Sallygardens Smallholding

Guest Smallholder

I meet many like minded people who are smallholding in various ways around Ireland and I'd love to introduce some of them to you now and then. Each smallholder has their own way of doing things and a lot can be learnt from others. This is my friend Geraldine.

She and her family grow all their own vegetables and also keep chickens, goats and occasionally pigs. Both her and her husband work part-time giving them a cash flow and plenty of time to be at home with the children and tend the smallholding. They are in the process of converting to an organically certified farm. When I was visiting her recently over in County Roscommon I noticed an ingenious way of watering pumpkin and squash plants until they are established under a mulch. The system can be reused year after year.

Simple, effective and a perfect example of the re-use of otherwise waste materials before they go into landfill.

That's an awful lot of squash for one family! I'm hoping some surplus comes my way.

Meat Rabbits

When you first consider what livestock to keep on a smallholding there are a few usual suspects that always make an appearance but don't forget about the unusual ones too. Cows, pigs, chickens, sheep and goats are at the forefront of most peoples minds but there is an alternative option that requires only a couple of square meters grazing, if any at all. Even people in an urban environment can consider raising meat rabbits for the table.

The wild rabbit was first utilised for meat by the Romans who realised a single pair could produce an impressive 90kg of meat a year. Originally they were fenced into large areas, fed bundles of fodder and culled when required.  It didn't take long for rabbits to be housed in urban hutches for meat production. There still seems to be a strong tradition of keeping rabbits domestically for meat in Wales and much of the US. When I was a child I clearly remember skinned rabbits being sold on Moore's Street  in Dublin and my mother would often make a delicious rabbit stew. In France rabbit is still sold in the markets and even supermarkets alongside chicken and pork.

Consider the advantages; on a couple of meters you can keep a breeding pair with two enclosures. A female rabbit (doe) is capable of giving birth every thirty days but realistically she shouldn't be allowed to do this or she will lose condition. A good doe can have approximately nine kits at a time and they are ready to eat at three or four months of age. Tthe doe ovulates in response to the buck's presence. If there is plenty of food she will give birth to all the kits.  If food is scarce she can reabsorb some or all of the kits and give birth to the appropriate number to match available resources.  Outdoors she will breed during spring and summer but if housed indoors she can breed throughout the year by extending daylight hours with lighting. The disadvantages are that you will need to confidently cull rabbits yourself. There are some excellent books which talk you through various methods including Basic Butchering of Livestock & Game, by J. Mettler. 

There are a few excellent large breed meat rabbits that grow quickly. The most popular is the stocky New Zealand White, followed by the beautiful Californian. Sourcing a breeding pair or trio is relatively easy in the UK, just read the adverts at the back of any smallholders magazine. In Ireland it's possible to source them via an excellent poultry breeder in Co Leitrim.

I've been researching meat rabbits for about a year now and I've found it very difficult indeed gathering the necessary information. I hope to publish another EBooklet 'Breeding Meat Rabbits for the Table, A Beginner's Guide' very shortly which ought to save those new to this idea hours of research!

How Did You Learn All This?

When we first moved to our smallholding three years ago I could have written what I knew about raising pigs, rabbits, chickens and goats on the back of a postage stamp. I had a basic level of gardening and vegetable growing and a bit of an inkling about the ecological conservation and management of woodlands (thanks to my Environmental Science degree all of fifteen years ago). People who come on our Smallholders Visit always ask 'how and where did you learn to do all this?'.

Books have been a great start and on each topic there are usually one or two iconic publications. Our bookshelf is well stocked and even now we constantly refer to our books. I repeatedly revise the contents of our bookshop, adding and removing books as I, or others, use and rate them. They are very well utilised and some pages are more dog eared and soiled than others. The River Cottage Cookbook is splattered on the pate recipe and the wine making pages of The New Complete Guide to Sustainable Living are very sticky (in fact I have it opened on the Edlerflower Wine page as I type).  The internet has also been a blessing to connect with others doing the same thing across the globe. Blogs of other smallholders both urban and rural are a fantastic way of sharing knowledge and forums are also a brilliant way of tapping into ideas and meeting like minded people. Our own new Sallygardens Forum is slowly gaining momentum, and there's also another Irish forum worth checking out 'Country Talk & Tips'. Of course the infamous UK 'River Cottage' forum is always kicking and I've just heard about another good UK forum I haven't visited yet, 'It's Not Easy Being Green'.

