tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58117497435236335032024-03-16T10:50:20.045+00:00Restoring MayberryAn older world is still aroundBrian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.comBlogger664125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-81149938346191166942024-03-16T04:06:00.001+00:002024-03-16T04:06:04.488+00:00Planting for pollinators<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimplTrIi8Yu9WsGlFOhnpz5NP1xljNchVdvaAN73qs2QF1onN4bK2QnkbPXxRC00c_HuwsujdRLDewNGMx8KZw4svQkaimeHOOm5DUxpSuXqEjWGVAzE-ck7mYWEH_SGvdZ1rdFvibc470-li0caZYAbi5cQqaWa8wd_H6HjtDcBDeGkWBPPf5HP33/s1090/Girl%20with%20honey%203.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1090" data-original-width="936" height="441" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimplTrIi8Yu9WsGlFOhnpz5NP1xljNchVdvaAN73qs2QF1onN4bK2QnkbPXxRC00c_HuwsujdRLDewNGMx8KZw4svQkaimeHOOm5DUxpSuXqEjWGVAzE-ck7mYWEH_SGvdZ1rdFvibc470-li0caZYAbi5cQqaWa8wd_H6HjtDcBDeGkWBPPf5HP33/w379-h441/Girl%20with%20honey%203.JPG" width="379" /></a></div>This time of year, as you plant your gardens, you must
remember to invest part of our garden to reimburse the armies of pollinators that
work for you. You could bring pollinators in by the box-load if you keep bees,
and you get honey and wax from the arrangement. Bee hives can be kept easily on
a small plot of land, a backyard, a balcony or even a rooftop, so long as the
bees’ flight path to and from their headquarters is located away from humans’ personal
space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They tend to like simple flowers
with an easy landing pad, like poached-egg flower, daisies or dandelions -- and
they also need water, so set a little floating pad for them in the bird bath. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia",serif;"></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Honeybees, however, are only one of 20,000 species of bee in
the world, and we can encourage the rest of them as well. They don’t give us
honey or wax but they do pollinate our gardens – sometimes more effectively,
according to some experts – and many are stingless. Dozens of species are bumblebees,
which live in small colonies, but most are solitary, often named according to
where they make their hole – miners, carpenters, masons and plasterers. Some gardeners
give bees a pre-made home --boring holes in wood or stacking reeds or bamboo
for carpenter or orchard bees, stacking adobe bricks for mason bees or building
a small, cotton-lined box with a large entrance hole for bumblebees. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One of the champion bee flowers, in our experience, is borrage
– my bees go nuts for it. It also makes a great herb to add to salad, with a
tangy melony flavour. Almost all herbs, in fact, make great bee fodder – thyme,
rosemary, oregano, marjoram, sage and mint. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hedgerows often provide the best source of bee flowers. Blackberry
brambles, in hundreds of varieties, grow widely here and make another flower
beloved of bees, and of course they grow in the margins where their thorns and
the bees are out of your way. Sally or pussy willows seem to be a particular
favourite of bumblebees in our observation – at times we have seen dozens of
bumblebees on a single tree near our house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They also love hawthorn, which and usually starts flowering in May.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Come summer, whole fields here erupt with red and white clover,
which have many uses -- bees love them, we and animals can eat them, and they
actually put nitrogen back into the soil. They like moist earth and warm days,
and beekeepers say that, once the flowers emerge, their beehives start filling
up with honey. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Bees and other bugs use many other flowers common to our
area, and which our local beekeeping society recommends – poppies, cornflowers,
forget-me-nots, zinnias, wallflowers, bellflowers, dahlias, hellebores and roses.
In exchange they service many vegetables, including artichokes, lamb’s ears, asparagus,
brassicas, broad beans, cucumbers, cherries, apples, currants, gooseberries and
courgettes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">You can draw insects other than bees to your garden, of
course, but you want to be choosy about which ones. We all love butterflies,
but they spend most of their lives as the caterpillars that we spend picking
off our crops, so you want to encourage only those species that eat the plants
you don’t want anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Few words sound less appealing than “parasite” and “wasp,”
yet parasitic wasps can be very useful in the garden, preying on the bugs that
would eat your plants and doing no harm to humans. Sally Jean Cunningham,
author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Great Garden Companions</i>,
cite herbs like caraway, anise, mint, chamomile, dill, fennel, yarrow and
cicely for drawing wasps, along with wildflowers like cornspurrey, lamb’s
quarters, wild mustards, oxeyes, red sorrel and clover. Similarly, some
gardeners buy ladybirds to unleash on their aphids, or even recommend planting
nettles to attract aphids to attract ladybirds.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Finally, you can plant species designed to repel certain
insects you don’t want – many gardeners recommend hyssop and thyme for cabbage
moths, or marigolds for nematodes. Such recommendations often carry a high
folklore-to-evidence ratio, though, so experiment in your own garden and take
notes on what seems to work. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If we and other large animals were to disappear, the vast
majority of the world that remained would get along just fine. But if they were
to disappear, the soil would become sterile, the lands desert, and almost all
life would perish. As you walk through your garden, thousands of them are
labouring like elves around your feet, unthanked and occasionally swatted. As
you plant your garden this year, make sure to give something back. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <i>Photo: my daughter collecting the honey from our hive.</i><br /></p>
Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-38859721747055143482024-03-06T03:59:00.002+00:002024-03-06T03:59:12.219+00:00The Generosity of Community<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEdRdb93xxmGRPIvdMnhWP_bhU6nDe1XZ3XI_-19QLpZb_R6x3XT6drTLhNJJDx930Dnl_EjKGCxlMhfdXWYVBbhnb-Wbk-Dd-2pVHNaKx7md_liwuBw8JOqFDYXd26_LhN5sIUB2eietbtclByTP8HB7tRbV_WFCo83InLiqFxWj3LT65cpStBBLJ/s3264/2008_12260077.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEdRdb93xxmGRPIvdMnhWP_bhU6nDe1XZ3XI_-19QLpZb_R6x3XT6drTLhNJJDx930Dnl_EjKGCxlMhfdXWYVBbhnb-Wbk-Dd-2pVHNaKx7md_liwuBw8JOqFDYXd26_LhN5sIUB2eietbtclByTP8HB7tRbV_WFCo83InLiqFxWj3LT65cpStBBLJ/s320/2008_12260077.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;">I wrote a few weeks ago about the value of social capital – how it was
once common for neighbours to have each other over for music and stories, for
families to eat together, and for many other kinds of gatherings. Similar forms
of gathering were once common throughout the Western World, but lingered in
Ireland here than in most places, perhaps because prosperity arrived here
later. </span>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;">In most other Western countries – in most of Europe and North America
--- people acquired televisions and cars in the 1950s, so people began spending
more time driving and watching telly than with their family or with neighbours
– what we might call “electronic culture,” rather than human culture. Here,
perhaps, the trend took place more in the last 20 years, according to most people
I talk to. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;">Either way, though, the trend is difficult to resist; we all find it
easier to deal with a television or video game than another person, or to just
drive to pick up a pizza than to cook a meal. The more people turn to electronic
culture, moreover, the more difficult it becomes to stand against the tide; you
can’t play cards with friends if no one else plays, and you can’t meet with
neighbours for storytelling if all your neighbours are just playing video
games. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;">If prosperity helped erode that community culture, though, going back is
not as easy when prosperity fades – people become accustomed to simply getting
a pizza rather than cooking, or spending 20 euros at the cinema rather than
sing or tell stories together, and children grow up accustomed to such a life.
In other words, we grow accustomed to buying distractions, and when we have
less money to buy them – say, when people are laid off or have their salaries
cut in this on-going depression – they feel the poverty more keenly. An Irish
family today, even one hit hard by the depression, might still be making twice
the money they were in the 1980s, yet feel poorer. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;">When people do feel poverty more keenly, it is once again that social
network – a real one, and not just a web site – that can alleviate their
burden, either through loaning us money, repairing your car in exchange for a
favour, or minding our children. We think of such behaviours as helping an
immediate problem in the short term, but they help build a network of trust in
the long term. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;">“Other things being equal, people who trust their fellow citizens more
volunteer more often, contribute more regularly, participate more often in
politics and community organizations, serve more readily on juries, give blood
more frequently, comply more fully with their tax obligations, are more
tolerant of minority views, and display many other forms of civic virtue,” wrote
sociologist Robert Putnam. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;">“Moreover, people who are more active in community life are less likely
(even in private) to condone cheating on taxes, insurance claims, bank loan
forms, and employment applications. Conversely, experimental psychologists have
shown that people who believe that others are honest are themselves less likely
to lie, cheat, or steal and are more likely to respect the rights of others. In
that sense, honesty, civic engagement and social trust are mutually
reinforcing.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;">As times get difficult and more people need such assistance, though,
that same erosion of community also makes people less likely to give to
charities, and charitable donations have declined across the Western World. As
a general rule, wrote sociologist Robert Putnam, we are likely to give more in
the presence of other people. “Joiners,” Putnam wrote, “are nearly ten times as
generous with their time and money as non-joiners.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;">If this all sounds quite grim, we can also look at the glass-half-full
side: Even when people are not being pressured to give their time and money to
help others, they still do so, without realising how many other people are
doing the same. A recent survey found that the amount that people gave was
greater than the amount everyone imagined everyone else gave; in other words,
we are better people than we realise, but now that we live much more isolated
lives, we don’t see it or encourage it in each other. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;">That trend can be reversed, though, and more easily here than in most
places, as it is so much newer here than in other Western countries. Older
people here remember a time when people had much closer communities, so
reviving them should be much easier here than in most Western countries. The
Irish don’t have to start from scratch rebuilding. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;"><i>Photo: Musicians at Wren Day. <br /></i></span></p>
Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-81283579002558562692024-02-27T03:54:00.002+00:002024-02-27T03:54:27.952+00:00Falls in Conemara<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYS6v3tgwe18TAdZDtSOcvzxKK0_23ynYO8sge7Byu_JUx97Q2tE_C744XP239pyVrl6Lj_Q1rzEBoeRdigyIFbR4C9QrScuqM9kC1-Xc5qfABbCERWyLw9lxXZ_lXNXJwUsnmm2vKa4g75Sxzmr-SiXlKI_xTJdmlajffGBlVVujjmU1OETTqwdig/s1756/Falls%20in%20Conemara.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1756" data-original-width="1601" height="685" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYS6v3tgwe18TAdZDtSOcvzxKK0_23ynYO8sge7Byu_JUx97Q2tE_C744XP239pyVrl6Lj_Q1rzEBoeRdigyIFbR4C9QrScuqM9kC1-Xc5qfABbCERWyLw9lxXZ_lXNXJwUsnmm2vKa4g75Sxzmr-SiXlKI_xTJdmlajffGBlVVujjmU1OETTqwdig/w625-h685/Falls%20in%20Conemara.JPG" width="625" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-50909448944921838002024-02-24T03:13:00.006+00:002024-02-24T03:16:11.103+00:00Wild Food<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcpHiV2ZTtDOf_VkJ3h9e8BL4UKbfNlczrdek9UUaHeGdhwZ7FzDCyWf1PK1OMycG-t9hTQFkf3mkHI_vIq08eRkOBFXNuZfVanEROHXvZ5YBbNqc9b26tUFe21x9nZTlYiJVyDFcDxUbRPcepfq4HxIlMtJm3fBawolM4A6GQlMgCmE5RQTkDbMVm/s1530/10-2011%20hedgerow%20berries.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1530" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcpHiV2ZTtDOf_VkJ3h9e8BL4UKbfNlczrdek9UUaHeGdhwZ7FzDCyWf1PK1OMycG-t9hTQFkf3mkHI_vIq08eRkOBFXNuZfVanEROHXvZ5YBbNqc9b26tUFe21x9nZTlYiJVyDFcDxUbRPcepfq4HxIlMtJm3fBawolM4A6GQlMgCmE5RQTkDbMVm/s320/10-2011%20hedgerow%20berries.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;">All food was wild once, and all
the vegetables in rows at the grocers were bred over centuries from what we now
call weeds. Their most promising pieces were swelled and sweetened, made fleshy
or fertile, made unrecognisable to fit our tastes. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;">Yet
colour and tastes go in and out of fashion with each generation; look how
swiftly the perfectly white eggs of supermarkets were replaced by brown ones,
with an identical taste but a trendy “natural” image. The centuries have done
the same to our crops, leaving behind legions of purple carrots, blue potatoes
and other victims of our whims. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;">In the
last century, moreover, we have shipped more and more food across the planet,
so that rows of Australian maize or Moroccan tomatoes can fill shelves in Iowa
or Scotland. Our crops had to be bred to stand out as consumer products and yet
survive the journey, leading to the massive sizes and cardboard flavours of
supermarket produce. The “fresh vegetables” most of us grew up with were,
typically, nothing of the kind. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;">Genuinely
fresh and wild food still exists all around us, though, and this time of year
the Irish hedgerows create a vertical salad bar of fruits and berries. Many
wild plants are edible and few were bred into groceries, and even those that
were domesticated can still be found in their original form -- which often
tastes better, as anyone knows who has tasted a wild strawberry. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;">Hawthorn</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;"> trees will soon be sprouting
shoots, and<b> lindens</b> after them, and both have leaves that when young are
edible and delicious. The fruits of the hawthorn, while bland in taste, are
also edible and can make an addition to wines and jams. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;">When
summer comes properly,<b> Fat Hen </b>will appear everywhere. It was apparently
much more widely eaten in ancient times than today; it formed part of the meal
given to Tollund man, one of the “bog bodies” fished out of Denmark. It is
basically a wild version of spinach, and its pale green leaves can be cooked
the same way. The garlic –flavoured leaves of <b>Jack-by-the-hedge</b>
first emerge in spring, but a new crop sometimes appears this month, so this is
a good time to go looking for it. Its large, deeply green, heart-shaped leaves
and small white flowers make a great ingredient in salads or sauteed. The
shamrock-like leaves of wild <b>sorrel</b> carpet forest floors beginning in
spring, and can still be seen this time of year. Its lemony leaves make a
perfect addition to salads. They can also be cooked, but be warned that they
wilt almost instantly, and in an herbal mix should be added lastly. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;">In later
summer, the<b> blackberries and raspberries </b>will appear. Many people here
take the traditional route of preserving them in jams for winter vitamins, but
you can also make them into wine, fruit leathers, add them to salads or spread
them with meat. <b>Dandelion</b> leaves are best when young, but the roots
should now be at their fullest; try pulling them out and roasting them like
coffee. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;">Rosehips</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;"> look similar to haws and are
almost as numerous along the hedges. Packed with Vitamin C, their syrup has
famously been used as a medicine, but they can also be made into jam or wine.
