Plastic Rubbish On The Beach. Time For More Rural Jobs.

We have been actively walking 3 to 4 four miles a day lately.  You notice so much more when you walk around the peninsula where we live in south west Ireland.  One thing what really annoys me is litter, especially plastic.  In the picture below you can see empty plastic containers and plastic water bottles.  No doubt this rubbish is local and international rubbish.  Plastic takes about 500 years to start decomposing.

The great thing about the tide is it cleans a lot of the beaches itself and moves the rubbish miles away probably to other beaches.  I think county councils don't provide any where near enough rubbish bins.  They could also create a lot of rural jobs picking up litter from the roadsides and the beaches.

I walk along the peninsula roads every day and notice it is so empty of people apart from the occasional passing cars.  Most people seem to travel miles to work or they own holiday homes that are empty most of the year.  I would gladly like a part-time job picking up the litter and strimming the brambles on the verges so you have somewhere to stand while the motorists speed passed you.  It shouldn't be down to volunteers to pick up the rubbish.  Why can't local companies sponsor litter bins and benches even a bus service?

Do you think it's possible to make a living in the countryside?  Most people I know have to travel miles to work.

First Early Potatoes From The Poly-tunnel.

 It's been a miserable week here on the smallholding in Ireland.  We seem to be getting April showers in May.  We decided to cheer ourselves up on Friday after the election results in the UK and Chelsea winning the title.  So we picked the potatoes growing in the poly-tunnel.  Some people would say:

"Let them grow a bit bigger."

Small is beautiful and absolutely delicious.  So we steamed them on top of the range.  The month of May and the range is lit and I am still chain sawing logs for hot water, cooking and heat from the radiators.

A plant pot full of new potatoes.  We got three/ four (I gave some to my brother) meals from our early potato crop.  I also hand picked 11 snails in the poly-tunnel this morning.  The hedges are growing mad too.  We heard our first cuckoo yesterday.

Bramble Problem On The Smallholding.

We must have had a good year last year.  You can see 2 new fence posts in the photograph.  Seriously.  I have noticed there is a bit of a bramble problem developing on the smallholding.  I think it's because we have been a bit under stocked and so the land is undergrazed.

It's true that the countryside we see is there because it's been grazed and fertilized by livestock for thousand of years.  My dad used to say it only takes 3 months for a vegetable garden to become fully overgrown with weeds.  Likewise pasture would soon become overgrown with scrub and brambles and other weeds if it wasn't grazed.

When we were young ("Shine on you crazy diamond") the Irish farmers would grow ("set") a field of vegetables and grow hay the following year. So the fields never got the chance to go wild.  Last year I bought six heifer calves and they never did much grazing.  We made silage in some of the fields.  But a lot of seem to be getting invaded with rushes (always a problem), Furze (Gorse) and brambles.

The cattle like to eat the blackberry leaves.  It's supposed to be a fine tonic for them.  I am going to top some of the brambles with the tractor and topper if the fields become dry again.  Last year myself and number one son cleared around 3 of the fields with the mini digger and I piked the brambles and grass and other weeds into the dumper.  There are a lot of high banks("lockers") that are too dangerous to remove them this way.

So I have come up with a few options:

1.  Get a couple of nanny goats again.  They do a fine job browse grazing and eating the leaves.  But you have to tether them and they are always getting tangled around the brambles.

2.  Pay somebody with a sprayer and quad to kill the brambles with a weedkiller like "roundup".  I don't like using weedkillers because you don't know what it does to to the soil.  I don't like the idea of paying either.  I have heard they charge around 25 Euros an hour plus weedkiller.

3.  Get some hand shears from Lidl and cut them back and use the Azada to dig their roots out.

4.  Get the petrol strimmer and put the brush cutter blade on it and spend hours cutting them back.

5:  Buy more cattle to graze more tightly.  Calf prices are lightning at the moment.  I will probably make good money when I sell my heifers in late summer.  But they will cost me a king's ransom to replace them.  I have heard of Friesian heifer calves being sold for 400 Euros.  Two week old at that.  I only paid 200 a piece last year for mine.  So I don't think I will be increasing my herd size.

6.  Get some farm volunteers to come and stay in the old farmhouse for a working holiday clearing the brambles?  We would give 2 of them free board and lodgings and a few cans of Newcastle Brown ale at the end of the day.?  Free (working) holiday on the Sheeps Head Peninsula in Ireland?

What do you do to combat brambles?  If you have and suggestions please let me know.  Preferably organic methods.  Thanks.  