Attending courses is also sometimes well worth considering. It's true everything you learn during  a day or two on a course could be found in various books or the internet but I generally find it worth my while attending a well chosen course. It can save months of sporadic research and in just a few hours you can be catapulted, armed with all the relevant information you need to get started on something immediately. I've found some courses at the Organic Centre, Rossinver to be excellent catalysts; Introduction to Beekeeping,  Herbal Medicine and Permaculture Design  have all been incredibly inspiring and groundbreaking  for me, with immediate results at home. Dan is all set to attend a course there next month 'Working With Horses', but that's another post.

Welcoming WWOOFers

First I'd like to thank everybody for their kind comments in response to my recent health scare on the previous post. I'm immeasurably grateful that I've been blessed with good health to carry on as usual with my family and life on the farm. I don't underestimate for a second how lucky I am and I intend to put my years on this planet to good use, so lets get cracking!

WWOOF is 'world wide opportunities on organic farms' and those who join as volunteers are affectionately referred to as Woofers. For the first time we have decided to join this scheme as a host farm. Hosts need not be organic certified, but they do need to work with the environment at heart and use organic or permaculture wherever it's practical. That means that volunteers can request to come and work here at Sallygardens with us. We will teach them what we know in terms of sustainable living as they work along side us each day and provide them with accommodation and food. In return they give us another pair of hands to hopefully help us get a few extra jobs done on the smallholding. It could work like a dream, or it could be a disaster! Time will tell and we enter into the scheme with realistic expectations, optimism and hope that friendships will be forged along the way.

Our aim here is to live sustainably by minimising our impact on the environment, and indeed hopefully enhancing the ecosystem in which we live rather than depleting or damaging it. As seasons go by we are embedding ourselves into the ecosystem around our farm and we strive to work within it, as part of it, keeping inputs from outside to a minimum and 'closing the loop' whenever possible so that energy within the farm is conserved on all levels. That energy includes the fuels we burn (home grown wood) but also energy in the soil and plant energy harnessed from the sun. Whatever excess or waste we produce gets put back into the system to maintain it ... kitchen scraps, human waste (humanure), animal manure, garden waste (from vegetables, lawns, etc) by composting and reapplying it to the land, or by feeding it to the animals we raise.

There is a never ending list of tasks to be done on the smallholding and a huge amount of possible projects which will span decades and hopefully pass to our children, and if not, some like minded land lovers. At all times of the year there are jobs that need doing, anything and everything from vegetable gardening, woodland management, wine making, hut building, sausage making, milking, harvesting, preserving, fencing, maintenance and renovations.

If anybody is interested in working with us, you'll find us listed along with many other inspiring hosts on the WWOOF Independents website with a preview of Irish listings here, we are host EIR290. It costs €30 for a host or volunteer to register.

At the moment we are eagerly anticipating the arrival or our first WWOOFers next week, Georgie and Oliver, who I had to postpone at short notice while waiting for my test results last week. Now all is well and we are really looking forward to welcoming them here at last.

Wildflower Meadow

Last autumn we decided that we would try to replace part of our lawn with a wildflower meadow. Several reasons led to this decision. The garden already has plenty of lawn and keeping it mowed is a major undertaking particularly when there's so much other work to do on the smallholding. I also like the idea of reducing the area I mow due to the fuel that's consumed simply to keep nature under 'control'. So I thought, why not let nature run riot in a mass of colour that will attract plenty of wildlife and feed my bees with nectar for the hives. It will also provide a little hay for the goats as it needs cutting once a year after the flowers have set seed.

The first thing to do in order to convert an area to wildflower is to remove whatever's growing on it already. Enter pigs stage left. We put them on the front lawn for about a month when they first arrived and they did a good job turning it over. Three months later there was quite a lot of new growth grass sprouting up so we put the pigs back on the lawn, and being much bigger by then, they turned the lot over in less than two weeks. With a wildflower meadow less is more, it prefers a nutrient poor environment, which in practical terms meant any pig poo had to be removed daily and put in the compost.