Most of their bulk, though, consists of the sharp seeds, which can be a fiddly
job to remove. <b>Elderberries</b> darken with the days here, and are
just at the right stage to be made into wine, jam, pies, syrup, meat sauce or
cordial. To make the syrup, boil the elderberries and stir in sugar as you
would jam, but without the pectin to make it firm. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOk9FIblscX6Mu2QcM_qSrCQ0b2Q7DNDDOOrvTVu4UtWV2sZYqVKIOOPOTnsqWZgPVJuuPl4aGufaIXCFg57r9vYaSUYETOm4n-jENMlZuQsfcCnhh4HjClda_xFKgu4t2ZwZK1AFg2DEt4aCagUjfy1khCoB3wu-nnqM4z5pzjXwtE-aTh8UHhGgr/s2429/07-10%20Edible%20flowers%20-%20cham,%20borrage,%20poppy,%20catmint,%20comfrey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2113" data-original-width="2429" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOk9FIblscX6Mu2QcM_qSrCQ0b2Q7DNDDOOrvTVu4UtWV2sZYqVKIOOPOTnsqWZgPVJuuPl4aGufaIXCFg57r9vYaSUYETOm4n-jENMlZuQsfcCnhh4HjClda_xFKgu4t2ZwZK1AFg2DEt4aCagUjfy1khCoB3wu-nnqM4z5pzjXwtE-aTh8UHhGgr/s320/07-10%20Edible%20flowers%20-%20cham,%20borrage,%20poppy,%20catmint,%20comfrey.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;">Medlars</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;"> were a popular fruit in medieval
times but are rarely recognised anymore, perhaps because they must be slightly
over-ripe to be edible, and did not fit well with our modern demand that fruit
sit for days on store shelves. Nonetheless, they are very tasty and make a
great a pie filling, so remember their appearance and keep an eye out. </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;">Do
remember not to remove plants from the roadside, where they could have been
bathing in toxic fumes, or from anywhere you think might have been sprayed with
pesticides. Do look up what these plants look like to make sure you pick them
and not a similar-looking poisonous plant, but most of these look very
distinctive, and telling them apart is quite easy to do. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;">Have
fun! </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<br />Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-40964863736781576612024-02-17T04:53:00.005+00:002024-02-17T04:53:49.220+00:00Straw-bale gardening<p><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8pwftpU817WpyGpDY4QUTSdevq38gYLEJRgCZkXOVg9uyIAXhI6r-KbV31OoKaLvDmgZPGjUGzePwd2d8xn2PInYszLJhHQw8daT45Kaf0XZUilszu5L3qLtRG8F6mtzMSpf3C9qWb73uvbGnBxSEs_NnJ9YMnZ2Xh6c5kyfGtcGPlHCKsmiYkfrs/s1200/Straw_bales_in_Zaouia_d'Ifrane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em;"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwrT90RwxQz_OSYjt21t4VqG8H_8vfZkMLbDLEkDURyfZvP_Sy4di61UQxetcXOmtBLd1L9hMEIovOWlrjIRjE2sofjOfqLpE3Ah9rr7SKYdB_yjFHKaq5Y7HH_ukXCBKiWDpK8gqQpOx3rw1gaC8BAcJdCmVfnM33HGBPjvjJoTI02Ypb1YveSXZO/s1200/Straw_bales_in_Zaouia_d'Ifrane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="814" data-original-width="1200" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwrT90RwxQz_OSYjt21t4VqG8H_8vfZkMLbDLEkDURyfZvP_Sy4di61UQxetcXOmtBLd1L9hMEIovOWlrjIRjE2sofjOfqLpE3Ah9rr7SKYdB_yjFHKaq5Y7HH_ukXCBKiWDpK8gqQpOx3rw1gaC8BAcJdCmVfnM33HGBPjvjJoTI02Ypb1YveSXZO/s320/Straw_bales_in_Zaouia_d'Ifrane.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Many of the straw bales you see across the fields of County
Kildare these days are mammoth cylinders that you would have difficulty moving
without farm equipment. But on some horse farms you can still find the older
kind of straw bales – rectangular, metre-long, hefted by hand. </div><p></p>
<p>Straw bales have many uses – as seats, as compost bins, as
borders to a garden to keep out rabbits. On the Great Plains of North America,
people stacked them inside a frame to create walls, which were then covered in
mud plaster. People still do this today to create sheds, barns, homes and even
churches, and they provide great insulating walls – and are no more a fire
hazard than wood. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If you don’t have the wood or time to build regular garden
beds, you could plant a garden directly inside your bales. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">First line up bales, long side to long side, to create a
garden bed, and water them as you would the rest of your garden for a few days.
For a week or so after that, keep watering but add nitrogen and phosphorous --
stir some chicken manure in your watering can, leave it for a few days and pour
the resulting liquid over the bales, or add urine in whatever way will not upset your neighbours. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">After doing this for two weeks – just water for a few days,
then water-with-fertilizer for a week and a half – punch a row of holes in the
bales. Set a handful of rich compost into the hole, and plant a seedling in the
earth. Sprinkle some earth on top across the entire top of the bale, and water
as you would any other garden plants. The straw bale decays as the plant grows,
until the plant can stretch more roots directly through the composting straw. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The best straw bales for a garden are wheat, oats, rye or
barley straw. These consist of stalks left from harvesting grain; they have
been through a combine harvester and had the seeds threshed from them, leaving
none or very few left. I got mine from a farmer in Maynooth who still uses the
small bales. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hay bales for gardening are less popular as they have the
whole stalk and seed heads with mucho seeds. They also often have other weeds
and grass seeds to cause trouble. Use what you can get locally — it may even be
lucerne, pea straw, vetch or alfalfa bales. Corn and linseed (flax) bales are
not so good as they are very coarse, and linseed straw takes a long time to
decompose due to the oil residue left on the stalks. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">An approach like this is not for everyone – it requires a
great deal of water, which was not a problem for me, who lives along the
canals. Other people might find it too much trouble. But it can allow elderly
and people with back problems to garden a raised bed without having to bend
over all the time. It helps make the garden unreachable by rabbits and many
pests. It helps cut down on the amount of soil you have to use, and since all
soil contains weed seeds, it cuts down on the amount of weeding. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Most of all, this approach can work well for homeowners with
what I call suburban soil: a thin layer of grass and topsoil, covering
clay and builders’ rubble from the construction of the house. Such people need
to build up their soil, and straw bales allow you to bring in the organic
material to do so – and straw makes a light and easily portable material. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">By the time your gardening project is done for the year, the
straw bales will be well-decomposed, and you can simply take apart the soil and
wet straw and spread it over your garden as winter approaches. The straw will
keep weeds down like mulch, but unlike mulch is already partly decomposing and
will finish turning back into soil quickly, and can be mixed with the rest of
the soil come spring. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If you’re just starting to garden, try doing this with bales
the first year, and that gives you an additional year to build wooden or stone
beds; by the time they’re done, you have the soil to fill them. In effect, you
will have created soil without having to lift the mineral and water content
that comprises most of the soil’s weight.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i> </i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>Photo by Mohamed Haddi, courtesy of WikiCommons.</i><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-363624165536831722024-02-02T03:48:00.012+00:002024-02-03T02:08:24.108+00:00Jobs then and now<span lang="EN-IE"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuSdXXLBfFL6vti0FCw2pWMCRhOjpAbsXEb-ymI8h5o5hzH9jEmwwNnqwjsw425hHIRYsDtribxTBL_z9ZdNOqI6VhH7u3WIhLikVUjGHE4TO6-nHfT9lSkvFvq6gLY-jL-zGIxgrXsgq_ZOzSHxRnGjAgdnzagQETi2cOruyBpkvo6s1sszsAFcSs/s1472/Johann_Hamza_blacksmiths_forge_1900.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1449" data-original-width="1472" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuSdXXLBfFL6vti0FCw2pWMCRhOjpAbsXEb-ymI8h5o5hzH9jEmwwNnqwjsw425hHIRYsDtribxTBL_z9ZdNOqI6VhH7u3WIhLikVUjGHE4TO6-nHfT9lSkvFvq6gLY-jL-zGIxgrXsgq_ZOzSHxRnGjAgdnzagQETi2cOruyBpkvo6s1sszsAFcSs/w330-h315/Johann_Hamza_blacksmiths_forge_1900.jpg" width="330" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Johann Hamza, <i>The Blacksmith's Forge.</i> Public domain</span>. <br /></div></td></tr></tbody></table></span><span lang="EN-IE">Somewhere in
an elderly relative’s mouse-chewed attic there probably sits a dusty photograph
of you – you as a child, smiling and proud one Halloween, wearing a tiny
uniform of the thing you were going to be. You had it all planned out; you were
going to be a farmer or fireman, cowboy or doctor, or some other role that a
child can instantly identify and adore. </span>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE">For most of us
life hasn’t worked out that way. A few become firefighters, of course (one in a
thousand) or doctors (two in a thousand), but most of us -- for the first time
in human history -- do not work at jobs that any child would understand or care
about. Three-quarters of Westerners work office jobs –
telemarketers, marketing managers, Assistant Diversity Officers, and other
growing titles that never existed until yesterday, all to describe where we fit
in an ecosystem of office plankton. Everyone jokes grimly about hating their job and hangs Dilbert cartoons on their cubicles, and waits until Friday, as they cling like fleas to the undersides of corporations for as long as they can before being dislodged. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE">It was a
shock, then, to hear my elderly neighbours talk of their work life. Many learned
crafts passed down through families until they became surnames – smith, mason,
miller, thatcher, tailor, baker, carter, cooper, and wright. By the time they
were men and women they were respected masters, keepers of secrets handed down
through generations. They spoke of shaping wood and iron and leather in ways
everyone could see and respect. Saddlers and scutchers, farriers and felters,
cobblers and cordwainers – even grave-diggers and churchbell-ringers spoke of
their jobs with an enthusiasm I rarely see today. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE">“I jump out of
bed on a Sunday morning for my ringing day,” said bell-ringer Leslie Taylor in
an interview in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dublin Voices</i>. “I am
the elected ringing master, chosen by my fellow ringers who are members of the
society ...I’m one of the people who have in one way or another serviced the
cathedral in some way since its foundation in 1038. ... I’d like to die in the
belfry … when I’m ringing.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE">It’s worth
examining why most people in traditional societies spoke so fondly of their
jobs and modern people do not, since work would seem to be one area where life
has unarguably improved in modern times. The long hours and unsafe conditions we
remember from Dickens and Upton Sinclair have much improved, thanks to unions
and labour laws, and for that we should be grateful. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE">Victorian
factories and coal mines, though, were a historical anomaly, appearing only
with the discovery of fossil fuels. Before the mid-1800s in Britain, and the
mid-1900s in Ireland, most people were farmers or craftsmen. Also, when people
today refer to “modern” jobs, they tend to be those of middle-to-upper-clasFirst-Worlders, not
those of the near-slaves that made our clothes and laptops. We compare the
worst of their time with the best of ours. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE">If we compare
our eight-hour day in a cubicle to the 15-hour day of a Victorian factory
worker, both working corporate jobs for hourly wages, of course we come out far
ahead. As Jaques Ellul pointed out, though, we can’t compare our office job to
the day of a village craftsman, who chooses their own tempo and rhythm, who
mentors and is aided by apprentices or children, and who stops to chat with
passers-by. We can praise the progress from 1850 to 1950, he said, but “we
cannot say with assurance that there has been progress from 1250 to 1950. In so
doing, we would be comparing things which are not comparable.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj_yE5WDAKx4SY5nQ0ZjQSEwWZZssOfgIQejSXxZfP45e5MSvvEtfAzlth-mg4p6viUg9Jrl2ldbslWSoVCAO4SolYI2EKrX7oPg-e-M6DLiy_MDsWecifx89X9BR9Y0-5pKRqo72wR2IZc21KBhRxx3EI0u7R0O-3tYEMX5IiviGrIJwN2UiOBgXF/s500/Haymaking%20(2).jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="357" data-original-width="500" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj_yE5WDAKx4SY5nQ0ZjQSEwWZZssOfgIQejSXxZfP45e5MSvvEtfAzlth-mg4p6viUg9Jrl2ldbslWSoVCAO4SolYI2EKrX7oPg-e-M6DLiy_MDsWecifx89X9BR9Y0-5pKRqo72wR2IZc21KBhRxx3EI0u7R0O-3tYEMX5IiviGrIJwN2UiOBgXF/w375-h267/Haymaking%20(2).jpg" width="375" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Making hay in Ireland (Irish photo archive)</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>Even then,
Ellul was assuming a 15-hour day, but most of our ancestors -- craftsmen and
peasants – worked far less. Historian James Thorold Rogers estimated that
medieval peasants – whom we think of as the most menial peoples of the most
backward age – worked no more than eight hours a day, a figure backed up by
several other studies. Labourers rarely worked an entire day for a lord; half a
solar day’s work was considered a full working day, so peasants who worked
sunrise to sunset were credited for two days’ work. Medieval Christians,
moreover, had so many holidays – in the literal sense of “holy days” – that
Nora Ritchie calculated they only worked half as many days per year as modern
Americans. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE">The modern age
has many advantages, of course; I can pull open a laptop and work from
anywhere, and make more in a month than my great-grandparents made in a year. I'm grateful for all that. But
most of those jobs move electrons around a screen; they build nothing, and leave us with nothing that we can feel or use, or say we built. They are part of a world that gives us everything we
want, but little that we need. More on that next week. <br /></span></p>
Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-68360592088829542402024-01-28T17:15:00.003+00:002024-01-28T17:37:35.277+00:00The past and future of food<p> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyaGd8MgCo7EigfLGCS1RXMeY4z-FcDJW-W2-MeuuTlJRQADAY1WuzTI-uJqItfPuqcPRqpRdSHplcFt3nJVCfDGU7GoZxhyphenhyphenwSvom0mDIBKzO2hC-1DUHVxsYOqC4rQJDnvrs5q5vs2sry28e1A5bGHECm7YfP5o8hw8jH-hkYc77mcN8VBCuR732r/s1188/IMG_2328.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1057" data-original-width="1188" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyaGd8MgCo7EigfLGCS1RXMeY4z-FcDJW-W2-MeuuTlJRQADAY1WuzTI-uJqItfPuqcPRqpRdSHplcFt3nJVCfDGU7GoZxhyphenhyphenwSvom0mDIBKzO2hC-1DUHVxsYOqC4rQJDnvrs5q5vs2sry28e1A5bGHECm7YfP5o8hw8jH-hkYc77mcN8VBCuR732r/s320/IMG_2328.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>When I give talks about a good, healthy future, I tell the audience that living sustainably doesn’t always
involve inventing new technologies or ways of living. Quite often, I say, it
involves rediscovering old ways that our grandparents knew but that we have
forgotten. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I get a lot of objections to
this from people who insist – as is fashionable to do these days – that
everything in the past was terrible. Everyone was dumber than we are, everyone
was a religious fanatic or a Nazi, everyone was starving, everyone died at 30,
and so on. I’ve talked before about how educated most people were a century or
two ago compared to ourselves, and I’ll talk more later about how we’ve taken
the Nazis and retroactively superimposed them on every complex human situation.
