How can we already be at the end of the month? - It feels like it only just began!

While the hot weather was lovely - great not to have to always remember to bring a raincoat - the rain in the second half of the month was extremely welcome. The ground is still dry though - making it really easy to pull the weeds!

We are eating and preserving lots of tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, potatoes, courgettes, tromboncinos and figs, grapes, plums and raspberries.

I have a newfound appreciation for the Irish language during the solar eclipse; I can see why the (Donegal) Irish for eclipse - fabhra- is the same word as for eyelash. We were looking using some DIY method with foil and a cereal box, but the tree our bedroom window looks out on, was making lots of natural ‘pinhole lenses’ with the gaps between its leaves - hence this photo:

Song of the Scythe was postponed for a week, so instead we had an overnight at the tree farm. I spotted some ash trees there that are fighting ash die back pretty well, so have reported them - there’s a project to collect genetic material from the resistant trees.

The next week was Heritage Week and I was very busy as a result, so only Brian got to go to the postponed Song of the Scythe - he came back in really good form, so it must have been a great event, hopefully I can join next year!

I’ve been doing Big Butterfly counts and FIT counts in Coole- a way to stop and look for 15 mins. And there’s certainly lots worth counting there.

Coole Meadow

We finally harvested some of the potatoes we grew in the cages with layers of donkey manure and composted hay. For the first 2 cages (planted 17th March) we had inserted lots of potatoes in the sides, and there was plenty of leafy growth (,until it got dry). Loads of lovely clean potatoes to harvest, plenty of large ones, but the small ones tasty too, and good for salad. Minimal sun damage. And no scab or wireworm. A very successful experiment, we will definitely be repeating that next year, and growing more this way, I predict! The tiny ones in the front trug were enjoyed by the hens.

Courgettes and tromboncino plants are highly productive, and the one cucumber plant - while not that happy or healthy looking - is producing well. We have loads of the individual Rolet squash ripening well, and a couple of large pumpkins filling out nicely.

The apples are not as plentiful as last year, but tasty. Plums were delicious, and there are some bullaces coming along - they ripen later from what I can see, which is a bit of a relief as I’m struggling to keep on top of all the produce right now!

We have harvested lots of yellow rattle, we will plant some in Coole, and at the bee meadow on the tree farm, and I’ll be giving some away at my various seed saving workshops - see below for upcoming seed saving and other workshops.

Workshops

The botanical inks workshop was a spectacular success. Wonderful to see the inks and charcoal that Mariia and I made in the hands of talented artists. And the inks went on to a bog workshop that I was unable to attend - I heard that the inks were the perfect colours to capture the bog. Keep an eye on Green and Blue project for some more events, and in particular the final event, which will happen in October. I can’t wait!

And my favourite

Working with Mullingar Gathers, we had a very sociable alternative drinks event - all non-alcoholic, but the buzz and chat that accompanied the drinks and the cheese and crackers would make you think otherwise. It was great to introduce people to the flavour of fig leaves, and to demonstrate how easy it is to make ginger beer.

From Seed to Vase had a few events this month - Seed saving in Moate library - we left lots of seeds there. The dried flower workshop in Castlepollard was fun - one participant commented that she had never left a workshop with so much swag :-)

I was delighted to run a jam jar flowers worship in the Family Resource centre in Athlone with Heartlands Pride.

And back to the beautiful and welcoming Ballivor library for an edible flowers workshop and tasting session.

Heritage week was very busy - talking about hedgerow medicine in all (6!) of the Westmeath Libraries. I was ably assisted by my son Dara, who brought his knowledge of the Irish language, and I’m amazed at how much better the Irish name of the plants are. I’ll be using my new cupla focal in my work regularly! See the article below for a splendid description of our first event.

Flower Farming

We had an informative visit to the Bloomsmith operation organised by FFOI. Nadia and I carpooled, so it was a lovely day out, and included a quick trip to IKEA and Decathlon. Johanna and Nick have an amazing setup, and impressive plans for the future. Great to see her progress as a grower, and being able to build a successful wholesale flower business.

On the flower front, I have lots of cosmos, nicotania, amaranth, and a second flush of feverfew coming along. Nasturtiums, calendula and pansies doing well - and essential for edible flower workshops. Here’s a bunch that I left behind in Moate library.

I’ve been planting out biennials - I'm in better shape than usual with some of them this year, I think you need to get them into the ground before the equinox, so I’ll be hustling to get the rest of them planted before the end of the month.

I’m a bit sick of flowers at this point - is that a terrible thing to say? At least they are not needing the kind of watering attention that they needed earlier in the month. But at this point I’d like to move onto the fruit and veg that need my attention so that we will be well fed next winter.

Learning

Eco printing with Patsy Preston in Dún na Sí - She’s an amazing teacher, and it was great to be working with a big pot over an open fire. Here’s a before and after - we were encouraged to experiment with different flowers and leaves. Looking forward to sewing something interesting with the dyed fabric.

Went on a visit to a fen at Lough Sewdy - a (smallish) lake that I didn’t know about previously. Went back there a few weeks later with the kayaks - a different but no less interesting. Saw some giant poops (yes I know, I have the best times) that we later decided was from a swan. Mind blown.

Upcoming events

From Seed to Vase concludes this month - here’s your last chance to attend an event

• 2nd September - Athlone Library - Edible flowers and herbs

• 9th September - Seed saving in Kinnegad

• 28th September - Dried flowers in Kilbeggan

• 30th September - Seed saving in Athlone

10th September - a chutney workshop with Emma of Mullingar Gathers - and not just chutney - we’ll look at making salsa and maybe a pickle too.

As part of Sustainable Development Goals week in Offaly, I’ll be flitting around the county on September 25th - book your place with the local libraries.

• Clara Library 10:00am-11:00am

• Tullamore Library 12:00pm-13:00pm

• Edenderry Library 14:30pm-15:30pm

I’m in Portlaoise Library on September 9th, talking about The Natural Home - that’s at 6pm, and back on September 17th doing a seed saving workshop at 6pm.

Sadly we will miss the Fómhar Feast. I was looking forward to sharing some of my vegetable bounty.

Siolta Croi haș some upcoming workshops that some of you may be interested in - see below - here’s the booking page.

• Saturday 3rd October - Exploring Seeds and Seed Saving

• Saturday 7th November - Food Forest Design

Links

I enjoyed this Rain Scale.

The class politics behind the fuel protests. (We will see a lot of right wing activists jumping on the food security bandwagon in the coming months)

Why are the Outer Hebrides so interesting?

Music

A great woman who grew up on a farm - and who didn’t romanticise hard graft or poverty - passed away. She was creative, prolific, and knew her own mind - a great role model for any of us. I’m including 9 to 5 - which was released the year that I finished secondary school. (Great movie too - what a cast!)

I have to admit I was a bit horrified to learn that in fact, most jobs required you to take an unpaid lunch break, and work way past 5pm - in some cases in the tech world all night! Anyhow, a great song and a sad loss to us all.

Well, that month just flew by! Loads of workshops, plenty of great food and learning new things about plants and colour.

It was hot and dry, and at times the plants were not at all happy. And as I’ve mentioned before, when the plants are unhappy, I feel their pain. But really, apart from collecting water where ever I could - kitchen sink, showers, bath, I didn’t have much time to brood on the drought. And in many cases, the work done previously feeding the soil and ensuring biodiversity below ground, has helped. Anything that was planted end June did not thrive - if I was lucky they didn’t die altogther.

We had a little wedding anniversary celebration - a delicious lunch in Skellys, Ballymahon, a chat with Pat the proprietor and some kayaking on the canal. Lots of dragon flies and damselflies. We also got in a bit of kayaking on Derravarragh one evening - there were damselflies everywhere, including some mating while on my leg…

We threw a bit of a party in the forest. Lots of hammock time, good food and great conversations.

The seasonal food that we are eating at the moment is potatoes, green beans, courgettes and tomatoes - there are even some tomatoes ripening outside. This one spotted on 7th July - I suspect that it’s picking up warmth from the water butt behind it, which would have been fairly full at that stage.

The annual Water Germander & Tubular Water-dropwort count at Lough Ree happened. Glorious weather and count numbers were the best yet. I think that they liked all the rain that we had earlier in the year. You could see how high the lake had been - the habitats had been submerged for some time.

On the flip side of that, Brian has been Balsam bashing in Multyfarnham. A large infestation of the invasive Himalayan Balsam is being dealt with by some courageous volunteers, led by Brian. It’s hot and dirty work but quite satisfying - the plants pull out pretty easily. We are on a deadline to remove as many as possible before they set seed.

Coole Meadow

The towers of spuds that were thriving so well succumbed to lack of water - too many plants in the same space I reckon, but maybe they were finished growing - they did start early. We will open them up at the weekend - our bank holiday excitement. Will report on the yield in next month’s newsletter. The other towers, which looked quite sparse previously now look great in comparison - the vegetation is thriving. We are harvesting plenty of spuds from the ground - though we need to use more manure cover next year, some are peeping out and getting sun - and turning green - so poisonous. A bit of eel worm damage too. Hoping to avoid that in the towers.

The leeks that I planted at the end of June have not budged at all in the past month. And lots have been dug up - by birds I think. I’d like to replant, but no point unless there has been rain to soak the ground.

The squash, courgettes and cucumber in the new no-dig bed with the sheeps wool have struggled. We have watered a bit, but you can’t beat a bit of rain to properly soak the ground. The ones planted in the hugelkulture bed are doing much better - the wood (now rotting) that we built it on must be holding water well. We are harvesting a bit, but hope for rain and better harvest in August. If the met.ie predictions are correct we’ll have warm weather and some rain, so that will be excellent for the squash.

Beans are a lost cause - a couple of plantings and seeds poked in also, and only a few plants have survived. The dwarf borlotti in the drills however are doing ok. Not much scything in July, but we will start that again in August.

Workshops

I got off to a good start with the Yoga Picnic - talking about soil health and our invisible friends. Nadia did the flowers this year - they looked fabulous!

My ‘From Seed to Vase’ residency continues:

The Moate and Kilbeggan community learned about preserving flowers, I ran edible flower workshops in Kilbeggan and Castlepollard and in Mullingar - flower arranging and seed saving. I’m getting the feedback that people are getting the hang of coming to the libraries for workshops. Great to see some people showing up to multiple events.

Moving into Longford - Our Shared Plate organised a fantastic workshop in Lus na Greine - normally we would set up there in the polytunnel, but given the sunshine and temperatures, we moved outside. We had 32 attendees (which I think is a record for me for a hands on workshop) learning about making pesto and pickles, and getting to taste loads of different ones. I farmed out a lot of the prep work to the attendees - they were great sports and did a better job than I would have managed. Claire from Our Shared Plate was my beautiful assistant, and organised a fun raffle at the end to give away the many jars of picked onions and other creations.

Next stop Meath - a compost / no dig talk in beautiful Ballivor library - a great crowd, very engaged and receptive audience. And a great discussion of the Natural Home - in Enfield Library .

Back home in Westmeath at the Agricultural Show - talking about edible flowers , foraging and meadows (Brian). My mother would have been so delighted to have so many family members at one of her favourite events, as (brother) Joe and (son) Leo were feeding the masses with delicious organic beef burgers.

And as part of the Green and Blue project, the Hapa Zome event was a spectacular success - my juicy and colourful flowers made some beautiful prints. If you’d like to see these, we will have some at the final event in September. (Sept 12th, mark your calendar)

Flower Farming

Flowers are thriving - and providing lots of materials for the workshops above - and the odd bouquet.

We are watering a bit with the sink water, and showering in trugs, and pumping that down to the water butts. The flowers in Coole have had minimal watering but they are doing fine - the benefits of healthy well-fed soil. Any that were well established before the start of July are fine - though they are going to seed a bit quicker than normal.

Some biennials have germinated and are pricked out. I’ll continue with planting biennials through August. Thats Sweet William, Honesty, Sweet Rocket (Hesperis) and Wallflowers. Hopefully a bit of rain will fall soon so I can plant them out.

Learning

Sewing continues - my toile jacket nearly finished, but putting in the lining had made it a bit tight. So I may have to do a bit more work before it’s wearable, and I’ll be using a bigger size for the final jacket. There a bit of ripping ahead of me!

The Green and Blue project needs natural inks for the event on August 8th, so I have been making some. Here’s what the dahlia ink looked like as I was reducing it. It was boiling for several hours before it was dark enough to bottle.

I attended the well organised IFA Women Farmers event in Coolamber Gardens - great to see so many female farmers gathered, and recognised for their contribution. And great representation from the ICA.

Upcoming events

A few more residency events in the pipeline: Booking links will be found here. or contact the libraries directly. Some dates and times below.

I’m delighted to be back in Ballivor with Edible Flowers and Herbs on August 25th at 5pm, book your place with the library .

I’m in all 6 of the Westmeath libraries for heritage week talking about hedgerow medicine - click here for details and to book your place . And for Wild Child day I’ll be in Streamstown and Belvedere - click here to book a place.

If you’d like to book a place for the Green and Blue botanical ink event on August 8th, keep an eye here.

Mullingar Gathers has more funded events coming up - click here for full details. I’ll be working with Emma on the drinks event on August 11th, we have some unusual treats planned, and I think that there’s one space left for this.

Siolta Croi haș some upcoming workshops that some of you may be interested in - see below - here’s the booking page.

• Saturday 15th August - Learn to Ferment your Food

• Saturday 3rd October - Exploring Seeds and Seed Saving

• Saturday 7th November - Food Forest Design

Thinking about going with Brian to the Song of the Scythe event at the start of heritage week…

Links

No links this month - but here’s what I’m reading:

Hungry by Katriona O’Sullivan

Plant and Ink -

Make Ink by Jason Logan - as I continue to make lots of inks for the Green and Blue workshop.

Music

Here’s a beautiful cover…

This is the peak of summer - it feels like everything that grows builds up to this month, and to the solstice. Such growth! We had 2 extremely hot periods sandwiching torrential rain. So grass growth has been amazing, the flowers are happy and the potatoes are flying (vegetation wise at least).

Here are some of the edible flowers that will be cropping up at workshops all through the summer. Using these in salads with home grown lettuce, and a bit of the Leitrim Creamery goat cheese - yum!

