County Clare: Farm #2

A bit of County Clare

I came to my next host's in County Clare just at the start of blackberry season. Bales are out in the nearby pastures, and the silage wrapped in black plastic is still in the early stages of fermentation, and smells like apples and oats. In terms of lifestyle, the change from my last host's home is striking. In Kilkenny, there was the familiarity of the television being a family hub in the evenings after dinner, and modern conveniences were expected and desired. Here, an environmental conscience takes precedent. The roof of the house is a green roof, sprouting a thin layer of plants, the toilet is a compost toilet, and there is no television in sight. Meals (besides breakfast, which is porridge or a seeds and raisins granola called flapjack) are about 60% garden harvest and 40% dried bulk foods, such as lentils, millet, pasta and beans.
My tasks here have included flooring, pulling onions and stringing them for storage (an onion stringing tutorial may be forthcoming), mulching the former onion bed with newspaper, straw and grass trimmings, tending ducks, watering a polytunnel where tomatoes, herbs, lettuce, zucchini and calendula flowers shelter from the wind, planting lettuce in seed modules, and cutting grass and weeds away from an electric fence with a scythe and shears. In return I have my own guesthouse/cabin (where I sometimes room with a mammoth spider whose feet sound like tiny mice feet, and who I have several times banished into the cold night), good meals, stories, gardening knowledge, and rides into the village to listen to the local music sessions.
A curious thing happened at the first session I visited. My host had been invited to join in on his fiddle at a little pub "in the middle of nowhere," as he put it -- with no houses or stores nearby. The room was half filled with Japanese participants in an Irish music camp, gripping their fiddles and flutes and whistles and waiting for a song they recognized, and the rest of the room was occupied by local musicians, with a sprinkling of instrument-less people in the corners. One of these last was a young woman about my age, vaguely familiar looking, who finally came over in a break between songs and re-introduced herself as the girl I had met briefly at my almost host's in Roscommon (a whole different part of Ireland), and who had exchanged contact information with me in case we had a chance to meet again. She told me she was milking, child bossing, and yogurt and cheese making at a farm while some of the family was on holiday in Germany. I thought this was extremely coincidental, considering that my host's family was also in Germany, but in fact, as it turns out, they are traveling together. Small world.
I had a chance later in the week to visit her farm, which is quite beautiful and looks like a ton of work, with cows, horses (draft horses, nonetheless, and a barnful of equipment to use them to farm with), ponies, turkeys, goats, dog, cats, kids, garden, and a pet crow. I helped out a little spreading straw for the horses and moving farm equipment, then had a good time testing the difference between cow's and goat's milk (definitely a difference -- goat's milk is more pungent) and playing a railroad-related board game. A veteran goat-milker, she also gave me a basic lesson in milking (pinch with thumb and index finger, and don't worry about being gentle -- they've got teats of iron).
During my stay, I've also had the chance to visit and volunteer at the Irish Seed Savers' Association near Scariff. The Association owns twenty acres of land, with several orchards, greenhouses and gardens, and puts on workshops, cooking demonstrations, apple tasting tours, volunteer days and open days.

Cabin with green roof at Seed Savers -- an example of my host's green building techniques

Seed saving -- basically the harvest and replanting of seeds -- is done in order to preserve non-commercial varieties of plants, which supports biodiversity and food security (in the case of a disease or pest problem, a large variety of plants means that there is a bigger chance that one is resistant -- plus, these plants don't require environments cultivated with chemicals to survive, as some commercial varieties do), among other reasons. The Association got a head start with the efforts of an individual, Dr. Keith Lamb, who bicycled around Ireland gathering trees in the 1940s. Sort of a reverse Johnny Appleseed, was my first thought.
Currently, I've got the house to myself while my hosts visit Germany. Keeping me company is a wily little puppy named Bran, who is described as a "dwarf collie," (quite cute, with a head just too big for his body and stubby legs). He enjoys staring at me with black eyeliner eyes and running barking into the night. I think he finds me sort of boring, being used to the bustle of a large family. I try to make up for it with long walks every day.

Bran, the troublemaker.

I'm signing off for now. Next up is a house in West Cork, southward.

A Taste of Things to Come

Blog posts will be infrequent (nonexistent?) over the next week or so, while I am out in beautiful County Clare without fast internet.
Recent days have been spent:
Harvesting onions and blackcurrants
Stringing onions for storage
Flooring
Clearing grass and weeds away from an electric fence with a scythe
Tending ducks
Reading
Going to pubs for evening music sessions
Visiting a nearby farm for a goat milking experience, hike, and a board game

Good times!