Right now, though, let’s look at some of the claims about food and health. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">First of all, there was never an
age when everyone died at 30. It is true that more infants died in the past,
and while we are lucky to be spared that horror, it does warp the average; in
many times and places, young adults could expect to live as long as they do
today. A book of the Bible written perhaps 25 centuries ago said that humans
live “threescore years and ten,” or 70 years, and that tracks with many
traditional peoples around the world. Of those who survived infancy, 1850-era
British men – mostly working-class -- </span><span lang="EN-IE"><a href="https://hipcrime.substack.com/p/modern-diets-are-killing-us"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">lived to be 73</span></a></span><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> on average; life
expectancy today for working-class British men today is only 72. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nor were people starving in most
times and places. Nineteenth-century British weren’t all begging for gruel, but
usually enjoyed diets “</span><span lang="EN-IE"><a href="https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/06/04/the-modern-diet-is-a-biosecurity-threat/"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">vastly superior to that
generally consumed today, one substantially in advance of current public health
recommendations</span></a></span><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">.” They ate more fruit and vegetables than most
First-Worlders today, as well as nuts and organ meats high in micronutrients –
most of the things fitness instructors recommend today, and they ate up to
twice as much as we do. Similar examples come from many traditional societies;
they lived more vigorous lives, so needed extra calories to survive -- and they
did, because you’re reading this. As writer Chad Mulligan put it, starving
people don’t build cathedrals.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Of course there have been severe
famines in history, most famously Ireland. Yet that resulted from the British
seizing the land for plantations to export food to Britain, while small farmers
were forced to rely on the one crop with enough calories to feed them. When
that crop caught a disease, there was nothing to fall back on, and what might
have been unfortunate but survivable turned into a mass death. It was also
genocide, as British plantations continued to export food to Britain even as their
Irish workers starved. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Another truism of modern life is
that all food until yesterday bland, rotten and generally disgusting. Just as
people today insist that all earlier generations were less free, less healthy,
less educated and less tolerant than we are, they insist that food must have
been a daily ordeal, tolerable only because they were too ignorant to realise
how miserable they were. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sometimes people cite the
often-repeated stories of bakers padding out bread ingredients with ash and
bone and lead. As historian </span><span lang="EN-IE"><a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/A-history-of-food-adulteration-and-analysis/oclc/912905655"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Frederick Filby</span></a></span><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> demonstrated almost
a century ago, however, those stories – 18<sup>th</sup>-century clickbait–
could not possibly have been true. Filby tried baking bread with the alleged
ingredients and found that it almost never became anything resembling bread,
and were often more expensive to make than the real thing anyway. Also, food
manufacturers put dubious substances into our food now, as we will see later. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Also, the examples many people
give – say, of their grandparents’ olive loaf or fruit jello -- are not
traditional foods at all, but were early examples of processed factory-made
food that have simply fallen out of fashion, or marked as unforgivably
working-class. Other people point out that old cookbooks never call for much
seasoning, and are bland if you cook the dishes as described. But old recipes
tended to give the basics of preparing a dish, with the assumption that people
would add whatever herbs and “seasonings” were, well, in season. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Most traditional peoples eat far
more variety than we do; English farmers record eating now-neglected meats like pigeons,
rabbits, pheasants and geese; now-forgotten vegetables like cardoons, chicory and scorzonera; underappreciated fruits like damsons and
medlars, and of course wild foods like Fat Hen, nettles, hawthorn, sorrel, dulse and samphire. These
weren’t inferior foods that we ate out of desperation -- I can personally
attest that most of these taste amazing – but they have been largely forgotten.
Some were abandoned because of changing fashions, others because they did not
fit our modern mass-production systems – medlars, for example, need to be
picked when they are just slightly over-ripe, and cannot sit on a shelf for
weeks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Also, the elders I talked to
worked hard, and worked up an appetite. Few of us today have ever done this,
but when you do, food tastes great by itself, and doesn’t need a lot of added
chemicals to make it appetising. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“It was wholesome food, plain and
simple, and the golden rule was ‘get it into you and it will do you good.’”
John Curran said in his memoir <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tides of
Change</i></span><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">.
They were also grateful for the food they had worked hard to earn; they had
overseen the plants from seed to crop, and the animals from womb to adulthood
to knife. We have no such connection to the hog factory workers or the genetic
laboratories where the corn was designed, or the Godzilla-sized machines that
harvest it. We have mountains of food, but it appears before us without
context, removed from our capacity for gratitude. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In addition, meals were
communal, and the company was as important as the food. Some of my most
cherished memories are of Thanksgiving or Christmas at my grandparents’ small
house, with aunts and uncles laughing and chatting as they prepared the meals
together, set up the tables and finally packed together snugly to eat, chat,
laugh and share stories. The food was great because it was shared in the
company of loved ones, not because it was heaped with flavour chemicals. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“They were great old days,” John
Lyons said in his memoir <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Joy of my
Boyhood Years</i>. “There was not much money around, but we had happiness and
joy in our hearts, and every neighbour’s house was the same as your own. You
could walk in any time of day or night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The kettle was always on the boil, the tea was made, you sat down and
you were handed a mug of tea with plenty of sugar and a yellow square hot off
the griddle, with lashings of butter – a delicious feed. My mouth waters with
longing when I think of it.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-IE"> </span></p>
Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-36580479177451308242024-01-25T02:07:00.002+00:002024-01-25T02:07:28.705+00:00Buildup to the riots<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvd3E9Q1Da7JdBGaQ3HFoZVmVViuux5aJbN9ZVz3DJ3GV-d4B9JaqSjKz2_w1nUBz_DVPYMsLmxO-l8678MEuZRPZLFrmmAiYqVyviQU3RBi4zxltuHltOoSx-6nNSPax6caMhLcF9QgdJazjM2uhuMkoJ3uX6wmBZMKD8cpx1lR2qDX-ZZvj2Ecty/s960/Jesus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="960" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvd3E9Q1Da7JdBGaQ3HFoZVmVViuux5aJbN9ZVz3DJ3GV-d4B9JaqSjKz2_w1nUBz_DVPYMsLmxO-l8678MEuZRPZLFrmmAiYqVyviQU3RBi4zxltuHltOoSx-6nNSPax6caMhLcF9QgdJazjM2uhuMkoJ3uX6wmBZMKD8cpx1lR2qDX-ZZvj2Ecty/w428-h285/Jesus.jpg" width="428" /></a></div>From my article:<p></p><p>There has been a surge in <a href="https://www.thesun.ie/news/10318886/rape-sexual-assault-domestic-violence-murder-stats-ireland/?ref=quillette.com">murder</a>, rape, <a href="https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/murders-rapes-and-sexual-assaults-increase-in-ireland/?ref=quillette.com">sexual assault, and domestic violence</a>, as well as a few shocking and previously unknown crimes—as when, in April 2022, a Muslim immigrant <a href="https://www.rte.ie/news/courts/2023/1023/1412415-yousef-palani/?ref=quillette.com">murdered two men</a>,
one of them by beheading, and stabbed a third man in the eye, after
using a gay dating app to target his victims. Gauging how many of these
crimes are committed by immigrants is difficult, however, as the media
initially report only the perpetrators’ place of residence—a reticence
that does nothing to allay suspicion.</p><p>When the national media do
discuss such crimes, they generally blame Irish culture, rather than the
assailants’ own cultures. After the beheading, for example, former
president Mary McAleese blamed Christian churches for being <a href="https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/mcaleese-accuses-churches-of-being-conduits-for-homophobia-following-sligo-deaths-1291120.html?ref=quillette.com">“conduits of homophobia,”</a> even though the assailant was from a Muslim country. When 23-year-old schoolteacher Ashling Murphy was stabbed 11 times by a <a href="https://extra.ie/2023/11/10/news/irish-news/neighbours-jozef-puska?ref=quillette.com">Roma</a> migrant in 2022, the <em>Guardian</em> ran an article on Ireland’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/18/ashling-murphy-ireland-misogyny-attack-violence?ref=quillette.com">“culture of misogyny.”</a></p>Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-40732871071664500342024-01-23T01:24:00.000+00:002024-01-23T01:24:05.334+00:00A changing country<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDT5cYyBAH4o_70iLbSR5IoKl_4Sda_8ogopQQXsLky8tqWpqV1-vSiJd2Kn8hyphenhyphen8WOT2EFKUeocl_NtEhHChty6E9tkXHG4BioM5YtHolbo2C_7lWfFNjRzfTWBEsa4xNB5YkH0bWOue_o_-gLXhxqW1u67VIWINQq4X_jTYrJr6mAyLMK8JmtEeb8/s1806/20231130_214719.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1285" data-original-width="1806" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDT5cYyBAH4o_70iLbSR5IoKl_4Sda_8ogopQQXsLky8tqWpqV1-vSiJd2Kn8hyphenhyphen8WOT2EFKUeocl_NtEhHChty6E9tkXHG4BioM5YtHolbo2C_7lWfFNjRzfTWBEsa4xNB5YkH0bWOue_o_-gLXhxqW1u67VIWINQq4X_jTYrJr6mAyLMK8JmtEeb8/s320/20231130_214719.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>From the <a href="https://quillette.com/2024/01/19/anti-immigration-riots-in-ireland/">Quillette article</a>: <p></p><p>Following a quarter-century of immigration, however, more than 20
percent of Ireland’s population is now foreign-born, and the immigrants
keep coming; the number of asylum-seekers increased by <a href="https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2023/1129/1419046-international-protection/?ref=quillette.com">415 percent</a> last year. According to <a href="https://www.newstalk.com/news/more-than-5000-asylum-seekers-arriving-last-year-had-no-valid-travel-documents-1433756?ref=quillette.com">Ireland’s <em>Newstalk</em> programme</a>,
70 percent of those immigrants were male, and almost 40 percent had
false or no passports. On the rare occasions on which an immigrant is
ordered to be deported, only around <a href="https://gript.ie/ridiculous-just-15-of-those-who-received-deportation-orders-were-deported-in-last-five-years/?ref=quillette.com">one out of every seven deportation orders</a> are actually carried out.</p><p>By the end of 2024, government spending on welfare payments is <a href="https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/question/2023-11-28/387/?ref=quillette.com">expected to have tripled</a> from that of 2020. And this increase comes <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2023/07/20/ireland-has-one-of-lowest-rates-of-home-ownership-for-under-40s-esri-says/?ref=quillette.com">at a time when two-thirds of Irish people under 40 cannot afford to purchase a home</a> and <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/housing-planning/2023/03/23/irelands-housing-crisis-facts-and-figures-all-you-need-to-know/?ref=quillette.com">an unprecedented number of Irish people are homeless</a>.