Cuckoo Flower Time On The Smallholding.

We have had a really abundant crop of Cuckoo flowers in the pasture this Spring.  I wonder if it's because we don't hammer our fields with granulated "bag manure" fertilizer?  This year we haven't bought any.  We haven't paid any one to put the slurry yet.  I noticed there are quite a few docks growing where we spread slurry last year.  Cow dung/slurry is a "cold" manure and weed seeds don't get killed like they do in rotting dung heaps.  If you want nettles and docks spread cow slurry

The cuckoo flower is a member of the Brassicacea family: Cardamine Pratensis is it's Sunday name.  It thrives in damp meadows.  Apparently in ancient folklore this flower was sacred to the faeries and it was considered very unlucky if you picked it and brought it indoors.  My mother used to tell me the same about the Hawthorn flower which was called "mother death" in northern English counties.

My Irish grandmother believed in the 'little people' and the Irish won't step on or near any of the 10000 forts found here in Ireland.

I have not heard a cuckoo yet this year.  Apparently it only makes a noise to call a mate and then it shuts up.  Perhaps it's found a mate already?

Talking of the cuckoo season.  We watched Question Time last night and noticed only Dave was given a chair to sit on?  The privileges of office me thinks!

It looks like it's going to be a close call.  Do you think there will be a Labour/Conservative coalition?  Now that would be different wouldn't it?  Well there going to go into government with some one aren't they?  

Seaside Grazing For The Girls.

Here's a blurry picture of my cattle taken this morning from a distance on the old mobile phone.  We live in the countryside next (Bantry Bay) to the sea.  That's the Beara Peninsula across the bay.  I often think if we lived in a tourist area in say England or Portugal.  The land would be full of hotels, villas and campsites.  But it's not, it's rural Ireland.  The land is used for cattle and sheep and growing hay and silage.

 There are houses and farms but very little infrastructure where we live.  There is no public transport or shops or a pub or even a bottle bank on the North side of the Sheep's Head Peninsula.  But it's a beautiful place and I always wanted to live here.  I think most rural places lack infrastructure.

 Bracken the Shetland pony eating the 'Furze' (Gorse) flowers.  He uses the electricity cable straining pole to scratch his back.  The Furze flowers smell like Sun tan lotion at the moment.  The fields are abundant with cuckoo flowers too.  I have not put out 'bag manure' (granulated fertilizer) this year.  Don't think we will need it with only having 6 yearling heifers.  Apart from the odd worming injection.  You could say we are almost organic.

Think we will buy hay this year instead of growing silage.  There won't be the huge expense of paying silage contractors to make it for us.  I will buy small square bales of hay for new calf replacements in the Autumn.  Or if the pasture gets too strong and in front of the cattle we will make some hay ourselves.  It all depends on if they eat the grass and what the weather is like.

John Seymour wrote: "When you buy hay you buy land."  Think he had a point.

Straw Potatoes?

Early potatoes pushing up their shoots.  Notice my homemade concrete path made with recycled pig slats.  

I took drastic steps before we went on our jollies to Portugal and covered my potato patch with old straw.  Here's a picture of them yesterday.  I removed the straw to one side and earthed up the soil over the potatoes and replaced the blanket of straw again.  This was done with my trusty four prong pike and azada.

There were frosts this morning and the air felt very chilly.  Never known an April so dry or so nice.  Talking to a farmer friend who was talking to another farmer, and he said it was like this years ago when he got married one April.  Then it rained all summer.  Hope this isn't summer?  What do you think?  

More Pictures From The Algarve & Seville.

 Ice plants growing wild on a cliff top path in the Algarve,

Ants making a nest on the cliff top path.

A dream villa and wonderful garden.  We have Oesteosperrnums growing in our garden in West Cork.

They be pirates!

Oranges growing on the trees in Seville. 

Red roses in flower in Seville in April.

The world famous Seville bull ring.  It holds 14000 spectators.  I wondered if Hemingway had stood where I was?

 Eiffel bridge in Seville.  He also designed a tower in Paris similar to the one in Blackpool and the Meccano set that is the statue of Liberty in New York.

Faro marina.

Yet another cheap flight landing at Faro airport.

Bone chapel in a little village called Alcantarila on the Algarve.  I found it on the internet and we we found the village a few miles off the tourist path in the Algarve.  It was only like the size of a living room and contains the bones of 1,500 parishioners.  It wasn't gruesome at all.  More awesome and incredible than anything!