Irish Pub Sign.

 

Yoghert For Dogs!

A photo took in Petmania in Tralee a week or so.

Yog-hert is the way yoghurt is pronounced in Ireland.

We were looking for dog treats to reward Heidi for bringing 3 fat puppies into the world.

They are doing fine and they are squeaking away like newborn human babies.

I was amazed to see a fridge freezer full of "dog" yoghurt!

Stop the world 🌎 I want to get off.  I think it was 8 Euros sixty for a tub.

Sorry girls but we didn't purchase.

Three Fat German Shepherd Puppies.

 Remember in December 2023 when Heidi our German Shepherdess bitch had ten beautiful 🐶 puppies 🐶?

Well we bred her again when she last came into heat.  Last Friday dear old Heidi Pied gave birth to just 3 fat puppies:

Proud Heidi with her 3 new Canine babies.

I call them her: "Three Musketeers".  

We were a bit disappointed when she only had the 3 pups.  But then we realised mother and babies are in perfectly health and we are going to have 3 bundles of fun to play with for 11 weeks.

J bought Heidi a full sized chicken and roasted it in the oven for her.  Heidi wolfed it down and washed it down with her dish full of milk pop!

Heidi needs her strength to feed her 3 fat puppies.

The Passing Of Another Rock Hero Of My Youth.

 Rick Buckler the drummer from The Jam passed away aged 69 the other day.  They were often described as a Mod band.  I always thought them more New Wave/Punk.  

Like so many of the bands of my youth they sang with working class teenage angst.  

I never got to see them live but I did once see Bruce Foxton the bassist and his band play at a outdoor  music festival in Rochdale with some of my friends.  

One of my pals N died when he was only about forty.  He was such a character and could be so funny on our pub trips to Hebden Bridge and Haworth.  I miss him very much.  

I have lost contact with so many people but then again I have lived nearly a quarter of a century in Ireland.

I once blogged about us (N and me) going on a school trip to Belle Vue Zoo  in Manchester and feeding our home made  sandwiches to the Polar bears.  Remember jars of Princess beef paste jars?  

Our mums added the salt and pepper.  The Polar bears reached out and pawed the sandwiches like a famous Manchester City German goalkeeper used to save goals. 

Then we went on the paddle boats and N created an enormous tide ripple and splash and two fit girls on another boat in our class got their short skirts and no doubt knickers wet?  

We howled with laughter and so did the girls and we bought them hot dogs from Wimpy.   Belle Vue is now an housing estate in Gorton.  

I have chosen " Going Underground" by The Jam for one of their videos to play.  

Paul Weller wrote it in response to the awful  then Conservative government that cared nothing for the millions of unemployed and seemed content to make England into an American aircraft carrier with an enormous nuclear arsenal.  

My West Cork smallholding is a nuclear free zone!

I remember going on a massive 200000 plus CND March in London in the early eighties.   A time when political parties had much differing views and not with policies seperated by the thickness of cigarette paper like todays parties.  

Only last week Keir Starmer visited Hinkley Point praising nuclear power.  This week he wants to put British troops in Ukraine.  The mind boggles.  You become a peace keeper soldier Mr Prime minister?🤔

Any way enjoy the tune.  Did any of you ever see The Jam live?

This song would be a good digging song for us gardeners:

Starting Off Parsnips Seeds In The Kitchen.

Yes I blogged on the same subject last April if you remember dear readers?

Traditionally the old gardeners books in England always said to sow your Parsnips seeds outside in February.

We have a lot milder temperature wise Februarys in 🇮🇪 Ireland but the last few winters have been exceptionally windy and very very wet.

I got my seed germination idea from Ivan's Allotment on good old You Tube:

One Chinese takeaway away tray or a Tupperware one.  Place some damp kitchen towel in the bottom and scatter your Parsnip or any of last years vegetables seeds on the paper towel.  Then place the lid on the top of the container and place it somewhere warm like on top of a cooker hood.

Usually Parsnip seeds can take 28 days to germinate.  This method will ensure that your seeds will be sprouting with tails within 6 to 7 days.

Heat and moisture play such a big part.  You don't need to sow them in the allotment soil and place a plank on the surface to keep them dry.

There is a lot to be said for indoor gardening.

Starting Sowing Vegetables In The In-house Potting Shed.

Now my polytunnel is in a ground/plastic under repair position.   I have decided to start my seed propagation indoors.

This was no mean feat and it took us the best part of an hour to move the flotsam and jetsam and detritus of every day domestic life like black bin bags full of clothes.

Spare boxrooms are like sheds.  The more you have the more you will fill them.

Any road any way:

🌰 Onions ("Snowball") sets pressed into plastic planting modules half filled with potting compost.  This method works far better than pushing the poor onion sets in the cold and very wet soil.  We'll have a look at their progress in a few weeks.