Ireland is wealthy on paper—particularly thanks to the pharmaceutical
and tech companies headquartered around Dublin—but much of that supposed
“foreign investment” involves <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/almost-two-thirds-of-irish-fdi-is-phantom-imf-study-1.4012191?ref=quillette.com">a kind of corporate tax dodge</a>—and <a href="https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/ireland-most-expensive-country-eu-30294262?ref=quillette.com">the cost of living has skyrocketed.</a> To ease the strain on Dublin, the government has been shipping immigrants to rural areas <em>en masse</em>. In some country villages, <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lisdoonvarna-the-home-of-matchmaking-where-refugees-now-outnumber-locals-xlksgsfnn?ref=quillette.com">asylum-seekers now outnumber Irish</a>.</p>Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-86522155207468223352024-01-21T03:18:00.003+00:002024-01-21T03:18:33.869+00:00Published at Quillette<p><span class="break-words
"><span dir="ltr"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_NkWpI5j-uTuH7GgheuM4gdcyRoKIyTGUfar2Tl1DFGSdSn1nvY-6P1y0WcXPtT0B4gPgtOnPgDV1KaDD_bchcJGiXqop0P7tVbJjgXS4ctH2sjxHE9Ej6YtYql0PoQPMYZ71eakFQLNUxfpz5TTcSv5t-IdK2RXrNjf_epKAdZpY0Gi-Shxohdl6/s1385/Ireland.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="785" data-original-width="1385" height="385" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_NkWpI5j-uTuH7GgheuM4gdcyRoKIyTGUfar2Tl1DFGSdSn1nvY-6P1y0WcXPtT0B4gPgtOnPgDV1KaDD_bchcJGiXqop0P7tVbJjgXS4ctH2sjxHE9Ej6YtYql0PoQPMYZ71eakFQLNUxfpz5TTcSv5t-IdK2RXrNjf_epKAdZpY0Gi-Shxohdl6/w680-h385/Ireland.png" width="680" /></a></div><br />I'm delighted to report that Quillette magazine
<a href="https://quillette.com/2024/01/19/anti-immigration-riots-in-ireland/">has published my piece on the Dublin riots</a>, as well as the censorship
bill going through the Irish Parliament as we speak. <p></p><p><span class="break-words
"><span dir="ltr">What's happening in Ireland is part of a
much larger trend affecting every Western country, so t</span></span><span class="break-words
"><span dir="ltr">his is an
important story with a lot of moving parts, and I hope to report on more in the months to come. </span></span></p><p><span class="break-words
"><span dir="ltr"><br /></span></span></p>Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-10906607050952124472024-01-16T03:14:00.001+00:002024-01-16T14:08:50.767+00:00Victory Gardens<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjmAWBY7w6aqhl5I-ocWbWwNMSLIGD8933lmDtxAmjAunKc3Z20-vebb_pA2B5OTT_hkGgpzcWxAnqaQ1ZfkAUj9q-EVw9XKcITuT74pXcTkh1LXX5Pg7bFySJAP7isXflQvf91v6bTpPA7WFFJGXUD8UGVJYlEZwwcCRkzwwJfnIMyz3D_zWShxyN/s1444/My%20garden%202009.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1444" data-original-width="1200" height="417" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjmAWBY7w6aqhl5I-ocWbWwNMSLIGD8933lmDtxAmjAunKc3Z20-vebb_pA2B5OTT_hkGgpzcWxAnqaQ1ZfkAUj9q-EVw9XKcITuT74pXcTkh1LXX5Pg7bFySJAP7isXflQvf91v6bTpPA7WFFJGXUD8UGVJYlEZwwcCRkzwwJfnIMyz3D_zWShxyN/w347-h417/My%20garden%202009.JPG" width="347" /></a></div><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Imagine Hollywood celebrities
campaigning for backyard gardens, and America’s best-selling music stars
singing songs about patriotic recycling. It may sound crazy, but that actually
happened eighty years ago. As the USA entered World War II, much of the food
industry focused on the war effort. Farmhands were needed at the front,
machinery for planes, and people needed to do more for themselves. A
grass-roots movement spread across both countries to create “victory gardens,”
and the idea was picked up by celebrities, politicians and the media.</span><p><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
<br />
Similarly, In Great Britain, 60 percent of food was imported when World War II
began, and most of that food now had to be grown locally – and everyone pitched
in. Radio programmes, magazines and movie newsreels showed families how to save
grease for machinery and bones for fertiliser, how to turn their yards and neighbourhood
vacant lots into gardens into an allotment garden. They explained how to clamp
potatoes under mounds of hay to keep them for the winter, and how to save
energy when cooking food by setting stews in hay-stuffed boxes to slow-cook.<br />
<br />
On both sides of the Atlantic, the victory gardens worked. They allowed most
people to grow their own food, and spend less money. They put to work the
precious space that is now being used simply as lawns or landscaping features.
In a time when energy was scarce, they allowed more trucking and food to be
used for the war effort. They ensured that millions of people became
self-sufficient, and were insulated from the chaos of energy shortages and
supply chain disorder. In the event of a crisis, every gardener makes your
neighbourhood more secure. The gardens meant that people spent less money – the
less money you need to spend on food, the more you can put away for paying the
mortgage or eliminating the credit card debt. They created more beautiful
neighbourhoods, gave people exercise, and brought communities together.<br />
<br />
Victory gardens meant that citizens ate better food as<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>well – fresher than can be bought at any
store, with the maximum nutrition and no chemicals. A now-forgotten 1977
Congressional panel observed that heart attacks and strokes went down in the
war years, even with the stresses of war and a demographic shift toward the
elderly, because of more fresh vegetables in their diet.<br />
<br />
Such gardens also reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, which are currently
used to plough fields, make fertilizers, create pesticides, harvest, process
crops and transport them to market. Gardens eliminate all those steps at once,
reducing a 10,000-kilometre diet to a 10-metre one. While Ireland never entered
into World War II, the same thing was done here – council estates gave families
as much land as a cow needed, and it was once common, I’m told, to see cows,
pigs and chickens in many yards in Dublin. Even schools and hospitals had their
own gardens to feed those inside.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR6Lc0IC5FMpARWPmUZErbOV0yT-g7p3iqhIYcVtemjdYlyF5xnAiyQpIX0bjscmF7P8jt8N18p9KIcML6Rs_kiZdX9f2j8EIjs2uVY1UdwVQRBWDY2-IrLBhr-6KDOg9oRaiYWQFvdvjxo6VUaN0ygdxfH9uriIujDsm4F6NpZ9q5f-3FyPhjL-_N/s269/images.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="269" data-original-width="188" height="369" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR6Lc0IC5FMpARWPmUZErbOV0yT-g7p3iqhIYcVtemjdYlyF5xnAiyQpIX0bjscmF7P8jt8N18p9KIcML6Rs_kiZdX9f2j8EIjs2uVY1UdwVQRBWDY2-IrLBhr-6KDOg9oRaiYWQFvdvjxo6VUaN0ygdxfH9uriIujDsm4F6NpZ9q5f-3FyPhjL-_N/w258-h369/images.jpg" width="258" /></a></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Writer and former Soviet citizen Dmitri
Orlov wrote that most Russians had kitchen gardens, and that 90 percent of the
country’s food was grown in such plots. Even though they were formed from
necessity, because of the poverty of the nation and the incompetence of
centralized agriculture, they ended up being a blessing – as the nation
collapsed, the people could still eat. He warns that many nations in the West
are now heading for a crisis, but are not as well prepared.<br />
<br />
Could we feed ourselves again? We have in the past, and with less knowledge and
technology than we have now. Australian ecologist David Holmgren has estimated
that his country’s cities could not only feed their own population, but become
net food exporters, if the yards and golf courses were replaced by everything
from leeks to cardoons to turnips. Presumably the same could be done in similar
cities in Europe and America.<br />
<br />
Some people are doing this now – still a small group, but in an emergency they
could be the ones who teach others, as a similarly small fraction of the
population could teach others when World War II began. Within only two years,
though, Americans were growing almost half their own food. It could happen
again, and if the next few years were to bring another fuel crisis, or a civil
war, or an economic crash, or any number of other possibilities, every backyard
could be an ark that could carry people through the storm. <br /></span></p>
Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-75637704022877825422024-01-15T02:04:00.005+00:002024-01-15T03:33:50.441+00:00Update<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigPOndjnefjLRehs3x8qq0o4tkjuGGpRpvWpXl6-zr4mZ6FqLZN9ugpkwzagPiyIYzysHCALVoI_TiGqwhenMPf6SJ4ec6-rtuQO8GtKQiDDei7CGZ9-b85uxIriLhyYV2kieCpN_MF_SkNibhUqVaKuw3IKaFp7XhEJXG5-rBuKUNMusURHrEW_jd/s1600/Ducks%20-%208.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigPOndjnefjLRehs3x8qq0o4tkjuGGpRpvWpXl6-zr4mZ6FqLZN9ugpkwzagPiyIYzysHCALVoI_TiGqwhenMPf6SJ4ec6-rtuQO8GtKQiDDei7CGZ9-b85uxIriLhyYV2kieCpN_MF_SkNibhUqVaKuw3IKaFp7XhEJXG5-rBuKUNMusURHrEW_jd/s320/Ducks%20-%208.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> </span><p></p><p><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Sorry for
the gap in writing; some of you know that there’s<br /> been a lot happening in my
life, and not just the riots. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">I won’t go
into details, but I’ll be posting a lot more in the future, both here and on
social media, and on my web site. I’m also trying to find an agent and
publisher for the completed book, which Rod Dreher <a href="https://roddreher.substack.com/p/the-last-who-remember">was so kind as to promote onhis Substack</a>. </span></p>
Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-63065591964841801372023-12-22T19:31:00.004+00:002023-12-22T19:31:35.636+00:00Upcoming article on Dublin riots<p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5FPobWG18zPi6FxZnesoowhyphenhyphenqVgxTZtypxHxYQSFqHupQBaE7J9CXpGAonGtbD2chwNjrzMU0eoOCMquBNhaPDPgDjABSGmpkhH2rniJUwO3bIFxLGWA-UQNykyB2slGo8ub5IoA1DhV5O_eNWmMtJ8FLaU0Z0HsDGarTNqSFMZoJfNZb25bkAO2o/s1806/20231130_214719.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1285" data-original-width="1806" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5FPobWG18zPi6FxZnesoowhyphenhyphenqVgxTZtypxHxYQSFqHupQBaE7J9CXpGAonGtbD2chwNjrzMU0eoOCMquBNhaPDPgDjABSGmpkhH2rniJUwO3bIFxLGWA-UQNykyB2slGo8ub5IoA1DhV5O_eNWmMtJ8FLaU0Z0HsDGarTNqSFMZoJfNZb25bkAO2o/s320/20231130_214719.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dublin a few nights ago.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh26qW5fDLozGN62SyllSLdSqs5ZMPaEqzohoIHMHIi_FCIwWTtXpfqlG7DCC8A1CX62s5JGHqUtyQz2YG86l2WrER8QXB0mhhbszAkrx9kk0xei4i9VErsqqMYDsnsaXOC3YgX5fr6Zdr8bjl8AJaozrWyQNlFjW3jahy3RdRgHAewRndWh9Jvhh_f/s1806/20231130_214719.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMwMAcXbbgmYy-n3zD71gTDN6gwycnDNTXc-UTZlADLsAVJf1nKLBr1LGzJeKvZCWMaF7S6ZvBWAs4z-LO5NXXLqGBZ2OOHA5rwX8WEYZY_knwwukgZEU1ils8UEvMgmhefgWRZrVULTmnXd4sAVun-SwpIl6e9fklsTPZVeI2f1hC36RrC_nC9MqV/s960/Jesus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="960" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMwMAcXbbgmYy-n3zD71gTDN6gwycnDNTXc-UTZlADLsAVJf1nKLBr1LGzJeKvZCWMaF7S6ZvBWAs4z-LO5NXXLqGBZ2OOHA5rwX8WEYZY_knwwukgZEU1ils8UEvMgmhefgWRZrVULTmnXd4sAVun-SwpIl6e9fklsTPZVeI2f1hC36RrC_nC9MqV/s320/Jesus.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The same scene during the riots.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Sorry
for not posting much - I'm flying to America tomorrow, and between that
and the article I'm writing on the Dublin riots, it's been busy. </div><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">From the article: </p><p style="text-align: left;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-IE">"Most other
attacks had been rural or in poor areas, easier to sweep under the rug. This
was in the heart of the city, the main shopping district at Christmas season,
in a square named for a national hero, in the neighbourhood where the Irish
Revolution began a century ago. It was next door to where Irish icon Oliver St.