The seasonal ‘food du jour’ is potatoes. It’s probably a little early to be digging them up - traditionally they are planted on St Patricks Day, and July 12th is when you start harvesting. I had some planted very early (February) in styrofoam boxes in the tunnel, then brought outside when the frost is gone. They are not hugely productive, but very delicious. They were planted in some donated donkey manure, and my own compost, so they’re also essentially free. I have been microwaving the smaller ones a bit and then making this potato salad; not following the recipe exactly, of course, but the crispy potatoes and the slighty sweet and tangy dressing are a great combo.

There are a few small (yellow) courgettes ready. They’ll start pumping out fruit soon so I’d better be ready for them! Last year I brought some to my pilates class where they were most welcome. It’s good to have a group of non-gardeners in the social mix! I just planted out a pineapple courgette - looking forward to seeing and tasting that fruit. One cucumber harvested so far - a small one hardly worth mentioning and I am the only cucumber eater in the house (the rest have the gene that makes them taste bad).

I counted, and I have at least 45 tomato plants- most in the tunnel, but a good few outside. Nothing ripe yet, but plenty of mature green fruit, so it won’t be long now! Lots of different heritage varieties, I can’t wait to taste them. I have cracked and bought a few Irish grown tomatoes, but they are not as flavourful as the ones that I grow myself.

We celebrated the Solstice at Red Roots, courtesy of Mullingar Gathers, with creative assistance from Mariia (of Green and Blue). Cathy of Haumea joined us fresh from the 40th celebration of Crann. Rare and wonderful to spend time with her. It was a fabulous afternoon and evening of creativity, good food, chat, and some dancing. The sun shone until it disappeared ay 10:02pm, a wonderful way to celebrate the longest day.

Planted some seeds and plants during torrential rain at the newly dug area at the tree farm. While it was miserable and exceedingly mucky, it was probably ideal seed planting weather (a bit of chaos gardening) and some of them have germinated in the heat. I threw a load of brizia seeds on a steep slope - grass is probably the only thing that will manage to grow there, so it may as well be a pretty one. I threw down loads of seeds including poppies. I froze them ahead of time and threw lumps of ice around and look! Probably a bit too thickly, and there seems to be some kale mixed in there too, but hopefully a few will survive to maturity.

Swainstown farm is looking for a forest school teacher - if you know anyone who is looking for a forest school job. And if you are anywhere close to the farm at the weekend, check out the farm shop - a wonderful place to get tasty and beautiful veg and flowers, and maybe even have a picnic?

I’m part of the team from Talamh Beo that’s planning the ECVC meeting in November - we are staying in Maynooth for much of it. We’re looking for someplace off campus that could seat 100/150 people - anyone have any ideas?

Coole Meadow

As mentioned above, the spuds are flying - I dug a few British Queens, which yielded very well. The main reason for digging was to free up some space for leeks, as we have maxed out on veg beds. We have to leave a bit of meadow in place.

Also coming along well are various squash, courgettes and a cucumber - bad weather, hungry slugs and scratching birds have taken a toll, but I generally plant twice as many as I expect to survive, and that seems to be working.

This year the squash and the beans are on a new no-dig setup. We put cardboard on shorn grass, after removing as many docks and other perennial weeds as possible. On top of the cardboard is sheep’s wool, donkey manure and compost from home. Some of the squash are showing signs of spreading out. The hope is that they will get well established before the weeds break through. We’ll see!

The runner beans have been unmolested, but I have lost a few sowings of the French beans - I’m on my 3rd sowing. There was a lot more sheep’s wool around the runners, but it may just be that they were not as appealing to the wildlife. At any rate, we will see how the last planting survives, and I have plenty in the tunnel at home to keep us fed.

We continue with mosaic (or mowsaic) mowing with the scythe - we are using the freshly cut grass to mulch trees and potatoes. We have spotted a few orchids - we didn’t know if they would survive the disruption of the building work. During the recent heatwave, we also spotted lots of butterflies, and loads of bumble bees, so all seems well in the meadow.

Workshops

Residency events included a ‘Soil Health’ workshop in Kinnegad library (what a beautiful building!). I generally bring some fresh flowers so that I can leave a bouquet behind in the library, and if time and space allows, it’s a chance to take a photo. Here’s what I left in Kinnegad this month

In Athlone library for a ‘Gardening for Biodiversity’ workshop (and a quick stop in Magico to pick up some mystery bags to keep the freezer stocked). I managed to give away 3 crates of spare plants there, great to be freeing up some space in the garden! Finally ‘Spatial Poetry’ in Castlepollard which was picked up by Zoe Ryan on Midlands 103 - you can listen to what I had to say here - and quite a few people that I know heard me live as I gave Zoe very little chance to say anything.

Here’s some of the creations from the Spatial Poetry Workshop.

I was delighted to be the in-house expert for the first Green and Blue workshop - Botanical Illustration - using the plants found along the canal and the lake. Some beautiful creations made on the night, and participants happy to know the names and some properties of the plants that they see on their local, nature-filled walks. Some very talented botanical artists showed up - lovely that Mariia is making space for them to exercise their creativity! Here’s some video from the night.

And last, but not least, I spent a morning in Lus na Greine community garden in Granard , courtesy of Our Shared Plate, decorating with and discussing edible flowers, and a few herbs. Here’s some photos from the morning.

Flower Farming

I cut my final Ranunculus the last week in June - I’d planted them in crates in February and left them in the lee of the house. The cold, wet, weather in mid June caused some pretty long stems. Given that they started blooming in March, that’s a decent stretch, but the weather was definitely on-side.

I have 2 extremely prolific wild carrot plants in the tunnel. They were volunteers that I kept on and they’ve repaid me well. Probably picked more than 200 flowers per plant!

My Sweet Williams are stellar- prolific and scented, and now’s the time to plant more for next year! I had better get going with the biennials as I want to do some experiments with my Johnson-Su coffee-chaff compost. This goes to show how far in advance that flower farmers need to plan.

Loads of feverfew coming into bloom also, and some of the double variety from the tunnel hung up for drying. Every year I say that I won’t dry anything, but I had to dig out the feverfew from the tunnel to make way for courgettes and borlotti beans, so drying was preferable to putting the blooms into the compost bin. And since I’ll be running a few workshops on preserving flowers, I had better be practicing!

Learning

I started attending a dressmaking class in Mullingar this month - I’m getting my sewing mojo back. I’ll hopefully have some new clothes to show you here in future months. Course runs till November.

The IKC3 course has come to an end - I’m not sure if I was the intended audience, but it was great to meet other people locally who want to act on the climate emergency, so I suspect that the benefits will accrue slowly over time.

I went to Farming for Nature- the first one - a fabulous event, great weather (maybe a little too great) and some fascinating talks which I got to on the Monday evening, and enjoyed the dinner and beers. Tuesday I was busy on the Talamh Beo stand helping Éilis Murphy with a creative workshop. That proved very popular, not least because it was a chance to sit down and be in the shade. Éilis provided some stamps, and materials so that people could make their own. Some amazing things were created - I brought home a few that were left behind, and maybe you’ll be lucky enough to be getting one from me in the post!

Upcoming events

Lots more residency events in the pipeline: Booking links will be found here. or contact the libraries directly. Some dates and times below.

I’ll be at the Meath libraries too - Ballivor on the 7th of July (Healthy soil) and Enfield (The Natural Home) on 21st July. Back in Ballivor with Edible Flowers and Herbs on August 25th.

I’ll be at Mullingar Show, July 12th, talking about edible flowers and herbs - and Brian will be presenting there too, about meadow maintenance. Emma will be talking about Mullingar Gathers and community food.

I’ll be back in Granard with Our Shared Plate, talking about pesto and pickles, on July 16th. If you’d like to come along email reception@lngfrc.ie or phone 0436660977.

Mullingar Gathers has more funded events coming up - click here for full details.

The Green and Blue project will be exploring Hapa Zome - printing with fresh flowers - as part of the Green and Blue project on the 25th July. I’ll be assisting at that, and providing lots of fresh colourful juicy flowers.

Siolta Croi haș some upcoming workshops that some of you may be interested in - see below - here’s the booking page.

• Saturday 4th July - Introduction to Scything

• Saturday 18th July - Build a Chicken Tractor Run

• Saturday 15th August - Learn to Ferment your Food

• Saturday 3rd October - Exploring Seeds and Seed Saving

• Saturday 7th November - Food Forest Design

Links

No links this month - but here’s what I’m reading:

Salt Fat Acid, Heat. Getting inspired.

Living with Lynx: Saw the author at Granard Book Festival

Famesick by Lena Dunham

Plant and Ink - in preparation for a Green and Blue workshop in August.

A few pages a day is all I can manage - the downside of long days of daylight is that I can be outside in the garden till all hours…

Music

This one seems appropriate - hope that you have a wonderful July!

Another fantastic month, full of outdoor fun, workshops, plant growth and blossoming, learning and socialising. The weather was cold and windy at the start but more than made up for it towards the end.

I’m writing this sitting in the middle of a wood, admiring the young oak trees. Rusty is taking it handy, and Brian is off with his scythe somewhere. There’s a bit of bare ground here - we had some roadworks for the tree thinning- and I’m just running through all the native wild flower and grass seeds that I have at home that I can spread here. (bare soil is an opportunity!)

Lots of birdsong too, a lovely accompaniment to writing, and since I’m sitting quite still they may approach. I think that I heard some bluejays screech, I have never seen any here but they are definitely planting acorns all around.

We are just about getting through the hungry gap and coming out the other side. We have dined on artichokes a few times, and while they are not a full meal, they are extremely tasty and welcome. I snuck out a few potatoes, but I think it will be a few weeks yet before the styrofoam boxes started in the tunnel in February are ready.

Garlic scapes are ready for picking, and a few garlic plants were loose in the soil and ready for harvest. It’s a little early for the rest, but because I had my hard stop with the hip surgery last November, I got the garlic planted in October - no procrastination there - and it’s grown well.

We started the month with some kayaking in Lough Lane, and the May festival in Castlepollard, followed by a few days in Pure Space in Clare - some kayaking in the Shannon, a very hilly bike ride, and a very quick dip in the pollock holes. While there, we attended a lovely evening - a talk by Críostóir Mac Cárthaigh about the traditional buildings of West Clare, which was followed by a beautiful short film -The Mud House at Johnnie Mac's Cross. The event has deepened my appreciation of traditional Irish architecture - I can now confidently say - ‘oh, there’s a half hipped roof’. What cosy homes people made with the materials available to them - stones, mud, wood, rushes, straw. Truly sustainable.

We were H=honoured to get a tour of Lios Uath while there - Tony is working with Mother Nature in a gorgeous way.

The Mullingar Gathers Community Supper was delicious and lovely - as always - and that clay baker that I offered last month found a good home with a young couple who have just moved here.

And here’s Brian showing off his kayaking skills - going backwards.

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Coole Meadow

Well, the potatoes in the ground are doing wonderfully - we had lots to plant out in the end, with a kind donation of a few kilos of Sarpo Mira as a trade. In addition, we have the potatoes in the compost cages - that experiment is quite interesting at this point. We planted up two cages on St Patricks day - I put in potatoes at the outside on several layers. So we filled the cages with layers of old rotted grass and donkey manure, made some holes in the side with a dibber, and then shoved in the spuds, leaving a chitted bit as close to the outside as possible.

I then wondered if the new potatoes might not form also near the edges, and be exposed to light, and so I changed the method subsequently. Further cages had only one layer of potatoes, covered with compost and/or manure, not so close to the outside. Well, at this point method one is the clear winner with loads of leafy growth. It remains to be seen what the yield is. I’m wondering if we will see any growth at all from the other (8) cages - they were planted up to 6 weeks later, but there’s not much going on right now - the recent heat and rain may change that in June. (fingers crossed!)

Everything else is progressing well - we have lettuce, beans, courgettes, cucumbers, squash, beetroot. Some of the lettuce, bean and squash plants were eaten after planting, but I expect that so I always plant lots of extras ready to back fill the spaces. And with the beans, I’ll generally plant a seed or two beside the plants, in the hopes that something will come to fruition. A belt and braces approach.

The grass is getting quite long - and while we won’t mow most of it until later in the year, it’s hard keeping up with growth around the beds and on the paths. Growth is good!

Workshops

Loads of workshops this month - Biodiversity week saw me deliver 5 workshops in 4 days - that has to be a personal best.

I delivered a few workshops in the libraries for my residency - Soil health, Composting and No-Dig in Mullingar Library, Gardening for Biodiversity in Kilbeggan and Spatial poetry in Moate. If any of those sound interesting, I’ll repeat the same 3 in other Westmeath libraries - details here.

Biodiversity week began with the launch of the Westmeath Biodiversity plan - read it here . I was delighted to decorate the venue, and with Brian’s help, to make some reusable mechanics for future installations. Thanks to Smyths Hardware for the scrap plywood, and to Bell Lane for the hessian to cover the boxes. And thanks to Nadia for providing some of the flowers - the lilac and lupins.

For Biodiversity week, I ran a foraging workshop with Womens Community Project - nettle tea was the hands down favourite foraged dish. We had a few flower oriented workshops too - working with flowers seems to capture emotions, and lift spirits - it’s really lovely to see peoples mindset change during a workshop.

“The mood in the room completely changed, for the better. Including my own, I arrived tired from working late last night. I’m now leaving the room, refreshed & uplifted.”

Another highlight was the seed saving workshop in Athlone Library, where the participants saved seeds for themselves, and also replenished the seed library.

Flower Farming

My flowers got around this month - the launch of the Biodiversity Plan and the launch of the Green and Blue project. At both events we made take away bouquets for the guests at the end of the evening - thanks Claire from Red Roots for your very professional help with this.

Ranunculus have been pumping out the flowers in the tunnel since early April - but once the soil gets too warm they go dormant. I planted some in large pots last November, and left them on the north side of the house - these produced long lovely stems much later - perfect timing for Bloom in fact, so I’ll be doing more of that next year. I planted some in crates in February - they are about to bloom, but have short stems, so not great for cutting.

Load of seedlings planted out and loads more to plant out - and generally lots to give away - plenty found new homes at the (very successful) plant swap organised by Mullingar Gathers in Mullingar library. And for most of my residency workshops, I’ll bring some of my extra plants - flowers fruit and veg - so that participants can bring home at least one new plant.

