I was going to feed the newly harvested beetroot leaves to the pigs and poultry and I had read somewhere that red or purple (can't do shades of colour) can be toxic. Rhubarb leaves for example.
So I Googled beetroot leaves and apparently they are nutritious and if you went in one of those Yuppy pubs like the Slug and Lettuce you might get served a beetroot leave salad and a "gloss of whine".
Any road there's no chance of it doing any harm to our ducky wucks and piggy wigs so it's good enough for us.
What do you do with your beetroot leaves? Smoke them? Eat them, compost them, make soup? I suppose you could even eat the beetroots?
Newly washed new potatoes and a not very big onion.
Readers of this blog will know that I grew these with seaweed for fertilizer and an odd sprinkle of poultry and seaweed organic pellets which we bought in Lidl.
Like a lot of things I have bought from there I haven't seen the seaweed poultry fertilizer for sale again. I hope they get it back because it's weed free and excellent.
Ordinary seaweed we gathered from a local beach and it's full of over fifty trace elements and absolutely free.
There's a big pile of fym decomposing under a black plastic sheet. It's going to be great compost for the veg garden, polytunnel and my pots of perennials later this year.
The varieties of seed potatoes we planted are Britsh Queens, Homeguard and someone gave us a half of ordinary Rooster potatoes that were chitting so I planted them and they growing nicely.
The potatoes are so fresh and the smell of the soil is divine when we lift the haulm and tubers. You can not beat chemical free homegrown fresh potatoes can you?
A friend turned up the other day for some of my perennials and asked me if I wanted any "bag manure" fertilizer bags?
I heard myself saying : " They'll be alright for bagging up fym, logs and seaweed. He just complained about the price of granulated fertilizer for his silage fields. I told him I don't buy nitrogen I wait for it to rain like it's doing today.
Farmers are so stoic and pragmatic and pessimistic at times and I threw the bags in the old cart house.
Yesterday I wanted some Mypex or landscape fabric for Algarve my new polytunnel. So I got out my polytunnel scissors and cut along the seam of the fertilizer bag and made some landscape tightwad fabric for myself.
Yes it's not neat but it works as a weed retardant and the water puddles and irrigates the plant pots from below.
If you put Aslan in my blog search ("please do!") you will see a blog post of when we went to see Aslan in 2018. Unbelievably here in West Cork. There's chance of Kansas playing Drimoleague yet.
Sadly. This Tuesday Aslan front man Chris Dignam passed away after a long fight against a form of cancer.
He was so humble and down to earth and yet a star performer and himself and his bands versions of John Lennons Working Class Hero, Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here, The Rolling Stones Angie and The Fureys Green Fields Of France are absolute classics and well worth watching and listening to on good old You Tube tonight.
He was a very talented singer and I never known why Aslan weren't world headliners like Thin Lizzy and U2. Both bands whom I have seen and I would put Aslan up there with them in terms of talent.
Even Liam Gallagher (former Oasis) says he and his girlfriend have a drink or ten and get out the guitar and sing Aslan's "Crazy World".
Aslan were named after the C S Lewis literary lion character from Narnia.
I love CS Lewis who passed away on the same day JF Kennedy was assassinated. Did you know Aslan was the Lion of Judah which is another name for Jesus?
Please put Oxford in my blog search if you want to see when I visited there and where Tolkein and C S Lewis met with the Inklings.
I feel privileged to have seen Aslan and it was a great and memorable concert here in rural West Cork.
I love how natural materials like stone and how plants like the roses and the Shasta Daisies soften the old
agricultural out buildings like the old milk house next to where we reside.
I would imagine the building is made of old field stones gathered when a field was reserved and ploughed and harrower and stone picked and thrown on to an horse and cart?
There is a theory that the building was once a dwelling and thatched and it was a one roomed stone cabin. If only the walls could speak. Yeats The Lake Isle Of Innisfree comes to mind. No wattle but rammed earth or clay for mortar.
That's how the people of long ago built their houses. You gathered some field stones or pebbles or even quarried them and you and your friends and family would construct a home.
You would get a cartwright to make the doors and windows from the trees you cut down to make your site.
The local Blacksmith who made Dobbins horse shoes would make you some door hinges. Hey presto, Bob's your uncle! You had your own home sweet home with no rent or mortgage and a seaview thrown in.
The white upvc window looks a bit out of place but I replaced an old wooden window frame with the second hand one and it requires no maintenance.
I like the rusty patina on the old corrugated 'tin' roof. Notice the concrete mortar holding down the sheets? We get some very scary and ferocious Winter storms from the Atlantic. Fortunately last year we didn't get any.
The Oxford Sandy and Black farrowed on her own in the field last week or so. Nine of the litter are walking round the field following their mother.
It's an incredible sight to say they are only a week or so old.
Their father is the Gloucester Old Spot boar and he watches on in another paddock and grazes and digs and wonders and contemplates the meaning of life.
The Oxford Sandy Black's were almost extinct twenty years ago and now they are making a comeback.
Anyone else keep free range pigs or thinking of getting some?
When I was in County Donegal last Saturday I walked near a beach and noticed that the sea had washed these Jellyfish up on to the land.
These were probably the same kind that stung Bronte our Golden Retriever pup 🐶 the other week? Isn't nature so beautiful and
yet can be so cruel?
I took the photo of her sat next to me last night. She's doing fine and no worse for her ordeal.
She's a bit miffed that another Lancashire football team won the Treble. But like I said to her: "They have only equalled United's achievement they can't surpass them."
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