John Gogarty once lived. It was around the corner from a memorial to the
innocents killed by an IRA bomb in the 1970s. It was at an Irish-language
school, favoured by people proud of their heritage, in neighbourhoods now
populated heavily by migrants." </span></p></div><p></p>Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-29879454647607712732023-12-03T00:09:00.003+00:002023-12-03T00:09:28.311+00:00Avoiding the Same Old Crops<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI-Ncy96tIUIyLrxeW1jA9hWbySwD01RWAfF-7pkGES6vqNf1BtacPSVC-NdZNrPPiXJWed9mYnWtxI9xbWBbp6GRWu7gevUQXSvLzWS0vn3eR6bMOjZRMJerwswonw7FNXGePH0ejWqi2CqttkQ0eAPtebUpwXhk2pYHUSxKHdmz5eTvCi6K0XU9w/s1795/08-2012%20Dew%20on%20Strawberries.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1618" data-original-width="1795" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI-Ncy96tIUIyLrxeW1jA9hWbySwD01RWAfF-7pkGES6vqNf1BtacPSVC-NdZNrPPiXJWed9mYnWtxI9xbWBbp6GRWu7gevUQXSvLzWS0vn3eR6bMOjZRMJerwswonw7FNXGePH0ejWqi2CqttkQ0eAPtebUpwXhk2pYHUSxKHdmz5eTvCi6K0XU9w/s320/08-2012%20Dew%20on%20Strawberries.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">As pleased as I am to see so many people
here turning back to allotments and backyard gardens, I don’t want to see
people rely too heavily on the same potatoes and cabbages. Relying too much on
only a few varieties of a few plants, though, makes for a very fragile kind of
self-reliance. Eat a surfeit of one food and your health declines; meet the
wrong caterpillar or fungus, a summer too hot or a winter too long, and much of
your food is gone. The Irish did that once with potatoes, with disastrous results.
</span><p><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
<br />
Most of us, though, have little idea how many edible plants are all around us,
and how many could fill our salad bowls or soups. Even if we restrict ourselves
to the minority of plants that have become domesticated crops, we typically
recognize only a few varieties of each – the ones bred recently for fossil-fuel
transport, not for taste, health or your climate. <br />
<br />
Take the colour, for example – most of us have never seen green oranges, purple
carrots, striped beets or blue potatoes. Or look at breed names -- most of us
have eaten Johnagold or Green Delicious apples, perhaps without knowing what
they were called, but I have never had Seek-no-Furthers or Belle-de-Boskoops,
and you probably haven’t either. <br />
<br />
Even many ordinary vegetables have become widely unrecognized. When I was in
charge of a magazine in America, we made an arrangement with a local CSA to get
a weekly box of whatever was in season. I waited until everyone else had their
share and took the rest home – which meant I took most of it home every week,
because my colleagues had no idea what to make of the vegetables or what to do
with them. Some of these people were environmental activists or vegans, but
they stared quizzically at the kohlrabi, fennel, mange tout, swedes, daikons,
parsley root, beetroot or sunchokes as though they were specimens from an alien
planet. <br />
<br />
Still, I didn’t grow up knowing many of these crops either, and had to learn
them over time. When we moved here, for example, my mother-in-law introduced me
to celeriac, a celery relative bred not for its stalks -- which are edible but
foul-tasting, I can assure you – but for its bulbous root. Ours can grow as
large as a human head, and can be left in the ground until needed or
transferred to boxes of sand in the shed. My mother-in-law usually cooked them
like potatoes, but I find them great raw, finely grated like parmesan and mixed
in a spicy lemon dressing. <br />
<br />
As another example, I grow scorzonera, a yellow-flowered dandelion relative
that seemed to fall out of favour after the Victorian era. Its black roots
taste great peeled and either boiled, steamed or stir-fried. Its cousin salsify
has blue flowers and white roots, but can be treated similarly. I also grew
chicory, not to harvest at the time, but to transplant to earth boxes in the
shed in winter and force its blanched leaves upwards. <br />
<br />
Acquaintances of ours experiment with other roots and tubers: yacon and occa
originated in the Andes Mountains alongside the potato, but spuds became the
staple food for millions while the first two continued to be eaten mainly by
Incas. Sometime soon, though, we really must experiment with yacons, which can
be eaten raw and, I’m told, taste like sweet radishes. <br />
<br />
Most people think kiwis come from the South Pacific; in reality the name was a
1960s marketing ploy, a Cold War rebranding of the Chinese gooseberry. They too
grow in this damp and windswept country, perhaps not as big as the ones in
supermarkets but just as tasty --- and without using their own weight in fossil
fuels to get here. <br />
<br />
We will never approach resilience unless we wade into the vast pool of
little-known and rarely used plants. This time of year, as many of you are
buying seeds for the spring, consider devoting a piece of your land for
experimenting with new crops and new varieties. Not all your experiments will
work, but some might prove easier, healthier, more pest-resistant, tastier, or
more suited to your particular patch of the landscape that what you are
planting now.</span></p><p><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Photo: Morning dew on my strawberries. <br /></i></span></p>
Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-33120056654220855342023-11-26T21:20:00.000+00:002023-11-26T21:20:17.975+00:00Great write-up by Rod Dreher<p> Between going to Budapest to visit Rod Dreher and dodging the riots in Dublin, I've been a bit busy lately -- and I'm preparing to go back to the USA at Christmas. Thus, I'm late in posting a link to this, but Rod Dreher gave me a generous write-up on his Substack blog, and I'm quite chuffed:<br /><br />https://roddreher.substack.com/p/the-last-who-remember</p><p>I've finished the book and am searching for an agent and publisher, so I'll keep you posted. <br /></p>Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-53506854971097704262023-11-25T21:45:00.001+00:002023-11-25T21:52:17.098+00:00Been a bit busy here in Dublin<p><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBpESnSX8FtaleCorABgkBZJGejofKTTNHqjd5XxncJ81bUV8XDqp9UWVtJxG4WsNen0VOln0NSGbhLqZGrHq4T_0rQP5DwXjkvQDI80JGgNj84D3BCSlaydPkil5RUkbLlJf4YKlsOOYW0-6W53_Jxef53bJx8URh5eIadt9JgsYWCfdgNZ1WOxjE/s1280/-STABBING%20(80).jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="853" data-original-width="1280" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBpESnSX8FtaleCorABgkBZJGejofKTTNHqjd5XxncJ81bUV8XDqp9UWVtJxG4WsNen0VOln0NSGbhLqZGrHq4T_0rQP5DwXjkvQDI80JGgNj84D3BCSlaydPkil5RUkbLlJf4YKlsOOYW0-6W53_Jxef53bJx8URh5eIadt9JgsYWCfdgNZ1WOxjE/w454-h302/-STABBING%20(80).jpg" width="454" /></a></div>Believe it or not, this is my third time seeing part
of my own neighbourhood smashed and burned. I grew up near Ferguson, Missouri,
which made the news with a race riot in 2014, and then I lived in Minneapolis
and worked around the corner from where George Floyd would later be killed. Most
people don’t see this happen to their neighbourhood even once, much less three times
in three separate neighbourhoods. I would be the dot in the middle of a very strange Venn diagram. <p></p><p><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">I'm writing about it at the moment, and will be doing an interview -- details to come soon. </span></p><p><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><i>Photo: Irish Independent. <br /></i></span></p>Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-7684562229270490342023-11-18T11:55:00.003+00:002023-11-18T11:55:32.215+00:00The History of Woven Boats<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA3NeL0e0-uj0Uo40DRDslKAY2CmxZIE_ZDp1ghN01WsxBKJNpo9a7XWqkc3QtSrJF0odzTmaOC3LDaI0MZrUXP-uJejKkqeW5gJ_OekJ91L8Vj6DP5XHOFhnBzhutBRwzQs3KR_eODRjUCmxUH9YwD0p6WngLii01WvBbRa-rqiZAdlmEofo46I1I/s961/irish_coracles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="896" data-original-width="961" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA3NeL0e0-uj0Uo40DRDslKAY2CmxZIE_ZDp1ghN01WsxBKJNpo9a7XWqkc3QtSrJF0odzTmaOC3LDaI0MZrUXP-uJejKkqeW5gJ_OekJ91L8Vj6DP5XHOFhnBzhutBRwzQs3KR_eODRjUCmxUH9YwD0p6WngLii01WvBbRa-rqiZAdlmEofo46I1I/s320/irish_coracles.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Under the green and rolling hills of Scotland, a dozen kilometres from
the seaside, several people lay buried for four thousand years. Around them lay
what we guess to be their keepsakes; beads, a bronze knife, tools and a
battle-axe. Most interesting, though, was that at least one of them – a
teenager when he died, curled up like a baby – lay in what was guessed to be a
wicker coracle, like those used on these islands into the 20<sup>th</sup>
century. He was buried in his boat.</span>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Stop and consider a few things about this. First its antiquity: Before
the Ancient Greeks or the Hebrew prophets, before all but the earliest
pyramids, there were Scots, or at least people of Scotland. Also, you don’t see
boat-burials every day; perhaps it was the youth’s most prized possession, like
someone today might be buried in their Rolls-Royce. Finally, consider this was
a giant basket, woven together by hand, and that it carried people safely
across vast stretches of cold water. (1)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">That’s not as strange as it sounds; humans around the world, whether
jungle tribes or Eskimos, whether in the Stone Age or the Industrial
Revolution, used similar woven boats. Who first thought of it we don’t know;
the first basket fragments we have were about 13,000 years old, but we have
circumstantial evidence that humans might have been weaving baskets the size of
boats almost four hundred centuries earlier. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Not four hundred years, by the way
– four hundred <i>centuries</i>.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">You see, early humans first appeared in Australia about 50,000 years
ago, and even with the ice age lowering sea levels, you still can’t walk there.
To get there from Asia (presumably, because anything else would be even
stranger) they would have had to set out on the ocean — whole families in
boats, not knowing if there was land out there. Obviously they floated on
something, and we know of no other kind of boat-making technology for tens of
thousands of years to come. Even if they only lashed logs together to make
rafts, as you see in so many castaway films, they would have had to use the
similar technology of weaving fibres together to make knots.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">In the centuries since, cultures around the world wove boats: Tibetans
floated in Ku-Drus of woven wood and yak-skin, Eskimos lashed sealskin around
their long umiaks, Arabs traversed the Tigris and Euphrates in quffahs, and the
Celts of the British Isles – Irish, Scots and Welsh — had an amazing variety of
coracles for fresh waters and curraghs for the sea.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Most were woven from some local pliable wood – although Eskimos used
sometimes used bones — then covered with some kind of skin, and finally
waterproofed in some way. They were often rounder in flat water, like the Irish
coracles, and more oval or pointed in running or sea waters, like the Irish
curraghs or Eskimo kayaks. They also tended to be alarmingly tiny crafts, often
just big enough for one – although a traveller to Iraq in the 1930s reported
seeing woven boats large enough to carry several human passengers and a few
horses. (2)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Coracles in particular had the basic shape of a bowl, and its users
needed substantial practice to avoid tipping over. The advantage, however, was
that once the user reached shore, the small and lightweight craft could be
lifted and carried on one’s back. An English poet in the 1600s described
“salmon-fishers moist, their leather boats begin to hoist,” looking like
turtles as they walked away from the water carrying their boats upside-down
across the countryside. (3)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">On these islands coracles and curraghs were used from ancient times –
the ancient Welsh myth cycle the Mabinogion mentions them, as did Julius Caesar
on his trip to Britain. Irish monks like St. Columba in the sixth century
travelled around isolated islands in a hide-bound boat, and Hector Boece’s 1527
history of Scotland describes their frequent use of coracles:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><i><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">How be it, the Highlanders have both the writings and language they had
before, more ingenious than any other people. How may there be any greater
ingenuity than to make any boat of any bull-hide, bound with nothing but wands?
This boat is called a curragh, and with it they fish salmon … and when they
have done their fishing they bear it to another place on their back as they
please. </span></i><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Fishing was not just a pastime for such people, but a matter of
survival; the protein they brought in was precious, especially in Catholic
countries where meat was forbidden part of the year. Another common use was to
gather fish and eel traps from rivers and lobster pots from the sea – also, of
course, woven of wood like baskets. The traps operated on a simple principle; a
bit of bait could lure an animal into the trap but, if it were shaped properly,
they would be unable to escape.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Coracles also proved useful in other ways; when shepherds washed their
sheep, for example, coracle-men positioned themselves downstream to catch any
sheep that might be carried away. And, of course, they offered simple
transportation across a landscape lined with lakes, rivers and canals, and
among many islands separated by the sea.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrkX61vxWd6h3zXmfZhFJm2Hgm4QeJQxgBrnNmJ1hiCoBGK5GcCBXQd9qb7J-EARY3MDwf3TREKkccR48BmCzgA4RsBHbu-FsPGt6z5f-h2U8POXWsnuH1mC-5MYCe6Qwg49yALFJGbYbHpCL76lKIZt9QEO0noZQt-m_Rdz7TWMLVnYhg8EANr1bV/s640/Coracles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrkX61vxWd6h3zXmfZhFJm2Hgm4QeJQxgBrnNmJ1hiCoBGK5GcCBXQd9qb7J-EARY3MDwf3TREKkccR48BmCzgA4RsBHbu-FsPGt6z5f-h2U8POXWsnuH1mC-5MYCe6Qwg49yALFJGbYbHpCL76lKIZt9QEO0noZQt-m_Rdz7TWMLVnYhg8EANr1bV/s320/Coracles.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Each region had its own design – not just region as in “Europe,” but as
in each local village or stream; small Welsh rivers like the Teifi, the Taf,
the Wye, the Monnow, the Lugg, the Usk, the Dee and the Severn each had their
own styles of coracles, each apparently made for the conditions of that place.