Also spent a day at Bird Bia Bloom with some of the Flower Farmers. Great to be able to talk to people about the importance of Irish grown flowers, to see the show gardens, and the art exhibition of botanical and floral art - great inspiration for the year ahead!

Learning

Still enjoying the IKC3 program, and another in-person session. Good things are going to come out of this - watch this space!

Biodiversity week - really enjoyed the grassland walk and talk by Linda Gilsenan. She’s so knowledgeable and her enthusiasm for plants and the creatures that live in the grasslands is infectious.

Also made it to the Invasive Species talk out at Lough Owel, where once again I learned a lot. And managed to get in a quick paddle in the lake.

Upcoming events

A few more Residency events coming up in June: Booking links will be found here.

Our Shared Plate have invited me to come to Granard for a couple of workshops - the first is edible flowers and herbs, June 18th. One of my favourites to run. If you’d like to come along email reception@lngfrc.ie or phone 0436660977.

Mullingar Gathers has a fabulous solstice event at Red Roots on June 20th -and other fun events - click here for full details.

Links

Only one link this month : If you’d like to be on a WhatsApp group for workshops, here’s the link: https://chat.whatsapp.com/EkFKGaEdq1EGb7chY0WOAO?mode=gi_t

Music

I’ve heard from some of my readers that you like this section, thats great feedback, thank you! This one has amazing choreography (you need to watch it) and is a bit more modern than my usual choices. If you’re finding it long and a bit scary in places, go to 4:17 for the best bit.

In addition to all of this wonderful life beginning, I have had a busy month of workshops and events. Weather wise it’s been very mixed - torrential rain, hailstones, vicious winds that have scorched baby plants, and then finishing up with some glorious sunny days.

My hellstrip and front garden is having a moment - a lovely man stopped his truck to get out and admire it, and compliment me on it. The naturalised tulips and the dandelions look marvellous together.

The ground has gone from sodden to very dry, and the weeds are going mad with the bit of warmth - I have one of my more cooperative hens doing a bit of weeding in the more out of control areas - she’s enjoying the fresh grass and laying regularly in return.

This month I have a giveaway - this ceramic roaster/steamer - good for baking bread - I picked it up in the charity shop, but I’ve never used it - it still has the price sticker! Leave me a comment if you’d like it! I’ll pick someone at random after the weekend - you’ll need to be able to collect it in Mullingar.

In non growing related activities, I has my first cold water dip in a long time at the start of the month, it was painfully cold, and I didn’t manage to fully immerse - I’ll be trying again soon at the water heats up. And hoping to get on on the water in our kayaks also. We also had an overnight stay at the tree farm, enjoying the warm weather and the moon. Brian did a bit of scything, and Rusty enjoyed a snooze in the sun.

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Coole Meadow

It’s all go at the meadow - with the global oil crisis in full swing, we are taking precautions and have several rows of potatoes planted. We are also doing some potato cage experiments - using the old hay mown last year and composted over winter, along with some locally produced donkey manure, we are hoping for a good crop that is eelworm free, out of those cages. And it’s something to do with the wire until we need it again later this year for composting again. And a great use of the old hay. Any composted hay not used for potatoes is used to mulch the trees, and maybe even to earth up the spuds planted in the ground.

The daffodil and tulip planting under the apple tree was splendid as always, and the bulbs that we dumped under other tree also grew successfully, so there will be lots of naturalised flowers in years to come. I had a good run at my flower beds, and have cleared some new space for planting the annuals that I have been starting since March.

We have also seen lots of wildlife - in particular loads of ladybirds - particularly on the nettles. Here's a pair that Brian captured being very energetic - this is just a brief snippet of their amorous interaction.

I have started lots of courgettes and pumpkins - we will be heaping some of that lovely donkey manure onto the hugelbed, and hoping for warm weather to bring them on. I’ll also be planting a lot of beans - I just need to have a secure supporting structure - once the beans grow up and get heavy, any bit of wind can take them down. There’s a metal mesh that Americans call cattle panels that people use, but I’m not sure what that’s called in Ireland - if you know, please leave me a comment! For now, I’ll be making teepees with sturdy hazel posts.

Workshops

I hosted 6 workshops this month as part of my residency in the Westmeath libraries. I scheduled 3 in the first week, and that was probably too many - I needed to sleep for a day afterwards. Those were all on the same topic - growing from seed - and participants went home with seeds, and plants, and hopefully learned at least one new thing. All were very well attended, which isn’t always the case with free workshops - so thanks to all of you who booked and showed up!

This paper potter has been the star of the show, allowing me to send people home with plants that they have pricked out and planted up.

I also ran a window box workshop at the Women’s Community Project in Mullingar . We focussed on herbs and edible flowers - it was very well received, and I was able to grow most of the plants myself. Looking forward to another session with that group in May.

Flower Farming

The broom in Coole is just starting to blossom, and many of the biennials planted last year are on the verge of bursting into bloom. It’s an exciting time of the year - although the ranunculus are almost finished, sadly. It’s getting a bit too warm for them, and some have succumbed to greenfly also. The corms planted in February in crates don’t seem to be doing much - I’ll be pleasantly surprised if I get a second flush from them.

Lots of seeds germinating, getting planted out, coming on well. I have larkspur, snapdragon, cosmos, ammi, statice and strawflower pricked out into modules, and nearly ready for planting out.

The (volunteer) sweet pea in the tunnel is growing vigorously, I’m excited for some lovely scented sweet pea flowers to bring inside. Speaking of scents - April has seen the wallflowers doing extremely well - and there’s quite a variety of colours these days - some lovely purples and pinks. They are scenting the front of the house beautifully, even my odour-impaired husband has commented positively.

Learning

The Bioregioning event in Borris was a great success. People had some difficulty getting there with the fuel protests, and panic buying of fuel, but it felt very much like the right place to be while the turmoil ensued. Lots of great discussion, meeting new people, having the craic with old friends, and working together. As you’d expect, the food was local, sustainable and delicious! I may have overindulged in the pastries from Seagull bakery, but it’s difficult not to. As the event was on a Friday, and in Borris, it would have been criminal not to have shopped at the farmers market there, and at Plur Bakery. Although my picky (discerning?) son reckoned that he preferred my sourdough….

Brian and I are both participating in a training course run by IKC3 that started this month. It’s mostly online with monthly in person events, and run in conjunction with Westmeath County Council. We had our first in-person seminar this week, and I have to say I’m really energised by the discussion, and the potential for collaboration with the Westmeath cohort!

Upcoming events

A few more Residency events coming up:

Booking links will be found here.

The month of May also includes Biodiversity week - I’m doing a seed saving workshop in Athlone Library at 6pm on May 19th. No booking link for that yet, but if you’re keen, phone the Library and book your place - (090) 644 2157.

I’m also in the Family Resource centre in Ballynacargy that morning (19th) doing a jam jar posy workshop - free, open to all. To Book: phone 0871341478 or email outreach@caraphortfrc.ie . I’m also in the Family Resource centre in Athlone on Wednesday 20th May at 10am, another jam jar posy workshop - also free , open to all - email Projectworker@afrc.ie to book your place.

There’s a May festival in Castlepollard - some free workshops run by friends of this publication on May 2nd.

Mullingar Gather’s next event is the community supper on May 22nd.

Links

Talamh Beo statement: Defending Seed Sovereignty.

And another Talamh Beo statement on the fuel crisis.

Not too many links this month - not spending much time reading!

Music

I’m been humming this in my head ever since I started this months newsletter….

The idea of the residency is to deliver workshops, but there’s also some hanging around and talking about flowers in general. So even if you don’t want to take part in the workshops, I’ll be in the library for a while either before or after the event to just chat. Hope to see some of you at one of the workshops below.

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Workshops

This Months workshop is ‘Growing flowers from seed’. Growing from seed is a great way to get a huge quantity and variety of plants in your garden. I’ll be demonstrating different ways of sowing, and then doing some pricking out, potting on, and I’ll have some lovely locally grown fresh seeds with me to give away. As usual, you won’t go home empty handed.

Mullingar 13th April, 11am-12:30pm

Moate 15th April, 11am-12:30pm

Castlepollard 16th April, 5pm-6:30pm

Kilbeggan 22nd April, 11am-12:30pm

Kinnegad 23rd April, 1:30pm-3pm

Athlone 29th April , 1pm-2:30pm

I’m partcularly excited about getting back to Kilbeggan after the renovation, and visiting Kinnegad for the first time! Next month I’ll have a webpage on bigskyflowers.ie so that all the events will be in one place.

Music

A fun listen and worth a watch too!

Also, I forgot to tell you about a special frogs project that we did way back in February. I got a call from our local Biodiversity officer to say she’d been asked by NPWS to put up signs in 3 specific places where frogs are known to cross roads in large numbers in their search for a mate. Official signs were on order, but in the meantime, drivers needed to be alerted to the frogs.

We had election posters from Ali’s election campaign, and with a lot of help from Emma who created the graphics, and Mariia who helped with the signage creation, we made 6 signs. Brian and Kim went out on a Saturday morning and put the signs in place. They reported motorists slowing down, and several people commented positively on what they were doing.

To get March properly started, I took a trip to Bellefield for International Women’s day- a beautiful location, fascinating speakers and the lightest scones that I’ve had in a while.

Speaking of food, the most recent community supper from Mullingar Gathers was reckoned to be the best yet by Brian. There was a sandwich cake (savoury) from Brazil, a fantastic chickpea curry that was even better the next day (need that recipe), and 2 baked cheesecakes. I was set up for the week with lunches and snacks with the leftovers that I brought home.

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Coole Meadow

As is usual on St Patrick’s day, we put planted a few potatoes. The ground was still quite damp and cold, so we focussed on the potato towers. We put in layers of donated donkey manure and the old composted grass from last years mowings. I recently learned that potatoes have the same variants as tomatoes - some are determinate and some are indeterminate. The determinate ones only produce potatoes at one level as it were - most first and second earlies are like this - so earthing up does nothing for them. So I placed determinate potatoes at several levels in the potato tower. I’m hoping that they will figure out to come out to the light, not try to wend their way up against gravity. I needed to push them in quite deeply so that the new potatoes would grow in the dark. It’s all very experimental.

One of our favourite spuds - purple rain - is indeterminate. So we will need to build up the cage over time, adding more layers as the plant grows.

The compost bins that were full to the brim at the end of last year have decomposed nicely, and have probably shrunk down to a third of what they were. As before, we will use that compost for growing potatoes, and also for mulching the trees - all of which are thriving.

We now have hundreds of willows planted which will hopefully produce lots of long skinny branches for making wreaths and baskets.

Lots in bloom there in March. And the odd bumble bee.

Workshops

Back with Womens Community Projects in Mullingar - 2 workshops this month. The first was on emergency preparedness. While we have been promised some kind of guidance by our leaders in they area the current booklet is form when Bertie was Taoiseach. So we spent some time thinking about how to be prepared in a variety of ways, and came up with a good motto - “Don’t be scared, be prepared”.

I also taught a sourdough class, and assisted Emma in a card making class, which was great fun. Another sourdough workshop (the final for 2026 I think) in Red Roots. Claire captured me in full swing.

Flower Farming

The butterfly ranunculus are flying in the tunnel, and the ones outside look even healthier, but they have not produced blooms yet - I’m hoping that the inside/outside and the corms I held back on planting till February will extend my season somewhat. The February starts are going into crates outside - they probably won’t have as many flowers as the tunnel ones, but I’m hoping for a later crop. I’m going to need lots of flowers for my residency!

I’ve gone a bit mad planting seeds and a good few have germinated although I’m struggling with pansies so if you have any tips please leave me a comment. The feverfew, which was one of the first go in (self saved seeds) has been pricked out and potted on, and is mighty. Not ready to go outside yet, though.

I got a bit of weeding done , it’s great to get at it and make space for all the seedlings that are coming along in the tunnel. Some of my beds are so full of scutch though, at some point I’ll have to remove all the perennials and dig everything up to get rid of it. Unless anyone has a better idea?

A few of us Westmeath Flower Farmers got together to place a bulk order of Living Green compost - 82 bags is too much for one, but just about perfect for 4.

Learning

On behalf of Talamh Beo, I attended an event in UCD - Governing for the Future: Institutions and Practices. Organised by Feasta, it brought together civil servants, academics, politicians and other interested parties to think about long term strategy for Ireland. Worth checking out what our neighbours in Wales are doing. I was honoured to be there, can’t say exactly what I learned, it was one of those events that will probably have an effect on me down the line. One of my colleagues from Maynooth days was there, I was delighted to spend time with her.

More prosaically, I attended a sourdough workshop in Riot Rye - a lovely day of learning - there’s always something new to learn about bread.

I’m excited to be going to the Bioregioning event in Borris in April, I’m sure that I’ll learn a lot there, and probably see some old friends, and make some new ones.

Upcoming events

There will be residency events in April, but they are not planned yet, I’ll probably send out a special newsletter to cover those.

I’ll be back in Womens Community protest looking at window boxes. I’ll be in Broadmeadow Community Garden in Swords on April 18th talking about soil, compost and no-dig.

Mullingar Gathers has a few fun events coming up - click here for details. And if you’re a reader you might be interested in Granard Booktown.

Links

A beautiful slice of nature from Clare.

A great explanation of food security and food sovereignty.

Proof that crafting is good for you!

If you’re interested in community gardens:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/x/community-gardens-ireland-spring-gathering-and-agm-2026-tickets-1983892052534

I’d encourage you to donate to this crowdfunded - it would be great to see Irish wool being processed here.

JP McMahon always on point.

And finally, a call to action.

Music

I’ve been listening to a lot of Dire Straits recently - my son is looking to buy an album that I owned decades ago - anyhow - be sure to watch the video for this one - it’s cute! Groundbreaking at the time, and a bit Minecrafty? Is it a bit problematic? Maybe.

I’m enjoying the flash of white that is the drift of snow drops, lovely grown under trees. If you’d like to have similar next year, now’s the time to act - snowdrops are best moved just after flowering. There’s also Hellebore, wallflowers, crocus and primroses. Driving to Dublin earlier this week, I was enjoying seeing cherry blossom and dandelions - we are a few weeks behind here in the midlands.