We also sowed 🍅 tomatoes,  leeks, lettuce and cabbages.  

Then we sprayed them with a mist and cut along the seam of a polythene bag and covered up the trays.  Hopefully the dogs and cats will leave them alone?

Anyone else making their spare bedroom into a chitting room/potting shed?  It's got to be better than rebuilding your motorbike in the front room or kitchen?

I feel my pre spring growing itchiness stress wearing off after our indoor sowing adventures. 

This will be the third incredibly wet winter on the trot.

Buying Compost At A Home, DIY And Gardening Store.

 We went in Woodies in Tralee for some compost.

I opted to purchase two bags of compost for 15 Euros.  They are 9.99 on their own.  So I bought the two bags:

60 litre bag of multi purpose compost.  We are always after a gardening bargain or two?

Is it me or are the shops adding a pound or Euros to every item this year?

I am going to start off some vegetables seeds and plant onion 🌰 sets in compost in plastic modules in the "Chitting Room" or small bedroom this week.

Conditions are very wet and not very warm outdoors.  Plus I have no indoor gardening shelter since Storm Eown caused havoc recently to my polytunnel cover.

We noticed lots of storm damaged derelict old houses, agricultural buildings and fallen trees on our travels at the weekend.

I see little point in planting onion sets off in cold and saturated soil when I can start them off indoors in plastic compost filled modules.

We also plan to begin sowing vegetables trays this week.  We will keep them in doors for a few weeks before planting them outside and harden them off.

Anyone started planting and sowing yet?

First Carboot Sale Of The Year.

 Plants and bric a brac for sale.

We travelled two and half hours to county Limerick to a carboot sale on Saturday morning.

It was trying to rain and most booters decided to walk backwards and forwards carrying their wares inside a community hall.

We decided to be brave and decided to empty the van and tough it out.

One woman asked me if I would sell a print painting with a neatly carved frame for 3 Euros?  I said that I wanted 5 Euros at least and the frame was worth that.  The lady said it wasn't worth it would take a lot of cleaning and walked away.

Carbooting reminds me of my old coarse fishing days.  Sometimes you catch and some times you don't.

A cheerful man  asked me how much my plants were and I told him what species they were and their price.  The man bought four off me for twenty Euros.  I gave him a plant for free.  He was really made up and patted me on my back.

That's all we made: 20 Euros.  Then I paid the carboot lady organiser 12 Euros for our pitch and we were left with 8 Euros!

What a waste of time.  Perhaps we has tried selling to early in the year?

I won't be going there again.

Last year at a carboot sale a fellow booter told me had done a carboot once and never sold a thing and he paid ten pounds to sit in a carpark for the morning.😄

Empty Houses And Empty Rooms.

 An old homestead dwelling not resided in since the Great Famine.

This is one of the old ruins that I often walk past and think about on my hill walks near where we live.

I have read there are over 110,000 derelict properties here in Ireland.  If you look on Daftie  you will see properties in places like county Kerry for 50000 Euros or less.

There is a empty houses government grant of up to sixty thousand Euros to renovate such properties.  Some councils do not always give planning permission especially if the property is isolated and there is no infrastructure like a council road to the property.

I have also read that the owners of some of the ruins emigrated overseas and died and no one knows who owns the properties.

I think it's sad when I see old buildings fall into disarray and get covered in Ivy and the gales demolish them for ever.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

In my almost a quarter of a century living in rural Ireland I have seen parts of the building in the photo disappear.

'Empty Rooms" by the great Gary Moore plays on my mental jukebox when I think of such derelict and unloved properties that people once called home.

Filling Up The Repurposed Raised Bed And Weeding.

 A busy day on the smallholding veg plot:

I filled up the repurposed oil tank this morning with fym and home-made compost and topsoil.

Then I went weeding and forking over the raised beds made from planks, old tractor tyres, fish boxes, plastic baths and old heating oil tanks.

IBC tanks.

Old barrel.

Old plastic baths.

The long bed is made out of old decking planks.

The corridor of raised beds.

Plank raised beds with Japanese onions 🌰 growing in them.

Even more raised beds.

The long raised bed.  We grew tomatoes there last year and peas.

Old Ford 3000 tractor tyres.

I finished my gardening at 3 o'clock this afternoon.  It had just begun to rain.  I counted 45 raised beds including the fish boxes and tyres planters.

Apart from moving a lot of perennials in the polytunnel and taking up the black plastic tarpaulin and digging it over for new potatoes and adding seaweed and fym.  That's my winter veg work done and ready for the planting season.

Are your beds and veg plot ready for planting?

More Repurposed Raised Beds For The Veg Plot.

 Number two son drilled me some drainage holes in half a old plastic heating oil tank.