(4)<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Irish coracles and curraghs were woven from willow or hazel, and
typically built upside-down. Locals here began by planting a row of hazel rods
straight into the ground, continuing in a wide curve until the row came back to
where it began. Then, when the rods looked like the bars of a large cage, they
wove withies – thin strips of wood – back and forth between the rods along the
ground. This would be the gunwale – the “rim” of the boat – when it was flipped
over.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Then the hazel rods — the bars of the cage, as it were — were bent down
across the oval to make a wicker dome, until the whole structure formed a
large, solid basket. Then a covering was lashed to the frame – cow-hide was
typical, although horse-hide and seal-skin were also used. Finally, the cover
was waterproofed – in recent years with tar or some other petroleum derivative,
but originally with tallow or butter.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Such ingenious craft opened up new industries, crafts and food sources
for ordinary hunters or farmers, allowing them to traverse lakes and rivers
easily and travel between islands. They allowed people on islands or in remote
areas communicate and trade with the rest of the world. They let people create
their own craft for the unique conditions of their place, with nothing more
than local resources, knives and skill. In short, for tens of thousands of
years human survival depended on such small and unlikely-looking creations.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><i><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Originally published in Mother Earth News. Photos: Irishmen carrying their coracles. Courtesy of Wikicommons and Flickr, public licence. </span></i><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 3;"><b><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Sources</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">1) T. Watkins, <i>International Journal of Nautical Archaeology and
Underwater Exploration</i>, 1980<br />
T. Watkins, <i>The excavation of an Early Bronze Age cemetery at Barns Farm,
Dalgety, Fife, </i>Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 112
(1984) p. 48 – 114<br />
2) James Hornell, “Coracles of the Tigris and Euphrates,” <i>The Mariner’s
Mirror</i>, Volume 24, Issue 2, 1938<br />
3) Andrew Marvell, “Upon Appleton House,” 1651.<br />
4) James Hornell, <i>Water Transport Origins & Early Evolution</i>, 1936.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE"> </span></p>
Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-15754108448131575692023-11-09T23:02:00.003+00:002023-11-09T23:02:27.585+00:00Sourdough<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBmW5fX0ggJMwxI82X3qqDAOOMownLR90n8QDAIxxKBqY3IcxS1uAOGZTOZbe5rwC-bgEnSZPNUTVcfaT9kbfamV0FDZIpty5Y1gGa4HYR4C76_q9Nkaedd-bqAjOBbRPfD1RZQqYauoSpZBVPm_tA7CmfUGV3VNg-5_d6sIS2xfzGIUcBIlbkpyAE/s440/Home_made_sour_dough_bread.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="284" data-original-width="440" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBmW5fX0ggJMwxI82X3qqDAOOMownLR90n8QDAIxxKBqY3IcxS1uAOGZTOZbe5rwC-bgEnSZPNUTVcfaT9kbfamV0FDZIpty5Y1gGa4HYR4C76_q9Nkaedd-bqAjOBbRPfD1RZQqYauoSpZBVPm_tA7CmfUGV3VNg-5_d6sIS2xfzGIUcBIlbkpyAE/s320/Home_made_sour_dough_bread.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Making food – gardening, preserving,
cooking – is generally time-consuming work, and very few foods leap out of the
air and volunteer to make themselves. Fortunately, sourdough does just that. </span><br /><p><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
Sourdough is a kind of bread made with naturally-occurring yeasts and
lactobacilli bacteria, already floating in the air all around you. Because the
lactobacilli create lactic acid, it has a slightly sour taste compared to
breads made quickly with dried yeast powder from the store.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The preparation of sourdough begins with
a starter of flour and water, which can be a solid, liquid or somewhere
in-between. The starter carries the yeast and bacteria, and when you mix the
starter with the rest of the dough you are giving the micro-organisms much more
food, enabling them to spread throughout the dough. The bacteria and yeast have
a symbiotic relationship: the bacteria ferment sugars that the yeast cannot
digest, and their by-products are metabolised by yeast, which produces carbon
dioxide gas, which leavens the dough. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">First take a tablespoon (about 10
millilitres) of flour and a tablespoon of milk and mix them together – exact
quantities aren’t that important. Then you leave it sit out – say, on your
kitchen shelf – and stir it every morning and evening for about a week.<br />
<br />
When this gooey, pale mix begins to bubble and smell sour and tangy, it has
become sourdough starter. If it smells pongy, it pulled the wrong kind of
bacteria out of the air, and needs to be thrown out -- there’s really no way to
ensure either result or predict ahead of time.<br />
<br />
I added some organic grape peels to the mix; the grape’s sugar is food for the
yeast, and grapes are often covered in yeast themselves – that is the powdery
coating you see on the surface of grapes, one reason ancient people so easily
discovered they could make the juice into wine.<br />
<br />
Once you have a good batch of starter going, you keep feeding it a little bit
every day. Keep it at room temperature – say, 20-25 degrees -- and take out a
portion every week or so to make the bread. Some people keep their starter in
their refrigerator, where it ferments more slowly and only needs to be fed once
a week.<br />
<br />
Sourdough needs to be stickier and wetter than other doughs – the wetter the
better. Generally it should double in size within six hours of each “feeding,”
and it should be full of bubbles. One tip I got from the Prairie Homestead
blogger was that “if you place a teaspoon of the starter in a cup of cool
water, it should float on top of the water.” <br />
<br />
To make the bread itself, you bake it as you would bread in general, except
that instead of a packet of yeast you use some of the starter – don’t use it
all, of course. I use about half a cup of starter – 120 ml -- to about 300 ml
lukewarm water, and then add a teaspoon-and-a-third of salt, or about eight ml.
I then mix in 720 ml of flour; I use about 20 per cent rye flour to about 80
per cent wheat. I mash it together until it’s somewhat stiff, form it into a
ball, and let it sit in the bowl for about 30 minutes. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When this is done, I stretch and fold
the dough a few times, cover it with a clean dish towel and I let it rise
overnight until it’s doubled in size. The next morning fold it over a few times
and let it rise for about three hours, or until it’s doubled. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Preheat the oven to 230 degrees Centigrade.
Sprinkle cornmeal in the bottom of a baking pan lined with parchment and place
the loaf into the pan. If you have a Dutch oven, bake it for about 20 minutes
with the lid on, and about 30 minutes without. Wait until it’s cool before
slicing into it. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">These figures and this recipe are meant
to be approximations; people have different tastes, different kinds of bacteria
and yeast in their homes, different room temperatures, and different luck. Some
bread-makers advise novices to get someone else’s sourdough starter first, in
order to see what one should taste and smell like. Some “proof” the starter
before making bread dough; that is, mixing it with three parts flour to two
parts starter, letting it rise about an hour, and then mixing in the rest of the
dough. Sourdough does have more of a learning curve than most kinds of bread,
so it takes a lot more tries to get it right, and of course every culture of
sourdough has its own rules. That's part of the fun; you get to feel your way along your own path. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></p>
Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-22297209016485725292023-11-05T22:04:00.001+00:002023-11-05T22:04:06.893+00:00Growing Flax<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiU1r0CM3O3ZhjKqFP3s3IK8zeCQdy8gswWjSN7HRgk_5DkDeoqKiCK9EB02HPM_eZqTWMAFpHvNtdPKHSQmyPJj_Ir4fRBBVupdEX5cvVQVEFFMLpVutMhchSiKijsQOAjg9SD4FdrnhyCbXy7hZBN1VOuWthOXM2oeOmw9LsHWKRrpLc6VpvprvV/s900/Flax_plants_in_June..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="675" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiU1r0CM3O3ZhjKqFP3s3IK8zeCQdy8gswWjSN7HRgk_5DkDeoqKiCK9EB02HPM_eZqTWMAFpHvNtdPKHSQmyPJj_Ir4fRBBVupdEX5cvVQVEFFMLpVutMhchSiKijsQOAjg9SD4FdrnhyCbXy7hZBN1VOuWthOXM2oeOmw9LsHWKRrpLc6VpvprvV/s320/Flax_plants_in_June..jpg" width="240" /></a></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Most of the clothes we wear today are
made of oil, or coal, or gas, mixed with chemicals and turned into mylon or
rayon or some other synthetic. They will not decay as natural fibres do, and
when bits of them come out in the wash – almost every wash – they flood into
the sea. Scientists recently said they expected the ocean to soon have more
plastic per weight than fish, and we have no idea what effects it will have on
life there as it disintegrates into chemicals. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Once, though, Ireland made its own
clothes, giving thousands of people useful work – raising sheep, of course, but
also growing flax to turn into linen. Flax – ‘lint,’ they called it – made
linen cloth and canvas, string and rope. It was “a money-making crop because
there was very little work with it,” said Davy McCrory, but that was just to
grow it. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Turning it into linen was a long and
complicated process that involved uprooting the plants, removing the seeds
(“rippling”), soaking them (“retting”) in a bath (“dam”) until the outer husk
rots, drying them again, smacking the stalks to remove the rest of the husk
(“scotching”), and combing them (“heckling”). The end result was long yellow
fibres of flax that became linen cloth and canvas, and a lot of short loose
ones called “tow” – the reason long blonde hair is called “flaxen” and blonde
children are called “towheads.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Flax had to be pulled out of the ground
rather than cut, and here too neighbours assembled to help. “You went to the
neighbour to their pulling and they come to you, so that you had eight or nine
men to attend and to pull it, all in one day,” said Annie McKillop. Then the
plants went into the dam to be soaked so all but the fibres rotted away, and
“oh the smell was wild altogether,” Francis Quinn said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“It was the custom for the farmer whose
flax was being dressed to call at the mill with a bottle of whiskey, for all
the workers to share a drop on breaks,” Maurice McAleese said. “If this custom
was not upheld, that farmer could count on his flax being treated with less
care than the rest. The workers took two breaks, at 10 am and 3 pm, for a
snack, shot of whiskey, and a smoke.” (Back Through the Fields, 112)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Women handled the scotching and
heckling, said Martin Keaveny, “but scotching wasn’t all work for them! They
did a bit of match-making as well, planning who would make suitable partners.
There was a party atmosphere and a singsong.” It also seems to have been an
opportunity for community organising; flax workers had a reputation for being
political independents who talked back to public speakers, something we still
call “heckling.” (Growing Up with Ireland, 24)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“It was the custom for the farmer whose
flax was being dressed to call at the mill with a bottle of whiskey, for all
the workers to share a drop on breaks,” Maurice McAleese said. “If this custom
was not upheld, that farmer could count on his flax being treated with less
care than the rest.” (Back Through the Fields, 112)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Once the linen was taken to market, “it
was taken to the linen halls in Ballymena,” Harry Hume said, where cloth buyers
had strict standards and long experience examined them carefully. “The buyers
came along and pulled out the flax and they knew by the fibre whether it had
been properly retted in the dam, or properly scotched, or dried or hadn’t been
dried properly and hadn’t heated in a pile or anything.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In our time, we have become accustomed
to clothes just showing up in stores, made by slaves somewhere and travelling
around a planet for us. We have become so used to cheap fabric that we have
stopped mending clothes when they have holes. And we have become accustomed to
widespread rural unemployment. All these problems, though, could solve each other
if we brought back some of the industries that sustained small farmers and
villages across Ireland for hundreds of years. We would also have clothes that
did not make us dependent on Middle Eastern nations where the oil is found, or
Third-World dictatorships where the clothes are made. We could clothe ourselves
again.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></p>
<p></p>Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-15095104183394728922023-10-26T23:48:00.001+01:002023-10-26T23:48:20.722+01:00The Age of Kinder-Gardens<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihumT1ns7EyNHX1xOL_beIYgWKWKRSy0Q7YZg-_QPGwko8A8cphlVbYg5k6N5Z1Fsev9QPwMrR-q8p52-7OLTwVIX11q4zm0XidcZ4K_-puh4ZUfGS5c88Zn33YEXzn5efkgfn1hFqyWjtV31kpwvkASAW3gKmswbQhtUs0fZ8bfsBOA_0XpL2CCju/s434/Farming%20class.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="301" data-original-width="434" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihumT1ns7EyNHX1xOL_beIYgWKWKRSy0Q7YZg-_QPGwko8A8cphlVbYg5k6N5Z1Fsev9QPwMrR-q8p52-7OLTwVIX11q4zm0XidcZ4K_-puh4ZUfGS5c88Zn33YEXzn5efkgfn1hFqyWjtV31kpwvkASAW3gKmswbQhtUs0fZ8bfsBOA_0XpL2CCju/s320/Farming%20class.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span lang="EN-IE">In our modern world, most of us have joked
that school never taught us anything we needed to know – algebra, but not how
to do taxes. How true that is depends on the schools and teachers, of course,
and learning should be prized for its own sake. Once, however, schools taught a
wide range of highly practical and scientific skills that farm children could
implement in their daily lives. </span>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">A syllabus from the early 1900s in American
schools included plant diseases, erosion, insects, surveying, engineering, glaciations,
and geology, all to improve their farming. Touring dirt-poor rural America in
the early 1900s, Clarence Hall Robison found that agriculture and floriculture
were required courses for all students – 320 hours for boys – in addition to
botany, zoology, physiology, physics and chemistry.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">Robison describes a “typical Ohio village”
in which gardening was introduced as a class and the children threw themselves
into it. Nor were these students just bringing home a seed in a paper cup, as a
few students might do today – in one class the 12 students could not use the
standard textbook, for “it proved too easy, as the boys already knew most that
it contained.” The boys’ plan that year – just the boys, mind you, so perhaps
six students – was to experiment with varieties of corn in “288 hills.” Some
boys read about how beehives were made and immediately went home and
constructed some of their own, and one child described how he caught two wild
swarms of bees and set them in a hive. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">In some cases the students lobbied for
these classes themselves. After a school heard a lecture on poultry, a group of
sixth-graders, Robison said, was “in a class studying Shakespeare, taught as it
happened by the instructor in agriculture, [when] one of the girls suddenly
exclaimed, “Mr. Button, why can't we study poultry?” The idea was so popular
that a class was immediately organized.” </span></p>This <span lang="EN-IE">wasn’t just in schools;
some Midwestern advocates of modern farming practices, wanting to popularise
them in rural areas, began after-school “corn clubs” that became the 4-H. The
Boy Scouts, in one of their earliest manuals, lists a badge for agriculture. To
receive it scouts had to “a practical knowledge of plowing, cultivating,
drilling, hedging, and draining,” show “knowledge of Campbell's Soil Culture
principle, and a knowledge of dry farming and of irrigation farming” and
“[g]row at least an acre of corn which produces 25 per cent,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>better than the general average.”</span>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">In the 19th century, it was all the rage in
Europe to turn school-yards into teaching arenas – “child-gardens” or in
German, kinder-gartens. In Ireland, Horace Plunkett, who helped found many
co-operatives across the Irish countryside, urged that “Children should be
given elementary notions of science and a training in the faculty of
observation through illustration … drawn from the physical surroundings of
rural life.” In 1917, H.S. Sheridan wrote that school gardens teach children “to
observe and to think, to use their hands, eyes and minds in conjunction.