I had an organic pork and bacon delivery from Siobhan, a fellow Talamh Beo member Newbard - most delicious. We have been reducing our meat eating, so buying quality meat and eating a small amount is what works for us. A large pot of beans with a small amount of bacon, or a lentil stew with some sausages; batch cooked, eaten for dinner and more in the freezer for a day when we don’t have much time.

I have my fingers crossed for the Creative Westmeath announcements in March - I applied for a residency, and am a collaborator for a few other applicants - if I’m running public Westmeath workshops you’l hear about them here.

We are back to outdoor picnics - Coole on Feb 1st for our Brigid’s day fruit tree planting, and a Valentines day picnic at the tree farm in Kilteel.

I had a busy Valentines weekend , which included two trips to Dublin - once for lunch at Dion and a second to see Voices of Irish Farmers- a love story - a performance which put some women farmers front and centre. A very moving events for those of us who grew up on farmers, especially with mothers who were left to run the farm solo.

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Coole Meadow

Well we got the new fruit trees planted at the start of the month. It was a bit too wet for much else, except for the 120 willows that needed to be planted. We moved onto that this week. We planted a large tranche of willow this time last year, and there was sufficient growth to make wreath bases. The new batch of willow is multi-coloured, so it’s going to be interesting to see what we have to work with later this year.

I worked hard and for a long time that day with no ill effects, so I feel like I’m getting back to my pre-op self - without the hip pain and the limp, and the exhaustion that came with it. Great to have a dry day to test myself against the work.

Workshops

I had 2 well attended and lively sourdough making workshops at Red Roots. I’ve been delighted to see some of the student makes, and have heard from friends who have met some of the students that bread making continues!

I was back a the Womens Community Project making soap and talking rituals and all things self care. It's a big group so it can get a bit chaotic at times, but the ladies are all very patient with me and appreciate of the sensual nature of what they are experiencing. If you’re free on a Monday morning, it’s worth checking out what’s on offer, though there is a waiting list now. There’s lots of other offerings too, and it’s low cost or free, so it’s a great resource for us here in Mullingar.

Flower Farming

Still not a lot going on, on the flower front. I had some lovely pink pussy willow in a vase at the start of the month - which are now rooting in some grit, so I’ll have more next year. There’s a black pussy willow in bloom now, so that’s in a large vase along with some yellow willow and the normal white pussy willow.

There’s a bit of growth in the tunnel - not as much from the ranunculus as the volunteer poppies and the weeds, but you can feel that they ground is warming up and anemones are beginning to think about a few blossoms. I’ve started a few more seedlings - snapdragons, statice, snapdragons. the feverfew that I started previously is slowly emerging. But I’m afraid that my larkspur seedlings are being nibbled by slugs, even though they are high up on a shelf.

Learning

I finished up January with an interesting session in Cuige , organised by Mariia, a Ukrainian artist who is putting on lots of interesting workshops . The documentary that I was in - BOOBS- was available to view, and Maria guided a life drawing session (with me as the model!) as part of the event. A great experience! Being a (nude) model wasn’t something that I ever anticipated, but they seem to be in short supply and the only requirement is willingness, here I am! And here are some of the drawings from the night.

Andrea Cullen- founder of Cuige and all round renaissance woman - is running a series of creativity focussed workshops - I attended the first one - it was great fun and I left buzzing. If you’re feeling a bit stuck, or think your’re not creative, or even just want a nice social event, I’d highly recommend spending your Thursday evening with her.

Another Ink Night with Mariia, and some cool pattern. A fun way to spend a Friday evening. And I understand that her second life drawing class went brilliantly.

My beloved pottery class is finished, and my assignment is turned in. This lamp was the main piece turned in, I’m quite delighted with how it turned out, and thanks to Brian for working on the electrics for me.

I spoke on behalf of Talamh Beo at Climate Justice Universities Union All-Ireland Spring Meeting . I was on a panel, and had to introduce myself - as a forest owner/flower farmer, so I went back to my parents and how their lives and choices had shaped me - I was overwhelmed with the positive feedback, and the interesting questions that my introduction generated.

It was great to chat there with Lisa Singleton about her Brilliant Ballybunion work - worth checking out the learning briefs - useful for other community groups trying to galvanise around food.

Upcoming events

There’s another sourdough worksop in the calendar for March 22nd, starting at 11am - phone Tom (087 905 2686) to book your place - quite a few places booked already, so if you’re interested, don’t delay. That will probably be it for this years sourdough classes in Westmeath.

I’m teaching two workshops in Womens Community projects in March, but we keep those a secret, so I’ll tell you about them next month! Also, I’ll be helping Emma Noonan with her first workshop for that group, I’m really looking forward to doing a bit of making myself.

Mullingar Gathers has a few fun events coming up - click here for details - looking forward to the potluck on the 7th. I’m thinking to make some bean enchiladas, and to make a tomatillo sauce for them - I have bags of tomatillos in the freezer. And maybe a Basque cheesecake. What do you think?

Links

The Talamh Beo position on the Bord Bia scandal - worth a read. https://talamhbeo.ie/bord-bia-why-so-surprised/

With Valentines day in the rear view, and Mothers day approaching, some more reporting on the evils of the global flower industry. Good floral presents for Mothers Day - a rose plant, a subscription to a local flower grower, or a workshop. I have fond memories of a very happy Mothers Day in my brother allotments with my mother, we got very dirty and tired, it was a perfectly lovely day. So rather than a crowded garden centre or hotel, maybe volunteer for a few hours of work in YOUR mother’s garden, if you are lucky enough to have her close by.

An interesting event happening in Belfast:https://imaginebelfast.com/event/be-prepared-civil-food-resilience/

Food Sovereignty is in my mind a lot this year - here’s a proclamation from some years ago, but valid still. https://www.leitrimorganic.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Food-Sov-Ireland-Proclamation.pdf

And worth signing this petition to enshrine the right to food in EU law. https://emmaus-europe.org/language/en/food-is-a-human-right-campaign/#:~:text=Food%20is%20a%20Human%20Right,Commission%20to%20propose%20new%20legislation.

I was delighted to be part of the ECCO project run by the Rediscovery centre, helping people to set up worm farms with stuff that might otherwise end up in landfill. This video was made at the end of the project, and I was delighted to see that worms got a mention. And watch out for our own Westmeath libraries star, Dearbhla!

Music

Well, I can’t get enough of multi-award winning and multi talented Irish artist, Jessie Buckley. So here you go!

We began the year with a trip to Lough Boora - it was a sunny day and the sculpture was looking great. We were a bit late for the cafe , but luckily we had packed the Kelly kettle and some sandwiches, so we had a delightful picnic in the car park.

January has been busy with a couple of things - planning the Talamh Beo Womens event in IMMA - Rooted in Strength- this has been very popular, and was fully booked in no time - I guess that what we are talking about is timely.

Lots of writing - Creative Westmeath applications are underway - I have something exciting planned, I hope that it gets funded. I was developing a DIY Wormery resource for the Rediscovery Centre - I’ll link to that when it’s published, it’s getting beautified right now. My ceramics class is coming to an end, lots of beautiful things made - I just need to write up the corresponding words now.

A trip to Galway on a Saturday, a rare treat to be free then- checked out the farmers market, Sheridans , a quick flit around the charity shops and dinner in Kombu. I’d hope to get an outing like this in the calendar once a month - let’s see how that goes.

Doing about an hour of physio a day - most days - and strength and flexibility is gradually returning, but still not fully there. Can put on socks, and go up and down stairs at normal speed, so that’s great. Happy to be out of pain. And looking forward to being back at Pilates.

We are in the IMBOLC time - the earth is pregnant with possibility - lots of new shoots making their way upwards, and of course the January delight that is snowdrops.

Coole Meadow

I have not been to the meadow in some time! The fruit trees have been delivered, so that puts a sense of urgency on it - and with the days getting longer, and hopefully a little warmer. I’m planning some visits there in February - looking forward to snowdrops and pussy willow.

Workshops

2 workshops delivered for the Womens Community Project in Mullingar this month - we started with natural skincare, and the participants are all enthusing about how their olive oil and beeswax balm is making their hands feel and smell great.

This week was Brigids Cross making, and we also made some butter, seeing as she is the Patron saint of Dairy/cows, and butter making would have been a traditional IMBOLC activity. A little salt into the freshly made butter, and paired with some sourdough crackers, all were delighted with the new skill. We had some big butter fans in the room who will try making it at home.

Flower Farming

I have a few seeds starting - feverfew - can’t get enough of that - and some more sweet peas - they went straight out into the tunnel the second they germinated - not much activity above ground, but better that than getting weak and leggy inside.

I planted a few snapdragons too - the seeds are very tiny, and I’m not normally patient enough to only put one or two seeds per module, but this time, I managed. We’ll see how that works out - best case is that the plants have time to get pretty strong before they need transplanting. Worse case something eats them all and I’ll be sorry that I wasn’t more generous with the seeds.

Learning

I attended a most enjoyable workshop at Cuige - Maria (aka Masha) ran two workshops - Ink Drawing and Sketching, - details here. If you’re dipping your toe into making art - or would like to brush off some rusty skills, I’d recommend one of her workshops! She’s an excellent teacher - very encouraging and makes it easy for you to get creative, and she has plans for lots of workshops in the near future.

Upcoming events

I’m speaking on behalf of Talamh Beo at Climate Justice Universities Union All-Ireland Spring Meeting and registration is here: ClimateUni Spring Meeting TUS Athlone. Also speaking are Ruth Hegarty and Lisa Singleton - I’m in illustrious company!

We have 2 fully booked ‘No Knead’ Sourdough workshops in Feb in Red Roots in Killucan - we have another one in the calendar for March 22nd, starting at 11am - phone Tom (087 905 2686) to book your place - that will book up quickly too!

I’m organising an event in IMMA with the Talamh Beo Womens group, February 6th. There are lots of women farmers doing amazing things in spite of our messed up food systems and climate change disruptions. If you’d like to learn more, details are here, but the event is fully booked at this point.

Also, a Brigids day sound bath with friend of the newsletter Michaela in Fire and Earth on Feb 1st. Just a few spaces left there, so get yourself sorted quickly!

Mullingar Gathers has a few fun events coming up - click here for details, and seems to have settled in well to Cuige. Not on that web page, but exciting for me is a seed swap that Emma (the brains behind Mullingar Gathers) has organised with Mullingar Library. I have been dreaming of such an event for many years, and I’m so happy that we are finally having one here in Mullingar. That’s on in Mullingar Library , Feb 28th - 11am-1pm. I’ll be there with loads of seeds, hope to see some of you there too! No need to book, just show up either with seeds you have saved to share, or empty-handed and excited about planting!

Also - some great events coming up in Dun na Si, Moate - in particular the willow weaving workshops: Full list here

Links

Small-scale farmers produce more of the rich world’s food than previously thought – new study

Might be of interest - the global bio economy summit:

And this article about my brother from the farming section of the Independent

Music

This is a song I have featured before - Troy by Sinead O’Connor - this time sung by Jessie Buckley - currently Starring in Hamnet and doing us proud internationally.

December was a quiet month for me - my focus was on flexibility and strengthening post hip replacement - and if I took focus off that (parties, gallivanting etc) I paid the price. I had one day with a very sore knee where I couldn’t put any weight on that foot at all, and was back on 2 crutches. That only lasted a day, but it made me less gung-ho on the exercising.

I did manage a few sessions of preserve making, the rocoto chillies that I harvested green ripened inside, and while they were not super hot, they were the main ingredient in some chilli jam and some salsa. This year we added figs and/or raspberries to the chilli jam , both were very tasty.

As you may know, I love free food, and creative ways to avoid food waste, so when our neighbours offered us unpeeled peanuts left over from Halloween, of course we said yes. I had thought to give them to the birds, but Brian suggested that we make peanut butter. Shelling them was a bit of a pain, but a good sitting down activity for me, and then Brian roasted them and ground them in the food processor. It took a while but it did make delicious peanut butter - we made one with salt and one without - and now enjoying both in porridge the mornings. The shells are in the wormery, now nicely covered with fungus, and will eventually be consumed by the worms.

My walking has sped up a bit (still not back to pre op speed tho, and maybe that was a bit fast with potential for trips and random bruising?) and I’m covering greater distances - a pre Christmas shopping trip to Galway was 12K steps - but I was good for nothing by 3:30 pm. Here’s the data from my Fitbit - nice to see the progress.

We had a little outing to the tree farm and got to try out our new fire pit - this years Christmas gift to ourselves. We didn’t use it to cook anything, but can confirm that it lights quickly, and burns well, and isn’t too smokey. We bought our first Kelly Kettle 14 years ago, it’s still going strong - we used it to boil water for tea and hot chocolate with our sandwiches. I highly recommend getting one if you like a hot beverage in the great outdoors!

I was a bit frightened of how I’d get in and out of the van post op, but I managed well at the tree farm and even drove it a bit. So feeling quite positive about my recovery now!

The starlings are back near Lough Ennell - I have seen them in the past, but went out deliberately to see them recently and I highly recommend it. It’s an awe inspiring sight, and they seem to be pretty reliable in murmurating every evening.

Coole Meadow

Still enjoying the 2025 harvest - lots of pumpkins and tromboncino squash sitting waiting to be eaten, and a few potatoes also. You might remember that we had a lot of potatoes with eel worm damage - I was able to salvage some of those potatoes by cutting out the damaged parts. I then processed them for freezing - partially cooked, cooled, dried and put in a freezer bag with some oil - they were delicious roasted in the oven (from frozen) and very convenient. Freezing potatoes puts me in good company, though this is a but too much faff for me.

Planning to get back to the field in January - we have fruit trees ordered, and some coloured willow that will need to be planted. Looking forward to resuming the work and the picnics!

Workshops

No workshops delivered this month. Normally I’d have been delivering wreath workshops, but quite happy not to. Friends were worried that I’d be bored, but with all basic activity (showering, moving, getting dressed) taking a lot longer, with physio exercise, walks and naps or rests, there wasn't really time to be bored.

I’m delighted to be partnering with Red Roots Farm to run a Sourdough Workshop in early February. Based on feedback from a previous newsletter, a Sunday morning is good for workshops, so let’s see how this goes! We have limited spaces and there are bookings already, so phone Tom (087 905 2686) if you’d like to book a place.