Half an heating oil tank.  Drilled for drainage and put into place in the veg plot.

Once again I will practice the German Hugelkultur gardening method and half fill it with shrub prunings and fresh fym.  Then I will fill the top half with well rotten fym, compost and topsoil.

Soon they will be raised beds like the ones below.

Old IBC tanks cut in half and planted with leeks.  We love our homegrown potato and leek soup.

Old plastic baths repurposed and used for growing vegetables.

More cut in half heating oil tanks and a bath.

Raised beds are great for drainage and the soil is at least at knee height.  Some are at waist height.  This is very good for people with bad backs and none of us are getting any younger are we?

Once again may I add that my repurposed raised beds are suitable for anywhere.  You could even grow vegetables on concrete.  Don't worry about not having a garden or allotment.  Get yourself some repurposed oil tanks and old plastic baths.

The Veg Plot Keeps Giving.

Brussel  Sprouts in a large plant pot.

This Brussel Sprout plant is having babies.  How strange?

They are only 89 Cents in Lidl this week.  They won't be a patch on our homegrown and organic Brussel Sprouts.

All they have had for fertilizer is fym and the recent frosts will have converted the starches into sugars.

There's not a lot to harvest from the veg at the moment apart from an abundance of leeks and the Brussel Sprouts.

The two chest freezers are still groaning with home produced vegetables and bacon and pork.

I intend to buy some compost this week and start sowing some veg seeds and I always start my onion sets off in module trays.  Its much better than planting them in wet and cold soil.

Anyone else starting sowing seeds yet?  Are you still harvesting your winter vegetables?

Scruffy Gets A New Friend.

 Scruffy the Maine Coon cat lying in front of the stove.  Little Cat 🐈 the new Maine Coon plays on the firewood.  You can also see my empty pint glass.  I like a few cans on a weekend night. 

Maine Coon are an American breed.  The grow really large and so is the price they fetch to purchase.  You can pay 700 Pounds/Euros for one.  I jest not!

The two Maine Coons are lady cats and hopefully we will breed them.

We also have five other cats.  These are Heinz 57 varieties like myself.  They are neutered and earn their keep hunting the rats 🐀 mice and sometimes birds 🐦 sadly.

I have always been a dog 🐕 kind of pet owner.  But in recent years cats definitely appeal.

I could never live in a house without animals.  Like I couldn't live somewhere without vegetables, plants and a garden.

Have you got a menagerie like us?

Leek And Potato Soup And Irish Soda Bread.

 I harvested two of our homegrown leeks today.

J made some leek and potato soup and made a loaf of bread.

 I was in the garden going through my hundreds and hundreds of potted propagated perennials that I have made.  

There's always weeding, cutting off died off stalks and brown leaves and even composting some that have died from the cold and wet.  

J called me in for my dinner.   The smell of freshly baked bread and potato and leek soup was very pleasing to the nostrils:

Homegrown and homemade soup and freshly baked bread.  What could be nicer on a cold February day?

Bronte And Me Walk From Barnagh To Newcastle West.

 We went for a walk again on the jewel in County Limericks crown: The Limerick Greenway on Sunday.

It cost over 20 million Euros and it is 40 KM long.  Stretching from Abbeyfeale to Rathkeale.  

You can also walk from Abbeyfeale to Listowel in County Kerry.  I will save that for another blog post and walk with Bronte my hiking Golden Retriever.  In fact dear readers there are repurposed railway lines or Greenways popping up all over Ireland at the moment.  There are new walking routes being planned down here in West Cork.

We set off  this time from Barnagh. I last wrote about Barnagh  and its tunnel last July. Remember the light that automatically came on in the tunnel and we thought we saw a ghost like lady figure in the stone face?

We followed a sign for Barnagh Viewing Point.   About quarter of a mile later we arrived at the side of a very busy fenced off road.  Behind us was a sign for the viewing point:

We could see for literally miles.  Thomand Park home of Munster 🏉,  Counties Clare, Cork and Tipperary.  

I looked for a sign for Newcastle West.  There was no way we would try to cross the fenced off road.  So we turned back and a nice young man and lady advised me to walk back to the station and through the tunnel and under a road viaduct (subway) and we would be on the other side of the road.  If we had walked from the Abbeyfeale direction we would have seen the Newcastle West signpost.  But J had dropped us off higher up.

Twenty minutes later we had walked about a mile and we were opposite where J had dropped us off.  Five or ten minutes later we could see the viewing point across the road.  If only there had been a sign to point to Newcastle West.🤔

Ten Kilometres or six miles in old gas slot meters was our walking distance on Sunday morning.  Already we had put a mile on our saunter.

 The train line must have gone across where the busy road is now.  It was very noisy for about ten minutes and Bronte was not an happy bunny or Golden Retriever.  I didn't particularly like the speeding cars myself.  