Concrete facts are presented, and the pupils are taught to think in realities
and not in symbols.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">By learning how to grow their own food,
children learn the basic skills needed to provide for themselves and their
families in a crisis, and lets them live with fewer expenses and less financial
stress. They learn that food does not magically show up on store shelves, that
we depend on fragile things to stay alive. As a classroom activity, it is a
perfect way to demonstrate how plants and animals depend on and fight each
other. It teaches chemistry: some plants do better in boggy soil or chalky, can
better tolerate warmth or chill. It teaches world history: the limestone under
your feet is a coral reef hundreds of millions of years old, mountains made of
the shells of a billion billion creatures. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">It also teaches a patience needed in this
age of texting and Snapchat. An entire generation grew up knowing the world
mainly through a glowing rectangle -- the television, a computer or the text
screen of a mobile phone. But life is not inside the screen, and neither is
childhood. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE"><i>Photo: Gardening class in the UK, courtesy of the Garden Museum. <br /></i></span></p>
Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-56364919571108816702023-10-21T23:17:00.006+01:002023-10-22T21:03:42.590+01:00Masonry Ovens<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyw0dn-WzQaSOokqZ2WjLrHdzBcH-itYktq8mOEeikIbPiJcC10eJh7wXBhDR3HMeaOQpSag8_sZ28U-5HhB3klP_7wo_qq9vUoaBn4A4hsswTdVsgtyJI1Nkb6-EJxARLFXfDe6owmpfCOAmPNc8hF3SL0g6KxQjonM_3x0wKEVwL56jrWNxoSX8j/s770/Tile%20stove.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="770" data-original-width="539" height="364" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyw0dn-WzQaSOokqZ2WjLrHdzBcH-itYktq8mOEeikIbPiJcC10eJh7wXBhDR3HMeaOQpSag8_sZ28U-5HhB3klP_7wo_qq9vUoaBn4A4hsswTdVsgtyJI1Nkb6-EJxARLFXfDe6owmpfCOAmPNc8hF3SL0g6KxQjonM_3x0wKEVwL56jrWNxoSX8j/w255-h364/Tile%20stove.jpg" width="255" /></a></div><span lang="EN-IE">Almost no one enjoys the cold, yet most
people in the world live where it is cold for part of the year – even
subtropical or Mediterranean climates get chilly in the winter, and deserts get
very cold at night. We can keep warm by huddling together or wearing heavier
clothes, but sooner or later we have to start burning something. </span>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">We currently get much of our heat from
fossil fuels – coal, oil, gas – or from electricity that comes from burning
fossil fuels. In a few decades we will see many more people in the
world and far less fossil fuels, and we will have to warm ourselves in some
other way. We could turn to building wind farms, solar arrays or nuclear
plants, turning their power into electricity and then into heat, but that would
be a long and complex process. It would be much simpler and cost-effective for
people to use the oldest method of heating, fire. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">Using fire, though, presents a few
problems. For one thing, we destroyed most of the world’s forests when we only
numbered in the millions, or hundreds of millions. Now there are seven thousand
million of us in a world with a fraction of the forest we used to have, and
what remains – the great rainforests of the world, for example – are
needed as the home of much of the life on Earth. <br />
<br />
We could coppice trees (cut them off at the base) or pollard them (cut them at
man-height) and let them grow back. It is an old, and still valid, method of
preserving forests, but trees like hazel still take a decade or more to return.
<br />
<br />
Also, traditional fireplaces were spectacularly inefficient: A fireplace and
chimney send only 10 percent of its heat to the room, and the other 90 percent
goes out into the sky. Old buildings in Ireland will have the fireplaces
stuffed with newspaper the whole way up, and there is still a draught.<br />
<br />
There is, however, a little-remembered method that was used in Central and
Eastern Europe until the beginning of the fossil fuel era – the masonry oven, also called a Russian stove or tile stove.
It relies on a simple concept: it is a hearth surrounded by a thermal mass like
cob, brick or tile, which heats up with the fire and slowly releases heat
throughout the day. <br />
<br />
Instead of having a single vertical flue that takes the heat directly into the
sky, masonry ovens have a flue that winds around several times before heading
outside -- the smoke is typically cold by the time it reaches the outside. All
the heat is transferred into the mass, and thence into the room. Since the smoke and heat rise inside insulated ducts which do not conduct heat
quickly, interior temperatures rise very high, and makers of masonry stoves claim their products
are 85-90 percent efficient. <br />
<br />
Fires in masonry ovens do not need to be tended and kept going, as it is not
the fire itself that keeps the house warm but the thermal mass – most oven
owners simply set one fire in the morning, and then let the heat radiate
through the day. As they release the heat slowly, so they tend to be warm but
not hot to the touch – some old Russian ovens were made with spaces where children or elderly could sleep. <br />
<br />
Perhaps most importantly, since the ovens need only a brief and quickly-burning
fire, they do not require chopped wood for fuel, but can use faster-growing and
more common material like straw or sticks. The fast-burning straw creates
little soot to build up and block the flue, so their users say they require
little cleaning. <br />
<br />
Masonry ovens, like thatched roofs, bale-building and cob, is an old method
recently revived when more people began to realize its advantages. If it takes
off, millions of people could build sustainable heating systems out of nothing
more than clay and stone, and heat themselves with material that is renewable
and almost free. <br />
<br />
For more information check out David Lyle’s excellent <a href="http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/the_book_of_masonry_stoves:paperback">Book
of Masonry Stoves</a>, or an<a href="http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/12/tile-stoves.html#more.">
article </a>on the subject by Low-Tech Magazine.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE"><i>Photo by Wikicommons. <br /></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE"> </span></p>
Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-57939389168270843822023-10-13T20:36:00.002+01:002023-10-13T20:36:19.601+01:00Planetary refrigerators<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuymETa3SayocLfzz92UTIw7iTBjm0V9iJOi-k8326Yw7DQRtDoD4MWnhJfXNqr-r4ClHd0OsOw0PTn4TBC2mjvBhyFFgTUhE3wQ4G95HW6-t9rZCA2ps42BMMlsM16vtP2Ietg9K0XS3SUE7uauccYMuKhC9gcp6HlBHd6xSccP9vE4HPMd08VtIg/s1993/DSCF8381.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1993" data-original-width="1490" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuymETa3SayocLfzz92UTIw7iTBjm0V9iJOi-k8326Yw7DQRtDoD4MWnhJfXNqr-r4ClHd0OsOw0PTn4TBC2mjvBhyFFgTUhE3wQ4G95HW6-t9rZCA2ps42BMMlsM16vtP2Ietg9K0XS3SUE7uauccYMuKhC9gcp6HlBHd6xSccP9vE4HPMd08VtIg/s320/DSCF8381.JPG" width="239" /></a></div><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s getting cold again, and while I
look forward to seeing more days when I can work outside without bundling up,
the cold is useful for many things. For one thing, it’s as cold as a
refrigerator outdoors, and that means you have less need to spend electricity
on a refrigerator inside. In fact, you can do the same thing year-round, simply
by keeping some of your food underground. </span>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Look over the houses of County Kildare
and you will see many garages, tool sheds, trampolines, storage units and even
swimming pools, but you are unlikely to find many root cellars, or even many
people who are familiar with the term. Yet root cellaring seems to have been
practiced in most times and places, and even, in a sense, by animals who bury
their food. It is a zero-carbon, zero-electricity, low-cost way to keep roots
and other foods over the winter, simply by using the planet as your
refrigerator.<br />
<br />
Root cellars can take many forms, but they all work on the basic principle that
vegetables in the right conditions stay alive, so they do not spoil, but also
do not continue to grow, ferment, seed, bolt or any other plant activity. Since
the temperature underground changes little throughout the year, this usually
means keeping them partially underground and well-insulated.<br />
<br />
Perhaps the easiest things to root cellar are the roots the name implies –
carrots, potatoes, parsnips, beetroot, celeriac, turnips and so on. Many
vegetables and fruits can be stored, however -- krauts like cabbage, broccoli,
cauliflower and kale; onions and their relatives leeks and garlic; fruit like
apples and pears; herbs and even salad greens. Most of the vegetables come from
late-season plantings, when the crops are ripening at the latest possible
moment before they must be stored for winter.<br />
<br />
You can keep potatoes or carrots in boxes of earth, sand or sawdust; I did this
last year with beetroots to see how long they would keep, and was delighted to
find that they remained firm and delicious after six months. After a year they
began to get a bit wrinkled on the outside, like a raisin, but not rotten ---
and I can attest that they were still quite edible. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">You can make a fort out of straw bales,
as a child might do with pillows, and keep food cool inside. You can poke two
pegs in the ground at either end of a crop row, pull string taut between them,
and wrap plastic over the rope to make a long small tent. Some people have
buried broken refrigerators and used them to store food – a literal
electricity-free refrigerator, although of course you might want to have the
chemical fluids drained first, in case they leak into the soil. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<br />
Many potatoes and other vegetables can be piled into mounds and covered with
earth and straw. Mounds should not be dug where water puddles, and while some
gardeners dig out a mound first, we who live in the Bog of Allen might fine it
safer to simply start on the ground level. The triangular pile should probably
not be more than a metre high, to avoid the weight of the higher vegetables
squashing the lower ones. Some kind of ventilation – a column of straw, a pipe
-- needs to be put through the middle of the stack. The pile of potatoes is
covered first with a layer of straw – 15 to 30 centimetres -- and then a layer
of earth about half as thick.<br />
<br />
Here in the bog we can’t have cellars, but those who do can turn it into a
refrigerator for food storage. Put shelves in the corner, to maximise the cool
space nearby, ideally on the north side (in the Northern Hemisphere). Have a
pipe go through one of your window spaces to let the damp escape, with each end
covered in screen to keep pests from using it as a highway. Even better,
install two pipes at opposite ends, to allow as much air circulation as
possible. You want to keep the air cool but dry and circulating, as much as
possible. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">You could also dig a pit about a metre
deep and a few metres across, lean two wooden walls against each other in the
pit to make a triangle, nail them together, and cover the top with a thin layer
of earth. The result is a root cellar with an insulating earth and grass roof
that can be a walk-in refrigerator during the winter months.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></p>
Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-7040372480196021742023-10-06T21:34:00.006+01:002023-10-06T21:34:46.353+01:00Blacksmithing<p> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQzJAdPmoZMQo4irrUhcTIk8OwOwz-FbDVHVEglMXHguUCscPbb3udXX2OnKMiuGSkHOQ69UErLfFnDkK-Y96X9CPTB9Kjt4fDK-YmPtzdPYqonwHlpxEBhI6LKIgKBKRpa0B_YNuJANvRUnZKSmd03bUDx5y6n-b_Y7u7c4KeWVbGSMhmdHlSuiL_/s3264/DSCF7251.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="451" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQzJAdPmoZMQo4irrUhcTIk8OwOwz-FbDVHVEglMXHguUCscPbb3udXX2OnKMiuGSkHOQ69UErLfFnDkK-Y96X9CPTB9Kjt4fDK-YmPtzdPYqonwHlpxEBhI6LKIgKBKRpa0B_YNuJANvRUnZKSmd03bUDx5y6n-b_Y7u7c4KeWVbGSMhmdHlSuiL_/w601-h451/DSCF7251.JPG" width="601" /></a></div>In movies blacksmiths look like WWF
wrestlers, dramatically slamming white-hot metal with sledgehammers. When I
took a blacksmithing course under the guidance of an old pro, the experience
was more realistic: A plate-sized fire, small tools and frantic tapping. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">The forge this time was an old metal
hubcap, with small holes drilled in the middle, and the blower was a
refurbished Electrolux vacuum motor. You don’t even need the electricity; on
another course we sculpted a forge out of clay and horse manure, and turned
some old fertiliser bags into bellows. <br />
<br />
We began each day by lighting a small fire in the middle of the hubcap, right
over the holes. Once the fire was going, we placed charcoal delicately over it,
and then a ring of coal around the charcoal, and the crank fan blew air through
the middle to keep the fire hot. Iron-working only appeared in the last 5,000
years or so – the final 0.3 percent of the time humans have had fire – because
ordinary wood fire does not heat iron enough to work, and large amounts of
charcoal and air are needed. <br />
<br />
We quickly learned that you need to spend a great deal of time standing over
the fire, with the metal part in just the right place – in the middle, above
the blower and slightly buried in charcoal – to get the right temperature. Too
little heat, of course, and the metal cannot be worked, but too much and it
begins to “burn,” liquefying and sparking. A lot depends on the size of the
metal piece – the tractor axel we put in took ages to heat, but I accidentally
burned off the tines of my fork in short order.<br />
<br />
Once the metal was glowing orange, we had to rapidly move it to the anvil
without yanking it out and sending hot coals everywhere, and without burning
the people standing shoulder-to-shoulder with you. Once at the anvil you had
only several seconds of BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM ... until it was black and solid
again.<br />
<br />
Also useful are steel vices and hefty pliers, which allowed us to grip metal
while turning it – hence the twist in the fork handle. None of us wore gloves,
but leather aprons and goggles were recommended against flying sparks and coals.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">This time, I took an old car part and