Flower Farming

There’s not a huge amount to be done for or with the flowers in December, but I was delighted to get back into the tunnel in the past few days for a bit of work. Last year I removed the raised beds, and this has made the ranunculus planting a lot easier. I took a chance and planted the corms directly - this seems to have paid off, and butterfly and regular plants are sprouting. I put down metal mesh shelves to keep the cats form digging - these now need to be moved up onto blocks to allow the plants to grow unimpeded. Any where that wasn’t protected has been dug by the cats, who are lovely, but a bit of a menace.

There are quite a few volunteer plants coming up too - nasturtium, poppy calendula and sweet peas. The sweet peas I have moved to modules - they don’t love being moved, but since they are free, it cant hurt to try. I think that the nasturtium won’t survive a frost, but the poppies and calendula need to be removed, they will starve the ranunculus. So I was delighted to get that done, and even though I can only work for short bursts, its great to get out.

I let the hens out in the main garden - they did a bit of rooting and weeding for me, probably some fertilising too! They were delighted to be out, and there are no small seedlings at the moment that they can damage.

Learning

I finally buried the woollen strips that we knitted at the “Soil your Scarf” event in Mullingar Library. Jess gave us some extra wool, so I made a few extras. There’s one now in the tunnel, one in a big pot filled with homemade compost, and growing garlic, one in the front garden and another in a worm bin. There’s a final one destined for Coole Meadow. It will be very interesting to see how fast they break down - which is a good indicator of soil health.

Upcoming events

As mentioned above - No Knead Sourdough workshop on Feb 8th in Killucan - phone Tom (087 905 2686) to book your place.

Also. I’m organising an event in IMMA with the Talamh Beo Womens group, February 6th. There are lots of women farmers doing amazing things in spite of our messed up food systems and with climate change disruptions. If you’d like to learn more, details are here.

Looking forward to a Mullingar Gathers community supper in Cuige on Jan 10th.

Also, a Brigids day sound bath with friend of the newsletter Michaela in Fire and Earth on Feb 1st.

Links

An article about a Talamh Beo event I attended in Trinity College.

Chef Sam black talking about fermentation and evolution - a wide ranging talk.

Seed saving - a beautiful video

Seed saving instructions - free

Music

Something lively to see in the New Year - wishing everyone Peace and Abundance in 2026.

Surgery went ahead on November 8th, and all went well. My surgeon cleared me to do whatever I wanted on the 19th, so that was pretty speedy. At this point, I’m walking around inside without crutches, and outside for longer distances with just one. Tried out driving earlier this week, all good, but I wouldn’t want to drive a long way. Between the physio exercises, the napping, the short walks and everything taking longer, my time is filled productively - there’s a bit of reading and movie watching in there too, but I’m not yet restless for more mental stimulation. A nice time of the year for some hibernation.

I’m enjoying slow walking - really seeing the nature in my estate. And I have been able to return to some kitchen duties - the freezer was well stocked with bread prior to surgery, but that had all run out, so made a few this week - a white loaf with oats, flax and millet, and a cinnamon raisin breakfast loaf.

Back in 2024, I got involved in a cool art project that then evolved into a short documentary film. That film has gone on to win lots of awards- most recently audience choice at Waterford Film festival - and been shown internationally and in schools in Ireland, which is rather delightful. I’m hoping to arrange a showing in Cuige at some point, I’ll keep ye posted! And the painting of my boobs is on the wall in our bedroom.

Coole Meadow

Back in October, I picked lots of medlars. After you pick the medlars, you need to ‘blett’ them - so I left them in a cool place to rot slightly. Earlier this week, they were sufficiently bletted, and they have been made into some medlar cheese, something a bit like membrillo, which will be delicious with cheese and crackers.

The willow that we planted last spring went off to become wreath bases for Karen, which is a pretty quick turnaround for any planting.

Looking back at the year in Coole meadow, we had no house or kitchen to prepare food in, on our work days, so we had 7 months of weekly picnics. Between the Kelly Kettle for boiling water, and getting creative with frittatas and tarts, I’d say our picnic game is on point with so much practice. Looking forward to another few months of al fresco lunches in 2026, before the build is finished.

Workshops

I began the month with a lovely day in Coolamber- making soap and balms with a delightful group. And great to be tagged by people afterwards making beautiful and sustainable Christmas gifts.

It feels very strange not to have any more workshops lined up, and I did have some requests that I had to turn down. However, focussing on my strength and flexibility is a priority, and I hope that I’ll have one or two events in January in my next newsletter.

Flower Farming

As part of the early November garden push, I got the tunnel cleared out, and planted lots of ranunculus and anemone. Normally I’d sprout them first, but time did not permit, so they were all planted directly. My cats are very fond of lying and digging in the tunnel, so all the corms were then covered with mesh shelves from old mini greenhouses. Light and water can still get to the plants, but cats no digging or lying on them. I have been out under supervision to the tunnel a few times, looking forward to some light weeding and mooching there soon.

Learning

How to walk again - and looking forward to getting back to the pool, and on my bike.

Upcoming events

Mullingar Gathers has a few events coming up - check here for details. Events are mostly in Cuige, and by all accounts, well attended and very enjoyable.

Links

Some wonderful news for seed saving in Kenya - with an a Irish connection.

Lots of people putting Christmas lists online - I have a few suggestions

1. Buy local - get out to the treasure trove that is Studio Bleu Vintage in Castlepollard.

2. Give experiences, not stuff. Send or bring a friend to cheese school!

3. Give biodegradable gifts (for example food)- this granola is a lovely gift that will still be good in January. Or this would be amazing for creating tarts with leftovers and frozen puff pastry.

4. Check out Brookwood Pottery in Marino, Dublin.

Interesting research report from the UK about the cut flower industry and climate change.

A nice useful list from The Edible Flower

Music

A musical poem, with thanks to Grace Wells and Mark Roper.

Some good things though - after a summer of sleeping outside and perching on the compost bins, the cats have come inside. Warm for them and cuddles for us. And sometimes they will scoot along on the couch to leave room for us.

Lots to harvest - Tomatoes, tomatillos, aubergines, courgettes, beans, chillies, apples, raspberries - harvested, and mostly processed or eaten. Have been making lots of chilli jam - adding a small amount of raspberries or figs or both to add to the flavour.

Went to Athone for an Agriculture & Forestry Stakeholder consultation for the 4th National Biodiversity Action Plan, in my Talamh Beo role (and check out the TB website, which now mentions flowers!)

Also went to the Offline Film festival in Offaly, where a film that I participated in picked up a few awards. I’ll tell you more next month about this project.

Also got my flu and covid vaccination, no ill effects. Good to have that out of the way.

Coole Meadow

For the first time, a great year for squash. The yellow courgettes kept on producing till mid October, and Rolet and Tromboncino will definitely be on the list for growing next year. Roles in particular is prolific, and one fruit is perfect for one person - open a lid, quickly cook in the microwave, and add butter or sauce after scooping out the seeds. The big squash are great, but a production to cut up, and then you have to make a huge amount of food. Tromboncino were working like a courgette in the summer, and some of them developed a nice firm outer skin for storage. Subtle delicate flavour. I cut rounds, grilled them in a little oil, and topped them with pecorino at the end for a delicious starter.

We are still mowing - the grass has not stopped growing yet - but it has slowed down. The willow that we planted in spring has been coppiced, and will be used by Karen to make wreath bases for Christmas wreaths, here’s one of her workshops if you’d like to book in.

We have planted lots of yellow rattle, though I suppose that we could rely on the seed falling down and growing itself - but we don’t have much ground disturbance, so I feel compelled to help things along. I have been giving away fresh seed at my seed saving events - I still have some left - get in touch if you’d like some - it needs to be used up this year.

And yes, the weeds are still growing, I have been doing my best, and hoping that when I get back to Coole in January/Spring, that it will be in reasonable shape.

I got my garlic in, and covered with comfrey leaves on October 1st- they have rotted down quickly and some of the garlic (Primor, true to it’s name) has sprouted already!

Workshops

Lots of fun workshops this month. I was back with the Women’s Community Project for two - we began the month with Mindfullness and Nourishment and Michaela joined me to lead some chair yoga, and finished up with a sound bath which was very well received. The following week, we talked about food waste and made a vegetable soup. A very democratic soup - with some parameters in place, we voted on the veg, and made something that catered to the food sensitivities of the group. Always a pleasure, and hope to be back in the Spring. The students surprised me with a card and gifts to wish me well for my operation, I was very touched by their thoughtfulness and kindness.

The Crafty Yellowship has come to an end - for now. We ran our ‘Get the Flax’ in Bertilles beautiful Studio Bleu in Castlepollard. A beautifully lit, warm, mindful evening, with loads of creativity, and lots of clothes given a new lease of life. And new skills shared!

I visited the new renovated and lovely Ballyconnell Market House for a seed saving workshop, which was great fun - lots of hands on learning and socialising - and I still have lots of seeds left. So hopefully there will be some opportunities to give those seeds away next spring. It will certainly be part of my offering.

And last but definitely not least, we had an exhibition to mark the end of the Crafty Yellowship project in Cuige. Bertille and Martina did an amazing and efficient job getting the Cuige room set up, and we had a great turnout. Delighted to have Cathal Flood , Cavan Biodiversity officer, give a few remarks, and recite one of his beautiful poems. I was delighted to provide some refreshments, which seemed to go down well.

Flower Farming

All the biennials are planted out - and I hope, forming deep roots to help them last the winter. It’s always amazing how much growth happens for these, especially if you can get them in before the equinox.

I have not planted any cold weather annuals, and it’s too late for that now. So I will rely on self seeding - sometimes it good to be a messy gardener.

I’m filling up the tunnel with Ranunculus and Anemone, I’m not doing the normal process of soaking and pre sprouting - time just doesn’t allow - fingers crossed all will be well. I’m also planting lots in big pots, I seem to have way too many corms, but they are such beauties, you cant really have too many.

I was part of a group order for some tissue culture Campanula - that’s mostly gone in outside, I’ll try some in the tunnel too. Tissue culture is not something I’d normally do, but great to be experimenting.

Learning

I had hoped to get to a soil event run by NOTS, and to Riot Rye bakery for a sourdough course, and to the Burren Winterage - none of that happened. Maybe just as well.

I’m back in Athlone LWETB doing a level 5 qualification in pottery/ceramics. I don’t know if I’ll succeed with the qualification, given that I have only one more class left pre op, I’m hoping that I’ll make it back for a few classes in December. Enjoying the craic and the creativity.

Flower Farmers of Ireland sponsored another seed saving workshop, this time with Debbie Gilles of True Harvest seeds- great learning!

Spent a weekend in Kells Bay with Horticulturalists that were way nerdier then I! Highlight for me was a talk by Oliver Schurman of Mount Venus nursery and an opportunity to buy their new book. I’m looking forward to a day out in their new space in 2026.

Our local library hosted an inventive workshop called ‘Soil your scarf’ where we knit a tiny scarf with Irish wool to go into the ground and be eaten by the underground life. they healthier your soil, the faster that the scarf will disappear, but in the meantime lots of creatures can be seen enjoying their woollen home.

Finally, I was at an amazing event - a local food symposium in Trinity college on October 30th. Stand out moments for me were Fergal Anderson talking about the love that farmers have for their work, and how that’s not part of (extractive) Big Ag. The head of the School of Medicine closed the event with his full support for healthy food and healthy soils (for healthy people). Of course Rupa Marya was amazing, and is now part of Trinity, and Sean McCabe from Bohs was inspirational in his work there for community wealth building. There’s definitely room for optimism - lots of work to be done, but moving in the right direction.

Upcoming events

Soapmaking in Coolamber on November 1st - my last workshop for this year - it will be a beautiful day in a gorgeous venue with delicious food.

And that’s it for me for this year – my hip operation is Nov 8^th, I don’t know what I’ll be writing about in a month’s time.

Links

Have always loved Bette - and even more after reading this.

Some birds are coming back from the brink read it here

Don’t know if I shared this before , but never bad to repeat…Fungi

Might be of interest - building resilient local economies.

Music

Beautiful video and music - and Mullingar talent.

Creative direction @andrea.cullen - and director of photography @tanyacullen_tantan@bronte_photography_projects - both great friends of Big Sky Flowers. And filmed on the bog near Coole - a beautiful place that we pass on our way out there.

There are a few things happening in the next week that I’d hate for you to miss out on - and if you are not on social media you may now know about them.

Get the Flax is back, this time in Castlepollard at Studio Bleu on Tuesday October 14th, 7pm. We will chat a little about the global clothing industry and then do a bit of mending, embellishment, embroidery. We ran this earlier in the summer in Cuige and it was a beautifully mindful and constructive evening.

Click here to book a place.

Here are some photos of the previous workshop:

Then, on Sunday October 19th, we have an exhibition from 3-7pm in Cuige - all welcome! Maybe you didn’t get a chance to attend a workshop? We will have some of the materials there, and you can play with them. If you attended a workshop and would like to exhibit your work, get in touch and we’ll arrange that. Or just come for tea and chats! No booking necessary, just show up.

Also check out Mullingar Gathers new website - lots on this month.

I’ll be back later in the month with a proper update - hope to see you before that!

Anyhow, the Global Green Village is entirely lovely – an oasis of good sense and like- minded people, so the event was so much better than the anticipation. And of course great to spend time with other Talamh Beo members in real life. I got busy making flower crowns and could probably have brought double or triple the flowers and willow, and used it all. We sent a lot of people – adults and children, women and men, away happy, and of course I enthused about locally grown flowers and the negatives of imported flowers.

I didn’t manage to make it to any of the talks in Global Green, but I did attend a lovely talk (with snacks!) in Theater of Food destined for this podcast and even caught a bit of the David Gray show from some seats at the back, where the view of the screens was excellent. I was pleasantly surprised by the giant oak tree in the main stage, that blocks the view for many. I’m very glad that it hasn’t been chopped down or hurt by the crowds.