Kilkenny

Fields near my hosts' house, Kilkenny, Ireland

            Tonight marks my last night with my spectacular hosts, Mary and Tom, in Kilkenny. Mary has kept me up to my ankles in tea and sweets while I helped out around her guesthouse, weeding a polytunnel, painting a picnic table and deck chairs and getting the guesthouse ready for visitors arriving Saturday. If you're ever looking for a self-catering accommodation in the southeast of Ireland, let me know and I can pass along her contact information -- lovely rooms, good location, quiet, but lots to do nearby. I've been working the mornings, coming in for lunch (lunch and dinner all include variations of pork, including thin sliced ham, thick sliced ham, bacon and sausage, all which seem to fall under the name "bacon"), and then getting suggestions about what to do with the rest of my day (go into town, bike out to the village of Kells, climb the round tower), all of which turned out to be great.

            The city of Kilkenny -- literally "Church of Kenny" -- was the medieval capital of Ireland. A castle occupies the center of town, with a green lawn that goes rolling forever behind it and trees around the edges that make for a nice shady walk. On the sunny days, tourists and locals were sprawled out on the lawn with dogs and picnics. 

Castle lawn

Across from the castle is the Design Center, housed in the old stables, selling sweaters, scarves, pottery, jewelry (straight from the smiths' workshops in the courtyard, where you can watch them work). 

House and gardens behind the Kilkenny Design Center

Dog "parked" at the Design Center

In the four days I visited town, the square in front of the castle was occupied at different times by a youth brass band, buskers, and a farmer's market. Today, two women were performing a skit set in medieval Kilkenny, one woman playing a vendor of a drink called caudle, described as a kind of terrifying blend of ale, eggs, honey and spice.

            Pubs abound in Kilkenny. Looking for some Irish traditional music, I tried a pub called "The Fields," where a giant autographed hurling stick hangs above the bar. I had a BLT (triple decked -- ridiculous), and listened to a guitar duo. They pulled me aside as I was about to leave and had me sing John Denver's "Country Roads" with them -- maybe not the best decision, as I haven't sung that song all the way through since I was five. I tried my best lip-reading the parts I had forgotten, which, as would be imagined, didn't work at all. It was declared when we finished that I "would not be a contestant for America's Got Talent."

            I went on two biking excursions while I was here, the best to the village of Kells eight miles away (not the Book of Kells, Kells, but still lovely). There was a huge ruined priory in a field of sheep, accessible to pedestrians, but not to bikers without the combinations to their bike locks (a borrowed bike, code unknown). The whole spot was beautiful, surprisingly marshy downhill from the main part of the village. The photos will probably give you a better feel than text can:

Kells

 A sampling of children's poems from the Kells Poetry Path next to the mill:

            On one of my bike rides, I stopped about 30 seconds out because of this gorgeous horse

Gorgeous Horse

staring at me over the fence. The horse didn't really want to be touched, and I asked Tom about him (or her, I didn't check) when he drove past. Tom said the horse belonged to the Travellers. My vague idea of the Travellers was that they are an ethnic group, said to be possible descendents of some of the earliest Irish people, that move through Ireland, are fairly secretive, and that (like the Roma) there was often a history of mistrust between them and the locals. I told Mary later that I didn't know much about them, and she said that they "are not to be crossed." A year or two earlier, she said, a group of Travellers had been preparing to cross through one of the farmers fields with their greyhound dogs. The farmer told them not to cross his lands, they did so anyway, and he shot one of their dogs. Shortly after, one of his buildings burned down. The horse I had spotted disappeared later in the week, and I didn't spot any other signs of a presence.

            In all, I don't think I could have found better hosts for my first stay. After the strangeness of the first situation in Roscommon, it was a delight to land somewhere where I felt welcome to join conversations about the U.S., religion, exchange students and family at the table, watch golf and rugby and Indiana Jones in the evenings, and be addressed as "lovely." I worked hard, but I'm sure in the end that what I received outweighed what I gave. A fathoms better experience of Ireland than one I could get staying in a hostel, and nice to feel useful.

Things I'm Thankful For

[A List Made in Times of Uncertainty]
Covered bus stops
Kindle ebooks to read at covered bus stops in the rain
People who start conversations
People who offer help (directions, rides, a place to use the WiFi for free) without being asked
Bus station staff with senses of humor
Comfortable buses with WiFi
WiFi (and free mediums of communication)
Practical walking shoes
Countries with practical, casual dress codes
Colleen Irish Assortment -- "A mix of toffees, eclairs, caramels and boiled sweets"
Sensible, positive and non-panicking parents
Alternatives
Being accustomed to rain
Tea--not cups of tea, but tea that comes in pots large enough for three cups (which is what you get when you ask for "tea")
Successful, smart planning
Unsuccessful, dumb planning that works out anyway

The Problem [And the Solution]