The soil has laid fallow since October. It's clay and so digging it while wet is next to impossible. This week the soil has dried out quite a bit and so I've begun digging over a couple of meters a day and seeding it with a native wildflower mixture that I bought on-line. It's very hard work, perhaps it won't all get done this year!

I can't wait to see some of the widlflower seedlings begin to push through. Hopefully by the end of the summer, or perhaps next summer, I'll be able to show you the transformation from muddy slop to a meadow of flowers.

Interactive Food Map of Ireland

Paul O Mahony of Siopa Eile has launched the Interactive Food Map of Ireland. It's a brilliant idea for both producers and consumers. If you wish to locate an artisan made food product zoom into the area in question and click on the pointers to read contact information and product descriptions. Anybody can add or amend information on the map so if you are a producer go ahead and add your details, or if you know of a producer who isn't on the map please and add them. The success of the map depends on it's users adding information so don't be shy, jump in and help to make it a fantastic resource ... and don't worry you can't break it either!

What better way could there possibly be to start International Downshifting Week than to support a local food artisan in your area.

Spread the word. If you're an Irish blogger add the badge.

International Downshifting Week

It's International Downshifting Week Saturday 19th until Friday 25th April. You can join in with the campaign by visiting the official site and choosing an inspiring action from their list of suggestions. There are three lists to pick from depending on whether you are an individual, company or child/school. I have chosen not to turn on the television for a few nights next week and instead I plan to have a practice on my fiddle along with my husband (who plays the accordion) and my older daughter who is also learning the fiddle. The brainchild of this inspiring campaign is Tracey Smith who also writes a blog well worth visiting, called Sustained.

I was alerted to the fact that it's International Downshifting Week soon when a journalist from the Irish Examiner rang yesterday and asked if we would give an interview about our reasons for embracing this new lifestyle. I don't know if they will use us in the article or not, but it will be fun to see if they do!

What is Sustainability?

It must be the biggest eco buzzword of the decade, yet what exactly does it mean to you? We claim to be living sustainably here at Sallygardens Smallholding, but how does that translate into our typical day? When people describe our lifestyle they often use the words 'self sufficient', but that's not what we are aiming for, maybe 'living sustainably' is more accurate.

I suppose living sustainably is more about how we think before we act. Its not about keeping chickens, rearing our own meat, beekeeping, growing our own central heating fuel or organic vegetables. Its not even about leaving the rat race or relocating to an idyllic rural setting. These changes suited our family and its the lifestyle we have chosen, but equally we could have stayed in the city and lived sustainably too, as many do.

Now I'm waffling around the topic and not giving a concrete answer to my own question, which is exactly the problem when it comes to putting a definition on 'Living Sustainably'! To me it means living with the constant aim of  'closing the loop'. Ideally everything I require to survive should be provided by the land I am responsible for, and on which I live, without degrading it in any way. The waste I generate should be composted and reused within the closed system, thus sustaining the cycle of use, while conserving the quality of the land in terms of biodiversity, productivity and beauty. Wherever practically possible I try to arrange my life around this ethos. That's it in a nutshell.  When it's not possible to operate within the loop I try to choose an alternative which operates within the same ideals which often (but not always) means buying, sourcing or bartering local goods or services from local people.  I also always ask the question 'do I really need this' and more often than not, the answer is usually no! I try not to let marketing hype persuade me of my needs.