Here at months end, we are back from a wonderful trip to the Basque region – we took the ferry to Bilbao, spend a few days with our sons in France, doing some shopping, eating, swimming and mountain biking. We drove back to Bilbao, put the boys on a plane home (phew) and had a few city days to ourselves. Bilbao is gorgeous, but there were a few blisteringly hot days – screens were showing temps of 42 degrees C. It was a bit hot for me. When the weather broke with high winds, lower temperatures and torrential rain, I was much happier.

I’m not very good at relaxing on holidays, but the ferry is brilliant for making me relax – there’s really not much that you can do except for eat and drink and sleep, and no connectivity to make you twitchy. The journey is about 30 hours or so, so depending on what time you leave at, you get one or two sleeps on the boat. And wonderful not to be dealing with airport stress. We did a bit of wine/cider and food shopping too, great to be able to load that into the car and not worry about packing it. Ferry is also good for writing the first draft of this newsletter!

There are fantastic crops of apples everywhere. We have lightly wrapped the unblemished ones in newspaper and put them in a crate for storage – will keep an eye on them and try to eat them. We are not great apple eaters, I’m afraid. I cut out any rotten bits of the other ones picked and made apple pectin. Some of that went into a spectacular raspberry and fig jam (It was Brian’s idea to combine those two fruits) – it’s a great combination, so I will make more with the figs that have gone into the freezer. The raspberries are still producing - need to get out and pick them on a dry day!

We’re thinking to make a chilli jam version with the same combination – adding some vinegar for tartness and proportionately more of the apple pectin to have a more jelly like end product.

Coole Meadow

Getting ready for the winter – mowed all the ‘fine’ meadow, and removed the hay to our giant compost bins - this part of the meadow had loads of flowers this year, so we are doing things correctly. We had Brian’s sister visiting, and they did a bit of in sync mowing. The grass is still growing, so Brian will probably go back over the rough areas and cut again – multiple cuts help to improve the grass quality in those areas.

Potatoes are all harvested, although I have planted some Christmas spuds as an experiment. I wonder if the eelworms will get those too – possibly not if it’s colder, though they have already had some frost damage. At any rate I have some growing in Styrofoam boxes in the tunnel that are flying. A lot of the potatoes that we harvested had eelworm damage, so needed to be processed quickly – they definitely won’t store. I know that mashed potatoes freeze well, but I have also tried making my own freezer chips, and hash browns – it will be interesting to try these soon to see if it’s a viable way to store potatoes. I try not to buy commercial oven chips , but sometimes we opt for convenience in the winter and spring – they go so well with one of Joe’s burgers.

Here’s one of the wire worms dancing in a potato…

We thought that the big apple tree that precedes our work there was a crab apple, but it has produced lots of big delicious apples this year – nice to know that it’s a proper apple tree and that the extreme haircut that it got a few years ago was beneficial.

And here’s a little shrew that we managed to film before she squeezed through a tiny hole and ran free in the grass.

Workshops

There were seed saving workshops in Portlaoise land Malahide libraries this month – no photos, but plenty of seeds brought home and great feedback from participants.

I ran 2 lovely edible flower and herb workshops for Meath libraries - here’s some of the creations. A really good time of the year for a workshop like this – plenty of flowers and herbs to choose from, and great fun tasting and smelling lots of herbs, and decorating cupcakes with botanicals. And using fig and nasturtium leaves for plates, very creative and sustainable!

I did some tree planting with people from the National learning Network in Belvedere. I also did a Winter Herbs and Spices workshop in Women’s Community Project in Mullingar, and I’m back there with more events for the next 2 Monday mornings - they have a huge variety of funded workshops, and training there - check it out!

Flower Farming

Westmeath flower farmers had a lovely potluck brunch and seed and plant swap in Nadia’s farm. Some partners and children came, but I’m afraid that the conversations were all flower-lore related, so they may have been a bit bored…

I have a good few biennials planted, hopefully they will put down good strong roots before the weather gets cold. I’m trying to mix them with spring bulbs in one area – I’m hoping that they will be good flower bed fellows. With a small garden, I have to see if my beds can do double or triple duty!

Taste of Westmeath was launched in Killua Castle last weekend, and Jo from Glasson Flower Farm, and Sarah of Slow Field Flowers were there flying the flag.

Learning

I might enjoy Electric Picnic, given the right circumstances.

If I’m going on holidays for longer than a week, I need a project, otherwise I’ll start hankering for home. Definitely worth considering workaway or WWOOFing in the future for a more extended break

I attended an Aoife Munn workshop in Belvedere – learned some new things about hard and soft word propagation that might increase my strike percentage in the future.

Lots of learning scheduled for October - I’ll tell you all about it next month.

Upcoming events

The final Crafty Yellowship workshop is in Studio Bleu, Oct 14th - Get the Flax - numbers very limited, don’t wait to book your place! Also, a final exhibition/gathering/event will happen Sunday 19th October, afternoon to evening - save the date! I’ll be emailing all workshop participants soon.

Seed saving in Cavan – Friday 17^th October, 10am-12 noon, Ballyconnell Market House, H14 P300 - click here to book a place.

Soapmaking in Coolamber on November 1st - my last workshop for this year - it will be a beautiful day in a gorgeous venue with delicious food.

And that’s it for me for this year – my hip operation is Nov 8^th, so I won’t be delivering any wreath workshops this year.

Mullingar Gathers has a tea tasting and book swap event on 4th of October - click here for details. Wish I could be there, but I’m off to Kells Bay for the weekend.

HugelKulture workshop near Kells - click here to book

I have been chatting with Red Roots about a Sourdough workshop in January.

Check out Red Roots Autumn and Winter workshops!

Links

Help Talamh Beo to shape the future of food in Ireland! Talamh Beo is creating a database of Local Food Producers across Ireland.

Why? There is no complete picture of how many farmers & growers exist in Ireland — who you are, where you are, or what you produce. Without this knowledge, policies are being written without the voices of small-medium scale, agroecological, and community-rooted primary producers.

If you are a producer, enter your details here. It’s a quick one-page form, and your input is valued. The more voices we gather, the stronger our case for policies that support local producers and food systems across Ireland - please feel free to forward this on to other farmers!

You can find more information about Talamh Beo and our current Strengthening Local Economies Project here.

Music

Went to see this guy perform as part of the Mullingar Jazz and Blues festival, an intimate performance in Cuige Studio. A lovely mellow evening, and home in bed by 11pm.

So I normally talk about the weather in these newsletters but to be honest I can’t remember how it was in August, I was that busy. I think there were some hot days and there was some rain- not a huge amount - and I know it’s pretty bad right now with Storm Erin. Over the course of Heritage week, I delivered nine workshops in 10 days. So yeah, August was a pretty busy month

If you’ve been any of my in-person workshops over the last few months you’ll have seen that I’m limping a bit. And maybe a lot if I’ve been sitting for a while. So in August I also found out that I need surgery - a replacement hip - to fix the limp. That’s scheduled now for early November. Everybody says I will be hopping around like a teenager once that operation is over, I really hope that’s the case.

I got to eat out twice in August, once at the Vintage Kitchen and once in Carluccio’s. Both were delightful nights with good friends and excellent food. I do love my food, but eating out is a rare treat for me. On the home front, eating lots of figs, courgettes, plums and tomatoes.

We also managed a quick trip to Pure Space , Co Clare (Loop head) where we encountered Storm Erin and didn’t go kayaking. We did get in a bit of scything, tidying up the labyrinth and I got to take a dip in their beautiful pond. It’s a very relaxing place, I think mostly because I’m not in the kitchen so I’m not inclined to potter. I spent a lot of time reading which I don’t seem to do often enough at all!

I was on Athlone Community Radio with Christine from Mullingar 4 all, and we got into a great chat about an individual’s power to create the kind of community that we can enjoy living in. A great example was the sound bath event run by Michaela in the bothy in Girley bog. A magical once in a lifetime (?) event! The bothy will move again - details here.

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Coole Meadow

As we were harvesting our potatoes, we noticed that a lot of of them have wireworm, which is very disappointing. The reason for that - as far as we can tell - is that we planted them in new ground. Wireworm populations are higher in previously grassed areas. We had wondered why growth was so poor in that section in spite of all the beautiful donkey manure and compost that we used for our no-dig beds. It looks like the wire worms were causing that lack of growth. Always learning!

The warm weather has brought on the pumpkins and courgettes. They are looking lush. There are a few crazy looking tromboncinos too.

On the flower end of things I’ve been picking lots of materials for Seed Saving workshops. Lots of the flowers looking a bit sad except for the dahlias, but some of them - feverfew for example- are having a second flush of growth with the bit of rain.

We had loads of butterflies on the buddleia and other flowers - something that we have been working toward for years, wonderfully encouraging.

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Workshops

There were lots of workshops! August began with an amazing workshop at An Ghrian Glas. Participants learned one of three things - butter and cheese making with Max Jones, basket weaving with West Country Willows or bread making, with me 🙂. We made sourdough, soda bread, flatbread and crackers. At the end of the day we harvested beautiful vegetables and fruit and feasted on fresh bread, butter, cheese, beautiful soup - some served in the newly woven baskets.

We had a lovely time in Cuige making vases out of old shampoo bottles. I had some interesting dried flowers and seed heads to add to them

I taught a Seed Saving workshop in Dunboyne where we replenished the seed library. I started Heritage week with a very well attended event in Blanchardstown - that was seed saving again. We went to Moate Agricultural show to talk about biodiversity. Brian and his scythe were a great attraction there.

I talked about food preservation and the connections with biodiversity at four different libraries in Westmeath during Heritage week. Great to learn techniques and recipes from the participants. We had a couple of Wild Child sessions on the Greenway too! Always fun to get the parents to try eating a sloe - they look like blueberries but they don’t taste like them!

I finished up the month with a Crafty Yellowship event in Athlone - my first time to work in Abbey Road Studios. A very nice location and a lovely group making sculpture to both decorate their gardens and as habitat.

Flower Farming

I was delighted to final visit the farm of veg and flower grower extraordinaire Shannon and now we’re up to 6 Westmeath flower farmers. She gave me loads of sea holly and echinops to dry and some volunteer sea holly plants from her paths that are now taking root in pots and gardens all over the county.

I have been planting (more) biennials anticipation of a busy spring/early summer next year. Many of the July batch didn't germinate, so trying again, but my Sweet William seeds may be old. It’s been a slow month for flowers, but there’s plenty to do - dead heading, picking, weeding and thinking.

Learning

Brian went to a biochar event and came back with some clarity that biochar char is just charcoal that’s been inoculated with compost or other organic materials. We will continue to add charcoal from our Kachelofen stove to the compost bins and wormeries.

I brought some nettle seeds to various heritage week events, and learned about the difference between male and female nettle plants.

One of the participants on my courses talked about meadowsweet and apple jelly which sounds delightful.

Some interesting communication grants from circular.ie. I’ll probably apply for one. I’m quite excited about an under appreciate topic that needs some attention!

Also, taking a bit of a holiday, going to Spain by ferry - that will be very interesting. I’ll tell you all about that next month.

Upcoming events

I’ll be at Electric Picnic on Sunday 31st, you’re unlikely to read this if you’re attending, I’ll tell you all about it next month.

I have a seed saving workshop in Portlaoise library on 3rd September, 6pm - Link here. Same topic in Malahide library, Sept 27th, 3pm. - book with the library.

I’m running 2 edible flowers and herbs workshops in Navan on Saturday September 6th, and Trim September 8th. Those are always fun, tasty and fragrant! Book your place with the libraries.

The final Crafty Yellowship event is in Studio Bleu, September 30th - Get the Flax - numbers very limited, don’t wait to book your place! Also, a final exhibition/gathering/event will happen Sunday 19th October, afternoon to evening - save the date!

A few other private events coming up - tree seed planting and jam jar flowers.

Mullingar Gathers is hosting a potluck on September 12th - booking is free, but get your place. And the culture night event, which looks intriguing! Sadly, we will miss both.

Links

You might enjoy some beauty - give Tony a follow.

A good place to buy fruit and nut trees - something to think about as your winter activity.

If you’re interested in community gardens .

Care, Feminist economy and food sovereignty

Music

Something mellow from 2 legends:

We celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary with a small gathering at the tree farm. This was a bit of a challenge to organise - we needed to bring what felt like 50% of the contents of our house to the woods. Luckily we have the big van. Parking was the other worry, so Brian did Trojan work with his scythe clearing scrub from a gravelled area that had been colonised by gorse. In the end, it all went swimmingly.

Here’s the fully loaded van

Coole Meadow

Everything is going beautifully in the meadow - we had some visitors and enjoyed sitting in the green and white garden, listening to the bumblebees and admiring the butterflies on the buddleia.

Some good harvests, too.

Lots of potatoes - no photos… I think that I have already shared plenty, but let me know if you’d like to see more! The potato towers mostly worked well, and some of the no dig second earlies have been great. The first early that I bought - Solist - had a miserable yield, I won’t be getting them again. Celebration and Purple Rain - both second earlies are winners. (Growers in South America - the home of the spud - grow up to 200 varieties per field - I may need to expand my selection! )

We have used the potato tower area and compost to grow squash and pumpkins - hopefully lots to show next month.

The poppies peaked and went over.

And the trees are all growing happily, though not yet mature enough to hang a hammock. Lots of apples, raspberries and blueberries to come. We are keeping on top of scything the rough areas, and we will begin the flowery meadow soon. Harvesting lots of yellow rattle for upcoming seed saving workshops.

Workshops

I had one sourdough bread workshop in Blacklion, Cavan - supported by Cavan Community Development. It was my first time teaching with a translator, which was actually more relaxing than I expected. Lots of sense checking - because you can’t translate what you can’t understand…

So an easy month from that point of view, and a much needed rest!

Flower Farming

Loads of flowers harvested and used for the Yoga Picnic! A fun day working with Sarah and Nadia. My son Dara was there with me too, and helping out for the 2 days beforehand of picking and foraging - I couldn’t have managed without him. He even made a few arrangements on the day. And briefly on screen in the Yoga Picnic segment on Ireland AM. He’s a good sport.

Worth a mention is that all the arrangements at the Yoga Picnic are foam free - the boxes are the perfect width for jam jars which we filled with water, and strong plastic bags from Bell Lane in between them to keep them stable- their third use. Also the depth of the boxes means that we can use taller foliage and flowers, and they are well supported. Boxes built by Mary of Fire and Earth yoga studio - one of the yoga picnic organisers - what a renaissance woman!

