The Two Marys

 She may not realise it yet, but Mentor Anne has done me two big favours this week. The first was simply to lend me a book, in this case "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by one Barbara Kingsolver (pub. Faber and Faber, 2007, ISBN 978-0-571-23356-4). I must admit, I had never heard of this lady. Liz had, but had picked up her novel "Poisonwood Bible" one year as a beach-reading holiday novel and had found its fictional tale of a family trying to make good in Belgian Congo while Civil War raged and the CIA tried to install a puppet government a bit grim and unsatisfying.

Well, be that as it may, THIS book is not fiction. It is the autobiographical account of BK's move, with family, from the desert city of Tucson Arizona, to husband's (Steven L Hopp) small farm in the Southern Appalachians to try to live the good life, and I am finding it one of the best books I have read in a long time. I love it. BK writes seriously about all that is wrong with modern diet and farming and amusingly about all the things they have tried to do to change their own way of life. She chimes in with me on so many of the things I also believe in and that we are trying to do here in Feigh, sourcing food locally, avoiding things with too many food-miles, choosing high welfare, free range, better fed animals and birds for our meat and eggs, growing our own fruit and veg, eating what is in season, even down to more prosaic things like keeping family meal times 'sacred', sitting round the table properly to eat while you talking to your family members. They shop in farmers' markets and seek out 'diners' which support local farmers and source their ingredients from the local (farming) community. They cook simply allowing the fresh veg and fruit to 'star'.

Goocie is still cranking out eggs, one every other day.

She also set one ball rolling for me which I'd not 'rolled' yet myself, the interest in 'heritage' or 'heirloom' varieties and seed saving. Inspired, I was straight onto the internet to find a company which sold these varieties of veg, determined that this year, at least some of my veg would be these old, free-fertilizing, non F1, non 'commercial' (i.e. not bred for uniformity and tough travelling survival), non GM varieties (and more importantly, not varieties patented by the 'big 8' seed companies, Monsanto and their merry chums). The company supplying us is called 'Brown Envelope Seeds', based in Skibbereen in W. Cork and they seem to test all their varieties in Cork before they sell them, so the catalogue is a wealth of comforting expressions like "made a good crop even in 2012 (in Cork)' These seeds are not the cheapest but we chose 8 for our starting line up including...

2 bunnies where there are not meant to be bunnies!

Golden Friese (Yellow Swede)
Gaucho (drying bean)
Little Leprechaun (lettuce)
Best of all (white / purple) Swede
Vintage Wine (Tomato)
Irish Green (Pea)
Boltardy* (Beetroot)
Purple Guatemalan (Broad Bean)

*Yes, I know Boltardy is a widely available beet from the commercial boys but it is an old variety and hard to beat.

The seeds were quickly and efficiently despatched to us, I think it was 48 hours (possibly 72) from first finding the company to having the seeds in my hand through 'An Post'. That doesn't happen too often with the 'commercial boys' !

The gang catch some afternoon sun

Anne's second favour was to find me some more contacts in the Bee Keeping world, in this case Athlone based Niall who is an experienced expert but, more importantly, for us, his good friends with a bee keeping equipment shop, Mary H and Mary McN, widely known as "The Two Marys". The Two Marys have their 'shop' up the other side of Drumshambo in the hills near the border with Northern Ireland (actually County Fermanagh, so we were nearly in UK by mistake!). The 'shop' is actually in three out buildings, so you move between the three to see the clothing, hive parts, tools etc. The buildings are gathered round the ladies' farmhouse in a beautiful setting - steep wooded valleys and a racing mountain stream, the up/down inclines on the approach lane had us wondering how you'd ever get in and out in a car in the snow.

Seasonal veg'

The Marys are lovely people - friendly, helpful, very knowledge-able and great to talk to. Not only did we 'find' all we wanted to find in the way of bee gear, they also have a sale on selling 'slight seconds' at very good prices, which had us promising to return armed with cash where we had been thinking we'd wait till we'd done 'bee school' before we spent anything. It also turned out that one of the Marys is to be the lecturer for the first lecture in our training course on Feb 10th, but also that the other is a landscape gardener by trade. I'd spotted some old seed heads of purple verbena sticking up and commented on them. "Ah!", she said, "Are you gardeners?" and when she found that we were indeed gardeners, she generously started passing us potted cuttings of lilac, hyssop, white species fuchsia and so on to take away with us. We are delighted to have met these ladies and will thoroughly enjoy doing business with them.

I am smiling now as I type this. I have just re-read this post and realise that I am suddenly 'surrounded' by lovely, helpful and very wise women. There is Liz of course though she was not in this story, as too weren't Carolyn and Charlotte of the mini horses, rabbits and George the gander but there is also Mentor Anne, Barbara Kingsolver and now the Two Marys. There is also the Kent 'crew'. I should be fairly safe staying on the straight and narrow, shouldn't I?

A Million (Pear Shaped) Trees

This beautiful idea is now struggling. You will have read of our involvement with the initiative to plant a million trees across the island of Ireland all in one 24 hour period; what was going to be midday Friday March 22nd to midday Saturday 23rd. The idea was launched in January and was well taken up with everyone volunteering to do amounts of trees (20's up to thousands) with hundreds of volunteer groups or individuals across as many sites. We applied giving details of our sites, local conditions, planned use of trees and we chose which trees we'd like from fruit trees, hedge species, woodland trees etc and whether we'd like tree guards. This was going to be a MASSIVE operation their end in logistics and in cost - there was a website, smart new vans and we were all getting regular updates on emails and your queries were all answered. So far so good.