Within our own lifestyle we looked at our main areas of consumption. The first thing we tackled was the oil central heating and its impact on the environment and our pockets. Working long hours to generate income to pay an oil tanker to carry our heating fuel half way across the world just didn't make sense ... now we manage our woodland and field hedges to provide us with wood to burn in our woodstove which heats the water and radiators in our house. We also invested in solar panels, but having read a lot more on that topic recently I think we should probably have tried making our own (hindsight being 20:20 vision) ...  these changes to our heating means we no longer needed to raise a couple of thousand Euros a year for oil bills, thus freeing up the time we would have worked in employment to instead manage our woodlands and spend time together as a family. Our food bill was the next biggest expense, both economically and environmentally, so we invested in a polytunnel and within a year it has paid for itself and provided us with endless delicious food, literally on the doorstep. If we didn't love gardening so much we could have bought vegetables from our nearest growers instead, it depends on what appeals to each individual.  At the rate things are going perhaps home made biodiesel is the next step, and dusting off the bicycles. Soon even our sewage will be recycled and our only waste will be a minimal amount of plastic packaging. And so we continue to look at each of our 'expenses' and assess how they can be changed or tweaked to 'close the loop' as much as possible. Closing the loop is fun and hugely rewarding, it minimises impact on the environment and a very attractive side effect is the fact the we need less and less money to sustain our lifestyle.

How can you achieve these things in the city? It's still possible to embrace renewable energy systems, either DIY or ready made. If you can grow even some of your vegetables and fruit in your garden or an allotment thats fantastic, and you will make significant savings in your weekly food bills, not to mention the benefits to your health. If you have no garden then whats the most local and close to home alternative? A local farmers market if you can afford it? If at all possible walk to work, or where offered take public transport.  Support local artisans who produce art, craft and specialist foods. Spend your money within your community whenever possible. Join Freecycle which allows reuse of items rather than putting them in landfill. Set up a LETS network in your area to barter expertise. Start a liftshare scheme at work. Join  Carpoolworld or a car sharing scheme. Many people in urban settings can easily keep a couple of hens, or a beehive in their garden or on a flat roof. Take recycling and reuse to a practical level by buying in charity, brik-a-brac and antique shops. Arrange clothes swap evenings with friends. Make yours a Transition Town or neighborhood. What are your tips for sustainable living in rural or urban environments?

Culinary Heartbreak

As you know our first ever home reared air dried ham venture was a huge success and we are still licking our lips and patting ourselves on the backs.  The joint lasted a couple of months. It weighed roughly 1500g, and comparing the cost of something similar such as prosciutto or parma at €80 a kilo, ours would have been roughly valued at €120.  Is that too cheeky, comparing our own ham to such famous delicacies?!

Having finished our first air dried ham at Christmas, we were savouring the moment of cutting into the  next culinary extravaganza with anticipation. Our mouths watered at the thought of it and one day we could hold off no longer. I tripped out to the wood barn to cut down the next ham, and shock horror ... a huge hole chewed into the side of the muslin where some blasted unidentified creature had been helping itself to the most delicious and expensive  meal in its entire life. The whole thing was a disaster, it looked like a gaping leg wound, there was nothing salvageable. I hope theres a rat, or a cat out there, suffering badly with gout after its selfish over indulgence!

We've no idea what creature was responsible. What makes it more infuriating is that it was nobodies fault but our own. When the first ham was taken down it shifted the balance, so that the second ham swung to the side of the cage and was touching the edge. This provided any creature a perfect ladder down to the food source. Next time we will be far more careful, and instead of string to suspend the joints, I will use fishing line.

But the story doesn't end there, no, there's another link in the chain ...  butterfly wings and all that. Having decided democratically that it wasn't worth eating the remains we gave it to the dog. She devoured it and, not surprisingly, was very very thirsty. That night our children came down with a particularly aggressive vomiting bug and when I went to the kitchen at 5am to collect puke buckets I noted, with due agitation, that the entire kitchen floor was flooded. After a process of eliminating other possible culprits such as burst pipes, or rising water under the house, I had to concede that it was indeed the dog (the one looking sheepish in the corner) who was responsible for the flood. She has always had a bladder of steal, but unfortunately the huge salt intake from the ham, followed by the volume of water she needed to drink to quench her thirst, all proved to be too much.  Mind you, after cleaning up the consequences of projectile vomiting bug from the girls bedroom (even had to put curtains in the wash), dog wee was an altogether more pleasant and light hearted task.

When the meat has been raised and cared for by us, and when we have seen it walk in our woods for months, and in the end been directly responsible for taking its life to sustain us, it really does ache when something like this happens and it goes to waste.  A loss is felt and a failure in terms of respect to the pig.