I came back 2 days after the installation to collect the jars, and most of the flowers were in pretty good shape - in spite of the windy weather.

Biennials have been planted - Hesperis, honesty, sweet william, foxglove, wild carrot. Not all have germinated yet - I may try a second batch soon.

Learning

Check out In Your Nature Podcast https://www.buzzsprout.com/1701709/episodes/17513710 - I enjoyed learning about waders.

I attended a Beacon Farms event at Killua Castle on behalf of Talamh Beo. Great to meet Darina Allen, and lots of other people thinking about and working towards healthy food for all. The existing food systems are not delivering nutrition, health and are contributing to climate change. There’s the start of some action that we can take to turn this around.

I attended the Grain Social in Kilkenny on Tuesday 29th on behalf of Talamh Beo, run by the Irish Grain Network. An amazing day of learning and great food. Highlights for me were seeing the plot at Reuben Cope’s farm where Grace Maher is trialling heritage grains for her PhD research. Also blown away by the talk by Claire O’Grady Walsh on Seed Sovereignty - you can read her research here. A lovely mediation by Ciara of Ursa Minor bakery in Ballycastle and here’s her substack.

I look forward to seeing lots more Irish flour for sale here, and especially looking forward to developing some rye recipes.

Upcoming events

Back to busyness in August -

Bloom where you’re planted - Cuige studio, August 13th- booking up fast.

I’m teaching sourdough bread making at “A Simple Meal” at An Ghrian Glas on August 10th. That’s fully booked now, but keep an eye out for last minute cancellations if you’re interested.

Heritage week - there are 2 wild child events on August 23rd - Streamstown and Mullingar. These were very popular last year and sold out quickly.

Seed saving in Blanchardstown library - 10am start, August 16th. . Also seed saving in Dunboyne Library - August 14th, 2:30pm - book with the library for either event.

I’m also running a Food Preservation heritage event in Westmeath- dates below - book your place with your local library.

Tuesday 19th August, 2025

11:00am-12:15pm Athlone Library

2:00pm-3:15pm Moate Library

Thursday 21^st August 2025

11:00am-12:15pm Mullingar Library

2:00pm-3:15pm Castlepollard Library

Brian and I will be talking all things Meadow related at Mohill Agricultural Show on August 17th.

And I’ll be At Electric Picnic for Talamh Beo on August 31st. Yeah, it’s a bit busier than July - hope to see you at one of these events!

Links

Here’s the Talamh Beo Local Meat Processing position paper. If you think it’s important that we can access locally produced meat, you might consider joining Talamh Beo - you don’t need to be a farmer to join, it’s not expensive, and you are supporting an organisation that is working for our health, soil health and everything in-between.

Also, consider joining ProSilva if you love trees and forests!

Teagasc has a new Centre for Brewing and Distilling - useful if you are product innovating.

Some useful information on (delicious) fibre - For every 10 grams of additional dietary fiber consumed daily, there is a reduction in the risk of certain diseases, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers.

Blanchardstown Gardening group is looking for volunteers : Email blanchgardeninggroup@gmail.com or send Michelle a message on 0858614294 if you’re interested.

Music

Something a bit more modern - coming to Dublin in November - wondering if I should buy a ticket…

A few key items to bring to your attention :

The draft Westmeath Biodiversity plan is out for consultation - and you don’t need to live in Westmeath to give feedback. In this area, the people that are ‘agin’ biodiversity seems to be very noisy, so this is our chance to have our voices heard, and to support the excellent work that is bing done. I’d appreciate it if you would take the time to give feedback, however brief. Deadline is July 1st.

https://consult.westmeathcoco.ie/en/consultation/draft-westmeath-biodiversity-action-plan-2025-2031?language=ga

Here's where you can make the submission. You have to create an account but it's not painful.

https://consult.westmeathcoco.ie/en/user/login?destination=node/add/civiq-comments%3Fc%3D1271%26language%3Dga&language=ga

Also, I’ll be talking about seed saving and giving away seeds at the Yoga Picnic - tickets still available here- it’s a great lineup, looking forward to attending some great events after my workshop.

So, the weather has been great for plants and flowers and there’s lots in bloom right now. I’ll be doing some event floristry for the Yoga Picnic with some of the other Westmeath Flower Farmers - looking forward to having some fun with that, watch my instagram for some getting ready content next week.

June began with the intensity of Bord Bia Bloom - it was brilliant to spend time with other flower farmers and florists and to meet members of the public who were keen on our Irish grown, conflict free flowers. But boy was it exhausting!

Brian and I took a walk around pretty early on the last day of Bloom - it was getting difficult to properly see the show gardens by 10:30am. But I really enjoyed the organic garden sponsored by DAFM - I particularly liked the potatoes with weeds :-)

Seasonal Activities

We are in major harvesting mode now, with loads of food, herbs, fruit and flowers coming on stream. Potatoes in the towers are giving a great yield, while some of the ones in the soil - even with lots of donkey manure, compost and TLC are still struggling to produce foliage.

I’ve been drying nettles for my winter restorative tea, and this week I picked some rosebay willow herb that I’m going to ferment for tea also. I was interested to read that it was a major Russian export to the UK before the East India Company did a lot of marketing of their product…anyhow, looking forward to tasting it. Lots of calendula petals also drying for soap making and other uses.

I think that I have most beds planted now with half hardy annuals and some late planted hardy annuals, and I’m moving on to planting biennial seeds like sweet william, foxglove, honesty and hesperis. It will be a struggle to find space for them when they are ready to plant out, but worth doing as they are such good producers.

Blackcurrants, red currants, strawberries and gooseberries also need to be picked, it’s a good thing that it’s bright out both early and late!

Coole Meadow

The garlic is almost ready to be harvested - I was able to pick some scapes last week. We have emptied all of last years compost bins of hay, except for the ones that are growing potatoes, and we have used that material to mulch trees. At this point, we are trying to keep on top of the grass on the paths and around the caravan, and mowing between the tree stands - the rough grass there is becoming softer and more manageable.

Wild orchids are blooming, and the field is full of butterflies and bumble bees.

Workshops

We had a few Crafty Yellowship workshops in June - Home Sweet Home, Get the Flax, and Going Underground.

A few food waste workshops took places as part of food waste week at the start of the month - Edible flowers and herbs in Mullingar, and Let’s go Bananas in Moate and Athlone. And Nadia ran a fermented food workshop in Castlepollard. Thanks to the libraries for being so welcoming and appreciative of us! Give Nadia a follow on her new flower focussed account.

Cruinniu na nOg in Water St, Castlepollard was a great success with flower crown makers and musicians.

Flower Farming

There was a fair bit of admin post Bloom, not flower farming exactly, but associated. And time consuming. We are nearly there with all of that, I’ll be relieved when it’s finished.

I have sweet peas in the tunnel - not a huge area, but keeping on top of cutting them is a (pleasurable) but full time job! I got behind on my weeding around the end of May, and have kind of given up at this point, in my home garden at least. Every year I swear that this won’t happen, and every year it does.

We are seeing the benefits of our loose coalition of Westmeath Flower farmers - Nadia was contacted by a local florist for some Irish wedding flowers, and working together we were able to meet her needs. I think that we would all enjoy doing that more often - much less stress and pressure than trying to do it all yourself.

Learning

Our forest was used by ProSilva to run some oak thinning training for forest owners and foresters. Professor Ted Wilson delivered the training in Kilteel hall and in Fox Covert wood, we attended for the second day. It was lovely to share our space with like minded people. ProSilva is a great organisation for advancing continuous cover forestry (i.e. no clear fell) in Ireland. Anyone can be a member, worth joining if you love trees.

I attended the Talamh beo agm, this is a fantastic organisation, doing great work practically and politically and with a strong social justice foundation, focussed on food sovereignty. Expect to hear more about them here. Any one can join, you don’t have to be a farmer, and under 30s can join for free! As you might expect, the food was exceptional…prepared by the Gourmet Offensive

Upcoming events

No much on in July after the Yoga Picnic yet - and I’m looking forward to a bit of a break!

There’s a Sourdough workshop organised by Cavan Community Development in Blacklion.

There’s also a Kombucha workshop in P3 cafe. Lisa who runs the cafe reached out to me and I’m delighted to collaborate with her on this, and to reach a new audience in Cavan. Wish I lived closer, I’d be dropping in to the cafe for yummies on a regular basis!

I’ll be teaching Soapmaking in November in Coolamber Gardens - quite the posh venue and a wonderful day out if you wanted to treat yourself or a friend.

August will be busy with lots of heritage week events, and some more Crafty Yellowship workshops - watch this space.

Links

A section for stuff I read or watched that I think is worth sharing - still on hiatus till September . Not spending much time inside reading!

Music

And here’s an oldie, from someone who is performing in Ireland this weekend. I’m in Malahide on Sunday, so I may get to hear her. :-)

Anyhow, enough about that, we’ve had plenty of rain for the past while, and everything is thriving. Plants are happy and I’m able for whatever comes.

Early in the month we managed an overnight visit to the tree farm. Brian did some work with his scythe, but I just lounged around and read and snacked. Lots of nature to see! Happy to see (hear, small) native bluebells, birds, butterflies, bees.

And here’s Brian having a go at some brambles.

The following weekend we spent a lovely few days in Pure Space in Clare - a bit more scything there for Brian, and more resting, reading and snacking for me. And admiring wild flowers.

We did a bit of kayaking on the Shannon estuary, and were delighted when we spotted a pair of otters frolicking in the water and checking us out.

But lest you think I have developed a lazy streak, I have more than made up for those two lazy weekends since then!

June Workshops - in case you don’t have time to read to the end:

Crafty Yellowship workshops in Mullingar.

Cruinniú na nÓg - (Free) flower crown workshop (ages 9-18) and making percussion instruments in Water St, June 7th.

Food waste week June 1-7 - All events are free. Tickets for these are moving fast, so here’s the booking links.

Seasonal Activities

Once the dry weather finished it was time to do lots of planting out. Annuals that had been planted in April, and perennials that I was bringing along in pots. Lots of flowers to be picked - for subscription bouquets, for orders and for workshops.

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I planted some early potatoes in styrofoam boxes in the tunnel in February. Harvested some in late May - delicious. Surly son even acknowledged the freshness. All this from 2 seed potatoes in one styrofoam box with homemade compost.

Coole Meadow

Our comfrey was huge, so Brian scythed some, and I used it to mulch the garlic, and added some to the potato towers.

The potato plot is looking great - John has earthed up some with some topsoil that arrived from the build. (Does it seem like I’m obsessed with potatoes?)

The trees are looking large and leafy. Our Miyawaki plot is looking heathly but difficult to photograph. The willow is also thriving, and we are mulching regularly with cut grass.

Finally, just to show you what lunchtime looks like - the house where we used to cook and eat at is undergoing a major renovation, so the Kelly kettle is proving most useful for the lunchtime tea.

Workshops

A lot of workshops to tell you about!

Back making worm homes - this time in Longford on May 7th - in EDI centre Longford, as part of the ECCO project run by the rediscovery centre.

The Crafty Yellowship carried on with Let’s go Bananas at Water St in mid May - a lovely night of chat, cake and creativity. Mascarpone icing was a big hit.

‘Lets go Bananas’ comes to Moate and Athlone soon - as part of Food Waste week. Moate is booking up quickly, there are a good few spaces left in Athlone - book your place here - it’s free!

A Seed Saving workshop in Swords castle for Fingal Libraries gave me a chance to do some Irish veg shopping in the monthly market there - still working through some of my haul!

Biodiversity week was May 16th to 25th - I ran some events with family resource centres in Athlone and Ballynacargy. A great time had by all - here’s some photos.

And I was delighted to be present for the opening Streamstown pollinator trail on May 23rd. It was lovely to meet people in person that I had worked with throughout the project. Kate from NBDC spoke clearly and engagingly with the local schoolchildren, so a great day out for them.

Flower Farming

With the exception of a bit of planting out, weeding and cutting, this month has been all about Bord Bia Bloom. I’ll be there on Sunday 1st June, speaking in the Botanical Hub Demo Space at 12:30pm, and I’ll be back on Monday 2nd, selling bouquets and plants. Come by stand 17 in the Nursery Village and say hi!

We had a lovely get together for Westmeath Flower Farmers - ostensibly to take a photo for a Bloom related press release, but of course there was time for drinks, and flowery chats! I’m so happy that there are (such fun) flower farmers close by to collaborate with!

Learning

Submitted my portfolio for my ceramics class - it was a throwback to the 1980s, lots of cutting and gluing - I’m hoping to do level 5 in September - I’ll be sure to make a digital portfolio for that one! Don’t know yet if I passed, it certainly wasn’t my A game, but it’s a pass/fail mark, so fingers crossed.

Upcoming events

Loads coming up in June!

The Crafty Yellowship project has three events in June -

Home Sweet Home - in the Refill mill - June 12th. We will be making some sculptural pollinator homes. All materials provided.

Get the Flax is in Cuige - June 16th- creative textile upcycling. No experience necessary. Bring a loved clothing item that needs some TLC and we’ll help you get started.

Going Underground is in the Refill Mill - June 25th. We’ll be taking about below ground life, and making some sustainable home decor with raffia and other organic materials. A lovely crafty evening.

And of course tea, cake, chat at all of them.

Get your tickets now - these will sell out fast.

Cruinniú na nÓg will be coming up in early June - I’m running a flower crown workshop (ages 9-18) in Water St, and my delightful collaborator Bertille is running workshop looking at making percussion instruments out of recycled materials. It should be a lovely day for the community - there will be a lunch for participants and opportunities to socialise for all.

The first week in June is Food waste week - a topic dear to my heart. I’m teaching an edible flowers and herbs workshop in Mullingar library - Wed 4th June 10-12. That afternoon Nadia Pickersgill is in Castlepolard teaching fermentation. On Thursday 5th Bertille and I are taking ‘Lets Go Bananas’ to Moate and Athlone. All events are free. Tickets for these are moving fast, so here’s the booking link.

Headed to Cavan in July for a Kombucha workshop in P3 cafe. Lisa who runs the cafe reached out to me earlier in the month, and I’m delighted to collaborate with her on this, and to reach a new audience in Cavan. Wish I lived closer, I’d be dropping in to the cafe for yummies on a regular basis!