Soon the Greenway led us into a much more pleasant rural setting and we passed cyclists, runners, walkers and young children trying to learn from very patient parents "how" to ride their bicycles.  

Where else was there a tarmac path/ road where people exercise safely and greet each other with: " Morning", "Hi" and ''How ya doing?"  It's definitely  20 million Euros well spent on 40 kilometres of public greenway.  Not forgetting the chats and greetings with other people exercising for free.  

Regular readers know I reside next to The Sheepshead Way and  the views and vistas are spectacular.  Read Seamus Heaney's The Peninsula poem if you want inspiration.  I love walking it in the summer.  It's hilly and not the gentle terrain of an old railway line.  Also I rarely if ever meet people to chat or see here.  

Also on the Limerick  Greenway there are public transport connections.  On my side of our peninsula there is little or no public transport other than the Local Link on a Tuesday and a Thursday.  Although on the south side there are now 4 buses a day.  You can even catch a bus from Kilcrohane to Allhies over on Beara.  We definitely need more public transport infrastructure down here.  It's not just a matter of reducing the speed limits which I agree with the recent new road signs.  People like country dwellers and hikers need public transport for shopping and to get home from the rural pub or village..

Here's  so more photos for your perusal:

Bronte waiting patiently at a natural fence.  Old branches lay down and weaved in between the posts.  Very clever!

Please click on the photos to enlarge them!  There's  some interesting town land place names.

Old house looking sad and lonely.

Bronte stopped at a picnic bench.  We ate a packet of Aldi salt and vinegar chopsticks.  We didn't see any litter bins but we didn't see any litter in fairness.

Cattle probably bulls or bullocks with horns over wintering on the Rush pasture.

Bronte leads the way. 

Old train station converted into a dwelling.

Old signal

Looks like an old goods yard now a modern housing estate.

5000 fine if you don't  pick it up.

It was a lovely February day and the gorse was in flower and perfect for a walk with my four legged friend Bronte.  Only 14 Kilometres more and we have walked the Limerick Greenway.  I wouldn't mind an electric bike with a bell to warn hikers and runners I am passing them.

This track began to play on my mental jukebox:

I think the Greenways are an excellent way of enjoying Ireland's industrial railways and rural routes and they pass through villages and towns en route which are perfect for refreshment or hotel and air bnb accommodation.  I would like to see a few more portaloos, litter bins,  burger/ tea and coffee cold drinks vans or cafes  and maybe a bunkhouse in one of the old railway buildings or a campsite or two on a farmers fields adjoining the Greenway.

Limerick Greenway is very accessible from Kerry airport overseas readers.  

Not forgetting the EU subsiding of so many of the Greenways in Ireland.  

"How Do You Fit Them In?""

The bread is too wide to fit in the toastie bag.  That's  J's little hand.  

We went shopping in Aldi on Saturday looking for a tin of corned beef to make corned beef toasties for our tea.  We couldn't find it anywhere in the tins section.🤔

J asked a member of staff where was the tins of corned beef?  She said that it was only available when it was on special offer.

What is the world coming to?  

You can no longer buy English 🍺.   Yet the shelves are full of beers from all over Europe and you can't get a delicacy like a tin of corned beef?  

Should I blame the disaster they called Brexit?  Five years this week!  Even Nigel Farage says it was a failure!

We eventually found a packet of smoked 🥓 bacon and I bought a few cans of Guinness.  

We didn't attempt to operate the "self service" tills after our last shopping adventure/nightmare if you recall?

It's quicker to queue up and get served by a 'real' person than having to get another 'real' person to assist you serve yourself.  

"Welcome To The Machine" (Pink Floyd) began to play in my mental jukebox at the thought of the shopping nightmare.

Back at home.  We decided to make toasties and had to force the bread into the toaster bag.  

Why do they make them so small?  Are we living in Liliput?  Gullibles  Shopping Travels perhaps?  Perhaps they are made in China?  

Any way:  Our toasted sandwiches 🥪 were very nice.

Imbolc And Osteospermums.

 Not the name of a Irish prog rock band but the Irish word for an ancient Celtic festival.

"Hey do you remember when we went to that Celtic Prog Festival and we saw Imbolc and Altan and Enya and Clannad?"

 It is also St Brigids Day.  Today is the first day of Spring.

I walked outside this morning to feed the livestock and noticed one of my Osteospermums flowering in a large plant pot:

 

They are also called Cape Daisies and I lost lots of them in 2010.

Recently before the winter storms tore the newish cover on my polytunnel.  I took a lot of cuttings and they have all rooted.

Osteospermums rooted cuttings potted on into bigger plant pots.

I have about forty of them ready to go.  

Anyone else a bit of a plantaholic?