Then, nothing they could have foreseen, Ireland was hit by a new disease of ash trees, Ash Die-Back, and the Ministry and forestry authorities got all concerned about trees being moved about the country. The project could have been killed there and then, but after a battle, they relented and the project was allowed but NOT WITH ASH TREES, so the Million Trees guys had to frantically cancel ash orders and get in substitutes as well as fighting through lots of new paperwork to get things back on track. They postponed launch day for a month and we were now planting on 26th April.

The 26th came closer and there was no word. Our email contact, Imogen, went very quiet. Then a few days ago she suddenly emailed us saying they were struggling and that now individual orders would not be ready by 26th, so we would all get a 'starter pack' of ten trees. Further, these would not be delivered, but would need collecting from a collection point which she was still trying to confirm and would let us know our 'CP' by morning of the 26th. Reading between the lines, you knew this project was going badly off the rails as Imogen's emails started to include expressions like "we have considered all the options including cancelling and postponing again but the core team here feel it is better to go on with the event and get trees out in smaller numbers to you all".

So at 11 pm last night word came of where our Collection Point would be. For all of counties Lietrim, Longford, Sligo, Cavan and Roscommon, this was to be a back street garage in the small town of Blacklion, Co Cavan, an hour and a half's drive (85 km) from here, way up by the border, almost as far as Enniskillen. Many people we know involved felt badly let down and the cry of 'Blow THAT!' was heard echoing round the land. I am, maybe, a little more tolerant and patient than that. I have been in 'Distribution' as well as involved in volunteer conservation projects and could see some of the problems they would be facing. I decided to give Imogen the benefit of the doubt. As I said in an email to Mentor Anne, "It's a lovely sunny day and I'm doing nothing and my sat nav is pointing me through the lovely scenery of Carrick, Drumshambo and along the shores of Lough Allen". I offered to collect Anne's trees and anyone else's who could get word to us in time. The Collection point would be open from 10 am, so I breakfasted on bacon butties and set forth, loading up the dogs so they could enjoy the ride.

It will not surprise you to know that the fun and games did not finish there. I arrived at the big garage on Sligo Road in Blacklion at just gone ten, checked that this was indeed 'Clancy's garage', presented myself and asked for my trees. Blank looks all round. Not a one of them had heard of the Million Trees project or knew anything about trees. They pointed me to a meagre display of bedding plants on a Danish Trolley. Did I mean like that? I phoned my contact, Martin Clancy who proved to be at his other garage in Monaghan but assured me that Imogen herself was on her way, had been delayed and would be there in 40 minutes. There was a nice café , so I grabbed a coffee and a paper and waited. It rained and blew. I wandered from garage shop to car to café. It hailed. An hour passed. Another half hour passed. I phoned the guy back.You know as much as me, he said. She'd be about an hour (!) and when she gets there she gets there. I decided to give it midday. It was only that I got boxed in by a car and a trailer filling with fuel that I didn't blow at 12, and it was about quarter past when a tiny white Ford Escort sized van came in smothered with Million Trees logos. Imogen had arrived.

She was a 'young one', in her 20's maybe but looking a bit hunted and lost at this stage. She was straight into apologising and saying that 'all this mess was her fault'. She phoned Martin to say 'I'm here' and then got some instructions that there was another garage down some back streets. I was to follow her. She took off like a scalded cat with me struggling to keep up, heading east. She suddenly braked and pulled over, then did a quick 3-point in the main street and shot off back up past the first garage and out of town with me, again in hot pursuit. I caught up, she suddenly braked, pulled over and did a tight U-turn in the main road, causing a passing van to pull up in bewilderment. Back we all went past the garage once more but then carried on through town, turning left at a couple of proper junctions to end up in the back streets at another garage. I am thinking, even if people had been able to find her on the Sligo Road, how are they now going to find her?

She leapt out, made brief contact with the garage manager and a non English speaking attendant, had me help her sling ten big sacks of trees out onto a pallet on the concrete and then started itching to leave to get on to her next drop. The garage guy had gone back into his kiosk/shop and the foreign chap back into his porta-cabin. It seemed that there was to be no-one manning this collection point. I opened the bags. Each bag had a single label stating the species (Sessile Oak, Alder, Birch, Whitethorn, Mountain Ash and Scots Pine) which I attached to one of the protruding trees. There were a good hundred in each bag. We were meant to be all getting a starter pack of ten trees, irrespective of the trees we'd ordered. There were no fruit trees, no nut trees, no holly etc. Imogen seeing the lateness of the hour and thinking not many people from her carefully prepared lists would show up, it being so cold and wet (and... um... badly organised?) told me to take mixed sets of twenty trees for my three 'customers' before leaping back into her van and heading for her next drop in Co. Galway (2 hours or so away).

So armed with a coal sack and two plastic shopping bags, I rootled out 3 or so of each species (except white-thorn, which is basically hawthorn) to make up my 20-packs. I was on my own. Another van pulled up and 2 guys got out and wandered over looking lost. I passed on the 'standing orders' and left them to it. What will happen to the thousand or so trees on that pallet I do not know but I hope enough people will show up, grab at least as many as they are allowed and plant them. Even if they are not on the list or part of the project, at least the trees will not end up in a skip somewhere, wasted. I drove back home through the rain, hail and sunshine to find my defrosted 'breakfast pack' from which to nick the sausages and cook myself some sausage sarnies to warm myself back up. Some of my 20 may get planted tomorrow

Plant a Million Trees? Surely not their finest hour.