I’ll be teaching Soapmaking in November in Coolamber Gardens - quite the posh venue and a wonderful day out if you wanted to treat yourself or a friend.

Mullingar Gathers x Water St collaboration for the Solstice tickets here -

Art and supper booking link

Supper Booking link

Links

A section for stuff I read or watched that I think is worth sharing - but this month, nothing to share (though a few links below in the music section)! There has been a lot of outside time…this section may be on hiatus till September - we’ll see how June goes. Those bright evenings are hard to resist. I have, however, been thinking a lot about (de)colonisation and conflict free flowers, hopefully I will have some things to share with you soon!

Music

This month I want to share a piece of music that makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. This was recommended by my amazing cousin Sheila Flynn, who is currently living in Australia. Previously she lived in South Africa, and was instrumental in setting up this Community Trust. I hope that you enjoy it too!

One of the perks of being self employed is that I should be able to make the most of weather like this, unfortunately, this time around I had so many workshops scheduled that going kayaking wasn’t a possibility. Must do better with scheduling! Not complaining about being successful, though!

My apple tree is in full blossom, fingers crossed for lots of apples!

In other news, we now have four workshop listed so far for the Crafty Yellowship project, and more to come later in the summer.

And continuing with the weather - that hot weather was followed by torrential rain, hailstones, horrible cold winds and more torrential rain. Happy that we needed some moisture in the soil, but it was exceptionally heavy. Lough Owel is not looking very full, which is worrying since it’s the main water supply for Mullingar. And now we’re finishing up April with some more heat and sunshine - back door in the tunnel is wide open, and fingers crossed that nothing in there will burn - I had to take out my potatoes - luckily they were in containers - the soft green growth was wilting in the heat.

Seasonal Activities

I have been doing lots of seed planting - courgettes, squash, the half hardy annual flowers like French Marigold. I have been planting out earlier sowings, I filled a tray with lovely strawflowers, and the slugs proceeded to munch on all of them,

It’s a busy time! Beds to be weeded so that the new flowers can be planted. Trying to time the planting so that the plants get rained on - but preferably not in the form of hailstones!

Coole Meadow

So, we got all the potatoes planted - in out no dig donkey mare beds, and also in some sheep fencing bins with composted grass, manure and some spent compost. These didn’t work out great last year, hopefully we will have a bit more success this year. We have been a bit more methodical with the layers of organic material. The potatoes at the top are volunteers from last year.

The broom is providing colour in the field, and structure and colour in my subscription flowers.

We still have lots of composted hay and regular compost to use - now we need to find places for it, before we start in on the mowing again. What mowing we are doing now around the trees, we are using to mulch straight away - no grass or weed seeds yet to worry about.

Workshops

A lot of workshops to tell you about!

The Crafty Yellowship kicked off really well with ‘Bloom where you’re planted’. Here’s a lovely creation from the night by Emma from Mullingar Gathers.

I ran a workshop in the Rediscovery centre where I helped people to make wormeries out of 10 lt Mayo buckets (generously donated by chippers) and old election posters. No one was grossed out, and lots of happy worms went to new homes.

I had 2 outings to Cavan, one for foraging for wild garlic and making pesto al fresco, and another for a soap making workshop. I’m getting rather fond of Cavan, and there’s more to come later in the year for that lovely county.

I’m almost finished with a 4 week gardening course in Water st community garden in Castlepollard - it has been a lovely time, with a nice mix between learning and hands on practice. The no-dig beds are looking good, and hopefully we will have some plants ready to go in next weekend. The best looking bed at the moment is the edible flowers/herb bed, with borage, calendula and feverfew all looking fantastic.

I headed down to Portaloise and delivered a gardening for biodiversity workshop, lovely to meet people who are keen to increase biodiversity and do the right thing by Mother Nature.

I delivered an intro to no-dig gardening workshop in Mullingar, Moate, Athlone and Castlepollard. Normally we overbook a little, because since these events are free, people book but don’t show up. (Don’t do this) Moate proved us very wrong - we had a full house of 20 very interested gardeners who all went home quite happy with seeds and plants.

Final worksop of the month was a Sunday afternoon Kombucha workshop - I really enjoy the part of these workshops where we have some cheese and crackers and taste different flavours - this one didn’t disappoint!

Flower Farming

So, as I mention above, my tunnel ranunculus are headed for hibernation - they are plants which normally grow in the Mediteranean under deciduous trees and bloom in early spring, so they are done for this year.

I had butterfly ranunculus in pots, and they were doing fine, but the heat stressed them - pots are drier and hotter than the ground - and they all have greenfly now. Lesson learned.

My biennials - sweet william, honesty, foxgloves, sweet rocket are all doing great. The honesty has bloomed and the others are on the verge. I won’t pick the honesty, although it does smell great - but it’s even more beautiful when it goes to seed. Aquilegia (a perennial) has self seeded all over and is in full bloom.

We (the flower farmers) are headed to Bloom again, and getting ready in all kinds of ways for what promises to be a great event.

And, believe it or now, now is the time that we organise next years Ranunculus order! This is one of the great things about belonging to the flower farmers - the opportunity to place wholesale orders for gorgeous varieties.

Learning

Here’s a teapot and vase that I had a lot of fun making in my pottery class. The vase turned out a lovely pewter colour - I’ll share it with some flowers in it!

I learned that it’s possible to get sunburned in March sitting by the sea.

I also learned that Greenpark Meadows is not ready for biodiversity - not going to say more here, but if you’re interested, ask me about it.

Upcoming events

Loads coming up in May!

The Crafty Yellowship project- We have 5 different themes/craft practices, taking place in Mullingar and Castlepollard. Next one up is “Lets go Bananas” in Castlepollard - 14th May, 7-9pm. Should be a fun night with some botanical decoration and block printing.

Back making worm homes - this time in Longford on May 7th - in EDI centre Longford

Headed to Cavan in July for a Kombucha workshop in P3 cafe. Lisa who runs the cafe reached out to me earlier in the month, and I’m delighted to collaborate with her on this, and to reach a new audience in Cavan. Wish I lived closer, I’d be dropping in to the cafe for yummies on a regular basis!

Mullingar Gathers has lots on too - if you haven’t been to one of their events you’re missing out! Games night Friday May 2nd. And then an afternoon tea party at Cuige on May 4th - if I haven’t gone camping I’ll definitely be there - to book a ticket click here. And best of all the community supper on May 17th, always a great feed and good conversation. AND there’s a plant swap on Saturday May 10th, 12-3pm at the Refill Mill. Bring your extra plants and/or take home plants that were someone else’s spares. Revel in natures abundance!

The May bank holiday weekend is happening in Mullingar - check out the Bailiu line up - lots for all ages and tastes.

I’ll be teaching Soapmaking in November in Coolamber Gardens - quite the posh venue and a wonderful day out if you wanted to treat yourself or a friend.

Biodiversity week is May 16th to 25th - I’m running some events with family resource setters, and there will be a grand opening of the Streamstown pollinator trail on May 23rd - keep and eye on my social media for details.

Cruinniú na nÓg will be coming up in early June - I’m running a flower crown workshop in Water St, and my delightful collaborator Bertille is running workshop looking at making percussion instruments out of recycled materials. It shoddy be a lovely day for the community - there will be a lunch for participants and opportunities to socialise for all.

Links

A new section for stuff I read or watched that I think is worth sharing.

1. Recommend you follow Mark, here’s a lovely example of his writing Solvitur ambulando

2. Some people have asked me about community gardens - here’s a list. Community Gardens in Ireland - We're Looking for You. And don’t forget about the Water St Community garden in Castlepollard.

3. A fascinating video about soil.

4. If you’re thinking about growing comfrey (something that I regularly give away) here’s a Young Scientist winner proving that it’s great. (no surprise there)

With the good weather you may not have time to read all these, but if you do, please hit the heart and like this post to let me know that you still interested…

One of my readers said that she loves my music choices, so it’s great to know that some of you are reading this far and listening! Here’s this months choice:

I was successful in my application for Creative Westmeath funding, and so The Crafty Yellowship sets sail. This means that I will be collaborating with Bertille de Lestrade and Martina Coyle to bring you workshops that mix sustainability education with hands on crafting. Not to mention tea, cake and chat. Speaking of cake, here’s one I made for a Moate event. Expect to see more at my upcoming workshops

There’s just one workshop listed so far for the Crafty Yellowship project, but more will be coming soon - maybe even by the time you read this!

Seasonal Activities

The equinox on March 20th is my trigger for removing the old stems and detritus from the winter, so that was very satisfying , and the new growth is looking shiny and healthy and beautiful.

Lots of weeding to do. However, I have left the dandelions, which is tough even for me, when my brain is in clean up mode.

With perennial beds, the couch grass can take over so it’s no harm to dig everything out occasionally and clean up. So with a little help I did that for one small bed. Satisfying, but I’m sure that it won’t last.

Lots of seeds going in and germinating, but I need to be sure that I have places for them to go!

Coole Meadow

It has been very dry, so the ground is easy to work with. There’s a bit of building work going on, so we had to move the perennial flowers from the upper lawn to the (very young) orchard. This necessitated the removal of a lot of couch (or scutch) grass (that will probably come right back). The digging was not too bad because the ground was very dry. However, many of the plants were struggling after transplanting because of the lack of rain. So I’m enjoying the showers and sunshine at the minute.

I may have bought too many potatoes to plant. After the first and second earlies were planted, and used up most of the space that we had prepared, I found another 4kg of second earlies that I had bought. And then there’s the 4 kg of main crop. Anyhow, luckily we have access to unlimited supplies of cardboard and donkey manure, so we will keep making beds, and look forward to loads of potatoes to eat from July on.

Trees are budding up - both the established ones, and the newly planted Miyawaki planting. I’ll share some more pictures once they are in full leaf. I have also completed pruning and staking the espalier apple trees, and they look to have lots of flower buds on the verge of opening. So that bodes well for a good crop. The fence that they are tied to needs work, luckily we have a fencing expert in our work crew.

Under the old apple tree is spectacular. Over the years we have underplanted with our spent bulb pots, so now there are load of spring bulbs in the perfect place for spring colour. Right now it’t the turn of the daffodils, and narcissus, but you can see tulips coming on in the background. Last year we had tulip fire- if you were cultivating tulips you’d dig everything out and dispose of it. That would have been difficult with the mix we have here. And I wanted to see what would happen if I did nothing. So, the numbers of tulips is reduced, but the remaining ones seem healthy and are producing blooms, so that was interesting.

Workshops

We had an engaging Saturday morning in Moate for the flower power workshop - if you saw that but couldn’t make it, (or want more of the Plaster of Paris craftiness) then we are running that workshop again under the Crafty Yellowship banner - here’s the link. Some participants wanted to learn about flower growing on the day, so we made sure to give a few tips on that.

We finished that project with an exhibition in Moate Library on March 6th - that was well attended and provided a lovely social occasion for participants and their friends and family. The exhibition is still on display in Moate Library of you’d like to check it out.

I was asked to lead a panel at this ProSilva conference which I enjoyed immensely. I never moderated a panel before, but I’d be delighted to do it again!

Flower Farming

So, lots of clean up and seeing what has survived the winter. The butterfly ranunculus is just starting to bloom, so farm I’m not that impressed with them, colours are a bit subtle for me, but its early days. I have been growing them in pots so I moved a few outside - they really did not like the dry winds. But I have watered them and put them somewhere sheltered. It will be good to stagger the blooms.

Lots of seeds going in, and some of the winter sown annuals will be getting planted out.

Flower Farmers of Ireland were accepted to Bloom, so a bit of preparation and admin work going on there, I’m on the committee that is organising it, with Karen from Heather and Harebells leading and designing a beautiful show garden. a I expect that we will get busier on that soon.

Learning

We had a seed saving webinar, organised for the flower farmers - delivered by Richie - we are lucky to have access to this community of practice. I think that we all learned a lot from the event, and we have 2 further seed saving events to look forward to later in the year.

I’m still plugging away at my ceramics class - we have some set projects - here’s a teapot that I’m making. I would not have chosen to make a teapot but I’m delighted that I did, and I have used the same geometric template to make a vase. I make a lot of vases, but I have plenty of use for them once the flowers start growing, and they are a lovely gift for any of my flower growing friends.

Upcoming events

2nd April, Bloom Where You’re Planted at the Refill Mill - only a few spaces left.

There will be more like this over the next few months as part of The Crafty Yellowship project- We have 5 different themes/craft practices, taking place in Mullingar, Castlepollard and maybe Athlone.

I’m teaching a 4 week gardening course with Water St Association, on Saturday mornings, starting April 12. It will cover theory but there is also a strong practical element where we will work in the Water Street community garden, so lots of hands on experience. We will replenish the no dig beds, build a composting system and start lots of flower and vegetables. And build community! This is an incredible deal at only €50 for the 4 weeks, to book your place text 087 6130165.

I’m headed to Cavan for a foraging workshop where we will make wild garlic pesto, but that seems to be sold out.

You can learn to make Kombucha - that’s 27th April - as a collaboration with Mullingar Gathers. It’s a Sunday afternoon event, and we will taste a few different flavours of booch, and eat some crackers and cheese and chat in addition to the learning. I’m so delighted to be working with Mullingar Gathers - if you haven’t been to one of their events you’re missing out! Next up is games night and I’m still reverberating from the lovely pot luck community supper last Saturday.

Westmeath Libraries asked me to teach some gardening courses in all four libraries, I’ll be focussed on no-dig and growing from seed. You’ll find links here to book in to Mullingar, Athlone, Moate or Castlepollard events.

I’ll be teaching Soapmaking in November in Coolamber Gardens - quite the posh venue and a wonderful day out if you wanted to treat yourself or a friend.

Links

A new section for stuff I read or watched that I think is worth sharing

1. If you’re interested in feminism and climate justice - click here

2. A lovely read about power and nature based activities

3. An old one, but relevant still - about paying gardeners and career paths for horticulturalists.

4. A farming collaboration.

5. Paving front gardens.

Thats enough for now - I wouldn’t want to overload ye. Maybe hit the heart and like this post to let me know that you have read this far….

Heres a bit of silliness that made me laugh, hope it brings a smile to your face!