile.

I saw this wonderful photograph in a shop window in Killarney last weekend.  The man in the photograph looks like a farmer who had gone to town on it's Fair Day.  We have our Fair Day (Bantry, today) on the first Friday of the month.  In Ireland it was the day when farmers walked their cattle to the town square to sell them.  Pigs and sheep were also sold this way.  

The man in the photograph reminds me of when I got my first allotment in England.  I use to load up Netto (dear old Netto) with carrier bags of our freshly harvested onions, potatoes, cabbage, carrots etc.  I would sway down the road with the bags nearly getting stuck in the spokes of the wheel.  

Did you ever move house with a bicycle or a supermarket shopping trolley?  Or do you carry things home on your push iron?  Go on lets have a laugh and a joke.