hammered it into a straight bar, flattened it into a knife-shape over the next
two days, and a bit of cutting and polishing did the rest. I cut a handle from
a hazel branch, heated the “handle end” of the metal until it was yellow-hot,
and seared the hot metal into the handle, with a gust of steam and a few bursts
of flame from the wood. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">Blacksmithing is one of the dozens of
professions that were widespread until just the last century, now is kept alive
only by a few aficionados. For thousands of years in metalworking cultures,
smiths were a vital and respected role – look how common it is as a surname
today. They might become vital again if the coming decades bring the turmoil we
anticipate. With charcoal and tools, a smith could turn landfill scrap and old
car parts into useful tools again – and as far as I know, there is no end to
the number of times metal can be recycled.<br />
<br />
When the world is no longer able to mass-produce new materials at its former
rate, when there is no new plastic and fewer forests, we will have billions of
tons of landfill waste. Movies like <i>WALL-E</i> posit garbage covering the
Earth, but in real life much of that garbage would not only be reusable, but
precious. Some of it will be metal, and all the landfills we have created in
the last few decades could become our mines in the next few decades. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE"><i>Top photo: A forge. Bottom photo: The knife I made. <br /></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCpUyxXzXUWcwjWnUf4EWihDkhlOsgdv5B-TovLQGIG-2yuWUiR6h0a4mE2JEEIgA5NW5M2OASTn3EWYPvehu9-wiFbS61jLeETLppHVpduS5aOhi9oIX8uhLqkAFpe0GOco-WPxEIBjaSfJpbHJHCXgEdD43wRpmRscysoBG0zsio18oGDVZadqGU/s468/Knife.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCpUyxXzXUWcwjWnUf4EWihDkhlOsgdv5B-TovLQGIG-2yuWUiR6h0a4mE2JEEIgA5NW5M2OASTn3EWYPvehu9-wiFbS61jLeETLppHVpduS5aOhi9oIX8uhLqkAFpe0GOco-WPxEIBjaSfJpbHJHCXgEdD43wRpmRscysoBG0zsio18oGDVZadqGU/s468/Knife.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="464" data-original-width="468" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCpUyxXzXUWcwjWnUf4EWihDkhlOsgdv5B-TovLQGIG-2yuWUiR6h0a4mE2JEEIgA5NW5M2OASTn3EWYPvehu9-wiFbS61jLeETLppHVpduS5aOhi9oIX8uhLqkAFpe0GOco-WPxEIBjaSfJpbHJHCXgEdD43wRpmRscysoBG0zsio18oGDVZadqGU/s320/Knife.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p>
Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-92015331170160486332023-09-29T18:25:00.004+01:002023-09-29T18:25:29.053+01:00Making Butter<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPgN0YKnO83LluXVfPEcUmLEXlxmByLFr8e7NXnuLcTS7YooCFzeis1qomEO2IjMqvj5ZYyJX3_YH5rUfDL0b5cju4NH1kkmvgSO12zlDsNL9IyyoWbB1xmXT9Z_HbpeHLqsmBsOJ68MYmIp9y94ZRyydLF0rk1X4B_qWS2ayGhAIkkSKYaXyC92ds/s767/Butter%20unveiled.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="767" data-original-width="767" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPgN0YKnO83LluXVfPEcUmLEXlxmByLFr8e7NXnuLcTS7YooCFzeis1qomEO2IjMqvj5ZYyJX3_YH5rUfDL0b5cju4NH1kkmvgSO12zlDsNL9IyyoWbB1xmXT9Z_HbpeHLqsmBsOJ68MYmIp9y94ZRyydLF0rk1X4B_qWS2ayGhAIkkSKYaXyC92ds/s320/Butter%20unveiled.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><span lang="EN-IE">Milk is not only an amazing food, but can
be made into many other foods as well – butter, ghee, kefir, yoghurt and
thousands of kinds of cheese – and all of them can be made at home. We are
fortunate to be able to use them; in many parts of the world, people cannot
digest milk products, so they tend to be found mostly in Europe, and
occasionally in India or the Middle East. </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">Butter was deeply important in this part of
the world; for dairying peoples it was the most accessible form of oil, needed
for cooking food and releasing the extra nutrition. Back when people milked
their own cows and goats, they made their own butter with a churn, but you can
do the same thing with a screw-top glass jar or some other sealable container. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">First fill the jar one-quarter to one-third
full of cream – a greater proportion than that and it won’t work. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People in times past would use whole,
un-homogenized milk, but that’s difficult to find these days, so cream is a
good place to start.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">The next step is to shake the jar vigorously
for perhaps 20 minutes ; try putting on some dance music and giving yourself an
aerobic workout, jumping around the house shaking the jar all the while. Don’t
worry if it takes more or less, as it will be fairly clear when butter forms
inside . At first the cream will become, effectively, whipped cream, and if the
jar is more than third full you never get enough agitation to get past this
stage. Eventually, though, you should see the liquid become thin again inside,
with a clump of something in the middle. That clump is your butter, and the
liquid is buttermilk. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">To separate them, place a strainer over a
bowl, unscrew the jar and dump the contents into the strainer. You can drink
the buttermilk or use it for making pancakes or any number of other uses – it
should keep for at least a week. The butter you can lift out and put in a bowl to
sweat. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">By “sweat” I don’t mean making it hot; in
fact, you could put a few ice cubes in with the butter to keep it cool. It
means that you have to chop, press, squeeze and knead the last of the watery
buttermilk out of the butter, so that it will not go rancid. As in a party
game, you must do this with spoons, touching the butter as little as possible
with your hands – the warmth of your body could melt the butter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">When you are sure the last bit of liquid
has been squeezed out, you have butter. If you like you could use it this way,
as Europeans do, or add salt as English and Irish do to preserve it longer. You
could mix in chopped herbs, like parsley and chives, to spread on bread, or
sage, garlic and rosemary to bake a chicken. Use your imagination. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">In warmer countries – or in Ireland in
warmer weather – butter will not keep long in the heat, so before refrigeration
Europeans used clarified butter, and Indians developed ghee. Ghee is
essentially spiced clarified butter, and while there are many variations, you
can make a simple version at home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">First put your butter in a pan on the stove
on very low heat – I put a thin metal plate on our gas stove, and the pan on
top of that, just to dissipate the heat a bit more. The butter will quickly
melt and begin bubbling, which is good – but be very careful not to let it
darken. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">The butter should separate into three
layers; a white film on top, the oil layer that is most of the butter, and the
milk remains on the bottom. Only the middle layer is what you want. Early on
you can spoon off the milky bits on top, and spread them on bread if you like. After
that you can add spices, like bay leaves or fenugreek seeds, as the Indians do.
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">Keep it on very low heat for half-an-hour
to an hour, checking frequently – again, it might take more or less for you.
When there is no more bubbling or hissing, just the oil and the milk deposits
at the bottom, you can strain it through a tea strainer and stop when you get
to the milk deposits. The milk deposits, browned at this point, are still
edible, and are good on popcorn. The rest should be a clear, golden-brown oil
that will keep for months without refrigeration. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE">Or, you could bury it in a bog if you have
one nearby, as I’ve covered here: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE"><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/make-your-own-bog-butter-ireland">https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/make-your-own-bog-butter-ireland</a>
</span></p>
Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5811749743523633503.post-80435023660640287122023-09-23T19:59:00.005+01:002023-09-23T20:03:44.934+01:00Thatched roofs<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmHpjATI1SKdSLexhOeTde7ykT3dxbC3ZHbwxvUDbj1wrSPHtDUQc4uXRgcnu_RTVI87MJh1qjvxn2LsJtLRMqa3bIOZ6osXlPjpyBqUybedwsrPiAYgHr6hrgcQHlaWBz7d7Ter2tKYJv2mxUdryB8IElttFfpxT8dApayew6vaMJ-L4NkzBDgPN4/s1329/02-02-06%20Thatch%20home%202.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="887" data-original-width="1329" height="446" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmHpjATI1SKdSLexhOeTde7ykT3dxbC3ZHbwxvUDbj1wrSPHtDUQc4uXRgcnu_RTVI87MJh1qjvxn2LsJtLRMqa3bIOZ6osXlPjpyBqUybedwsrPiAYgHr6hrgcQHlaWBz7d7Ter2tKYJv2mxUdryB8IElttFfpxT8dApayew6vaMJ-L4NkzBDgPN4/w667-h446/02-02-06%20Thatch%20home%202.jpg" width="667" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-no-proof: no;">Most of us
take for granted that we will spend most of our lives paying off other people
that we paid to build our homes, yet until historically yesterday people made
their own homes. They built with wattle-and-daub, cob, with squares of turf, with
stones, bricks or planks of wood, using whatever they had; everyone knew a
carpenter or mason, John Curran remembered, and </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: AR-SA; mso-no-proof: no;">“</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">they pooled their resources, and houses, farm
buildings, and stonewalls were constructed when required.” </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-no-proof: no;"></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: AR-SA; mso-no-proof: no;">Some of those building materials could be superior to
what we use today. In rural Ireland I once helped sculpt a house out of cob, a
wet mix of sand, clay and straw that holds together like concrete, and can be
far more durable. The house began with stone walls that went up to waist
height, as cob needs to be raised above the damp. Then we heaped the wet cob
mix on top of the stone walls one lump at a time – “cob” is from an Old English
word for “lump” – and then trod them down in our bare feet. Bit by bit, the
walls got higher, until we could lay a roof on top. After the walls are given a plaster finish, the house can look
just like any other, but made at a fraction of the cost, as it uses the
simplest and cheapest material on Earth -- earth itself. Despite this, they can
last hundreds of years; Sir Walter Raleigh’s palatial mansion was built of cob,
and still stands after 500 years. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-no-proof: no;">Many farmers in my native USA make homes out of straw bales,
which are as fire-resistant as wood and which are superb insulators. Here,
though, straw was put to other uses. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: AR-SA; mso-no-proof: no;">“Ninety-five percent of the houses at that time were
thatched, and I can tell you they were warm comfortable houses,” John Lydon
remembered. “The fireplace was almost as wide as the house, and there was
always a huge turf-fire blazing in the centre, which drove heat all over the
kitchen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-no-proof: no;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12pt; mso-hyphenate: none;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: AR-SA; mso-no-proof: no;">The straw
from a thatched roof was free from the fields; some roofs even had scarecrows
to keep birds from stealing bits for their nests. Local saplings were cut, bent
and tucked into place to secure the straw so tightly that the fiercest winds
couldn’t dislodge it. Nor, in this damp climate, was it a fire hazard. The
roofs lasted several years until moss started growing over the straw, staining
the rain green as it streaked down the white sides of the cottages. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12pt; mso-hyphenate: none;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: AR-SA; mso-no-proof: no;">Thatchers
were “usually lithe and agile to facilitate climbing on roofs that were often
fragile,” Joe Keane said. “He chose his materials with great care to ensure
durability against harsh winters. The thatched roofs of Irish cottages were
aesthetically pleasing and ecologically sustainable.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12pt; mso-hyphenate: none;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: AR-SA; mso-no-proof: no;">“The
old-time thatchers could turn their skills with straw to other areas, and one
of these was apparently the weaving of mattresses which were said to be of such
quality that they would last for years: some of them had even mastered the
difficult art of making conical ‘bee skeps’ out of straw,” Maurice McAleese
said. “When a thatcher succeeded in weaving a skep he could consider himself as
being at the head of his trade.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12pt; mso-hyphenate: none;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: AR-SA; mso-no-proof: no;">Even if you
don’t want a thatched roof, you could make a green roof. </span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-no-proof: no;">Cultivating plants on your
roof creates a patch of natural habitat, partially replacing what was destroyed
to create the building in the first place. They provide food for bees and other
miniature helpers who will fertilise your garden. They help insulate your home,
which can spare you heating and cooling costs. Finally, they look brilliant. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: AR-SA; mso-no-proof: no;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-no-proof: no;">To create one people generally cover an ordinary roof with
some kind of lightweight plastic, like pool liner, and spread thin but fertile
soil on top of that. The soil should be laced with grass and other seeds, and
over the soil should stretch fleece to stop erosion until the plants grow. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-no-proof: no;">These roofs do not have to just carry grass, which is one of
the hardiest of plants. They could carry wildflowers as well, which would
create a striking cover for your home as well as fodder for insects. I urban
tenants who are even using their roofs for beehives, allowing the bees to
pollinate urban gardens while allowing them to steer clear of passing humans.
If you grow hanging plants like nasturtiums, you could even have the plants
hang over the sides of your roof, creating awnings and shaded walkways in the
seasons you need them most. </span></p>
Brian Kallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11082602126850605083noreply@blogger.com0