look at the blue eggs

The hen is white, her eggs are blue. We do not give names to poultry anymore. We do not eat eggs until they are a couple of days old.

Sometimes when I eat a soft boiled egg I realize there might be no finer food, with bread and butter. The simplest food often serves to reconcile you with your life in particular and the world at large.

 

return to post

Home late last saturday having driven home through the fog after dinner, home from a week at annaghmakerrig (the Tyrone Guthrie Centre) where I was more than contented to just write, draw, collect a lot of branches for a work in progress, collect conkers because I can, eat well (too much), sleep very badly (brain not switching off), take the rowing boat out onto the lake, enjoy fellow inmates. Good to find my children again although I never ever feel they are far from me. Difficult to get back into the farming chores agenda, to become again that person that rarely sits down when I’ve let that other me out of the bag. The added seasonal bonus of daily stove lighting, fuel in ash out, and occasional extra of sudden leaking pipe (“white waste”, what can you expect ?) under kitchen sink. For a few days I am a little distracted. I have barely had time to unpack and I am even wondering if there is not another life for me. Funnily I realize I have arrived completely home one early morning walking to the goats in torrential wet and windy rain, and I feel pure joy at doing my job.

List of small jobs : not enough space here. List of big jobs : build a shed for the donkey, extend the wood shed, dig up potatoes and jerusalem artichokes and cover ground, prepare beds for next spring, negotiate more time with myself to sit and write or make things, art. I will Yes.

 

nuclear power

My theory is that nuclear power has been conceived by people who were not brought up to clean after themselves. What a bad idea. And now they have the Hadron Collider up their sleeves. Parents, remember to teach your children well, and enjoy each day as the last. Enjoy at least one nice meal today.

 

protest song : a work in progress

 

back home

Back from holidays in finistère, the maddest yet, mad in ways that I’m unable to share with you unfortunately. The weather was splendid as one says when referring to holiday weather, and the sea, when we reached the beach around 6 pm was a perfectly civilized temperature. We lost nobody to the high waves, perhaps as everyone was suitably weighed down to the solid ground by the copious amount of wonderful local organic produce. We are very lucky, very lucky, very lucky. I have been reading Animal, vegetable, miracle by Barbara Kingsolver a book my friend R gave me for perfect holiday reading, this is highly recommended. www.animalvegetablemiracle.com

Anyway I will keep this short, plenty to bake, settle the levain (sourdough) back from its own holiday with us, food for the opening of the Landscape show at the Dock in Carrick on Shannon, on friday at 5.30 pm, all welcome they say there, and bread and cakes for saturday morning in the midst of a wonderful jumble sale, all welcome, see you there.

By the way, the garden at Knockvicar is so full of beautiful stuff, what a gift of a season, and open everyday, yes, every day, courgettes, cucumbers, salads, chard, potatoes, beetroots, onions, garlic, and as soon as the sun decides to show its little nose, tomatoes, I’m sure I’m forgetting something, you should have seen the pile of stuff I gathered, you would call me greedy no doubt, but healthy too. Delicious, get there without fail, this is my message to you today.

 

circular time

walking around on church island in county sligo yesterday we probably saw the last of the bluebells : worry not they will be around next year for those who will walk in the woods, and below is the promised photograph of earlier glory. A number of years ago I copied a couple of verses by poet Frances Horovitz, quoted at the head of a chapter from a book we must have been publishing at the time, they have been with me always “Now is the time for walking in woods/by the cold stream come from the waterfall/are you afraid ?” So this is just to say thank you to the woods and all the trees and to the bluebells and to Frances Horovitz, today, the last thursday in May as the most wonderful blossoms turn pink on surrounding hawthorns. glory.

 

being in the right place

Difficult extraction from bed due to time change. Fed the cats with home-made cat stew, milked the goat, bottle fed the kids and carried them to their little pasture, let out and fed the chickens and ducks, checked on sick chicken, made pizza for school dinner, ate a breakfast of soft boiled egg from the garden and own-home-brand bread, with a lot of water and (equal exchange) rooibosch tea and then I finally put potatoes to sprout. I will be late planting them again this year. One of my neighbours said you can set potatoes as long as you can see through ash trees, I like that, I may not quite manage it, though.

I suppose it is not just about traveling sensibly it is also about loving where you are, looking at the trees, feeling lucky about your life. I long ago heard on the radio about this very old lady who had not ever left her village, who said, ‘why would I travel since I’m already here’. I do like to travel because I love seeing concentrations of people and what they make, but if I could no longer travel it would be all right too. The whole world is also here in my little community and I do love my life and it is a bright sunny day today.