Excrement Happens - Composting Toilets

How many of you are turning up your noses having just read the title of this post? A couple of years ago I'd have done the same, but since then I've used two fantastic composting toilets and I'm a convert.  The experience was not disgusting, I did not see other peoples poo, there were no coma inducing odours and no flies issued forth from the lifted seat to attack my nether regions. It was all very civilised indeed if you don't mind and thankfully none of my preconceived fears materialised.  Common sense research has added one or two simple factors into the equation to make this a perfectly pleasant experience! In fact I've shifted my opinion from 'no feckin way' to 'actually, I want one of my own'.

Excrement happens, but why contaminate 7 to 15L of water with every flush and then use huge amounts of energy and money to clean up the mess, often performed inefficiently causing ground water and soil contamination? If there was a safe healthy alternative that provided biomass for basket and fence making, fuel for your stove and fertiliser for your plants wouldn't you want to know more? Read on ...

The composting toilet is not an old fashioned hole in the ground latrine, which did result in terrifically bad smells and were not altogether pleasant to put it mildly. A composting toilet avoids the smell by ensuring the decomposition process is performed aerobically (air present for sweet microbes) rather than anaerobically (without air=stink to high heaven). Also some bulking agents are added in the form of sawdust or shredded paper which corrects the nutrient balance and again ensures conditions are ideal for aerobic as opposed to anaerobic digestion. Its not rocket science. So simple, yet very effective.

Let me describe both of the compost toilet options that I was privy to test run. The first was a commercially available toilet by Separett. On first approach it looks exactly like a conventional toilet. It's made from all the materials you would expect a toilet to be made of which does tend to put one at ease. Lifting the lid things initially look complicated ... where do I wee, do I have to get a poo onto that ledge, what if I do it in the wrong place ... a quick tutorial from the proud owner and I soldiered on in the name of sustainable living. A flap covers the contents and only opens when weight is placed on the toilet seat, along with a fan, so theres no 'view' or odour to contend with. This toilet cost €1000 and the owners have been very happy with its performance since they installed it two years ago. 'We didn't want all the bother that goes with installing a septic tank, along with the usual capers of regularly unblocking drains. Septic tanks just don't seem to work in Leitrim. Our toilet needs emptying once a month, then the composted contents are used as fertiliser around the trees and fruit garden'.

The other compost toilet I used was totally home made. On approach it looked quite appealing as it was all made with wood and decorated nicely with eco paint. It felt very 'clean'. There was a lovely smell of pine, not a toilet cleaner overpowering synthetic pine smell, but a natural one. Opening the lid met with no nasty surprises, and revealed the source of the lovely odour as each visitor scatters a small scoop of sawdust to cover any solids. This immediately neutralises any potential odours. The lidded pot needs emptying a couple of times a week. Total Cost €30. When I asked the owner why he chose to use a composting toilet he said 'Speed and simplicity, and wanting to save those good nutrients - plus not wanting to pollute the ground by using a 'normal' system.' It's more eco-friendly than todays septic/sewage treatments? 'No question about it.'

Composting Toilet at Dial House, UK

For those sunny days when we are outdoors a lot, and if your land has plenty of privacy then you might also consider a garden based treebog. This design does not require emptying so the compost is not harvested for use, well at least not directly. Again aeration is the key factor to excluding odour. The other ingredient is the use of nutrient rich plant species to harness the compost. The toilet is placed over a one metre squared space, walled with double chicken wire which is then filled with hay. This provides a visual barrier to the contents but allows aeration. Willow is planted closely around the toilet boundary and then a band of deep rooting comfrey. The nutrient hungry willow can be harvested yearly to provide poles for gardening and basket making, or harvested every few years instead when large enough to burn on in a stove. The comfrey leaves can be harvested annually to make liquid fertiliser for your vegetable garden.

Planning legislation in Ireland in not yet proactive in this area yet. However I did find the planning departments of other countries who provide publications on how to build one or where to buy one, and plenty of information on the web from various users.

The Humanure Handbook is the place to start if you are interested. Try your local library, request it on Freecycle, buy it from your local bookshop or lastly, order it from our Sallygardens Bookshop  by Amazon.

Do you think you could use one?