From Dublin I took the #22 bus out to the tiny town of Tulsk, where I had arranged with my host to be picked up. With a late start and a traffic jam behind a tractor in Longford, the bus pulled up in Tulsk fifteen minutes late, and I settled myself against the wall of the butcher's next to the bus stop. When half an hour had passed, I decided that my host must have thought I had missed the first bus, and was coming in on another, so I wandered over to the visitor's center to see if I could borrow their phone. The staff of the center were very kind ("No joy?" one of the men asked me each time I hung up the phone, and offered to watch my things when I ran back over to the bus stop). There was no word from the host, and after two hours of unsuccessful attempts to reach her, the butcher and his wife began calling around the area to find out where the farm was located. At last, they found someone who knew her neighbors, and the butcher offered me a lift over. He was suspicious that the locals didn't know her, and that we couldn't reach her, and while I had been ready to attribute the situation to miscommunication and bad cell service, I started to worry as well. We found the house, and the butcher suggested that he wait while I determined whether or not this was a place I wanted to stay. The host wasn't around, but four other volunteers were inside, and they all met me at the door. We talked for a while, and the volunteers said that while they felt safe, the farm wasn't what they had been led to expect, and that all of them were looking for other places to stay. As was pointed out to me in the following days, people come into WWOOFing with different mindsets and cultural expectations vary -- perhaps this host really needed a few days trial -- but I felt (and still feel, really) that the opinions of four different volunteers was enough to know that this was somewhere I wouldn't feel comfortable. I returned to the car. As the butcher said (it seems awkward to keep calling him this, but I will in respect for his privacy), I had no Plan B, and no phone. It was careless. He gave me his contact information, offered me a place to stay in an emergency, and dropped me off at the nearest phone store in Roscommon. Somewhat panicked (but not "devastated" as one of the pub owners asked me out of concern), I began calling up potential farms that listed their phone numbers on the WWOOF website. On my second try, a host near the southeastern town of Kilkenny took pity on me and offered me a place for a week, doing "light work" weeding and helping out around her guesthouse.

            After hopping from café to café using WiFi in Roscommon, I sat down at a bus stop in the rain to wait for my afternoon bus to Dublin (the first leg of my trip to Kilkenny). I read while I waited, and after a while one man appeared, and then a second, who started talking to us both in a thick, tricky Irish accent. He had slept under the cover of the bus stop the night before. He talked about his time in New York, the difficulty of holding onto a place to live in Roscommon, and rattled off a list of the schools he had attended. How did I like Ireland? he asked me. I told him I liked it. Seemed there were a lot of friendly people here. He said, "Well they don't treat me well, and I'm Irish."

In Dublin

 The River Liffey

            I arrived at Abbey Court Hostel at around 6:00am, decided that if I was going to have any chance of staying awake that I would need to be on my feet, and walked the two miles to Phoenix Park and the Dublin Zoo. Standing in line with kids on shoulders, in strollers, kids ferociously hugging their siblings, weeping, sleeping, parents, grandparents, and the occasional couple, I realized that no one really visits the zoo on their own. But, of course, visiting on your own means that you can linger over the California Sea Lions pool for 10 minutes, watching them zoom show-offy figure eights around the concrete islands, and no one will be bothered or impatient, and afterwards, when purchasing a packet of crisp (yes, crisp) M&Ms, you will not feel obligated to share them with anyone. (Another perk of traveling alone is that you can spontaneously return and laze about your hostel/hotel for a few hours to regain energy, and not feel the least bit guilty about it).  

---

 

            I started off day two walking along Grafton Street, a major shopping street where buskers, panhandlers, and the Leprechaun Yourself man (with a leprechaun outfit for tourists to try on) entertain or harass the crowds. 

 

Mime-like acrobatics performed to electronica on Grafton Street

Returning at various points in the day, I encountered a excellent but tired looking spoons player, acrobats with hula hoops, a violin and cello quartet, solo guitar players, an accordionist playing along to a recorded soundtrack, and a curious unicorn-like creature covered in streamers, which sat in the middle of the street and clacked its mouth at passersby. 

What is this streamered beast?

            As recommended, I tried to go on a literary tour of Dublin, but as I was the only one to show up, the tour was cancelled. One of the guides pointed out several places of interest (and maybe less interest -- I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about visiting the pharmacy where the main character of Ulysses buys a bar of lemon soap, though maybe I should have been -- I haven't read Ulysses). On his recommendation, I visited the National Library, which was running a great exhibit on poet and playwright William Butler Yeats. It included the results of a creativity survey he had taken (Did he revise? Always. Did most of his work begin with seemingly directionless attempts? Usually.), a documentary about the women in Yeats's life (he pined after 6-foot-tall revolutionary Maude Gonne for most of his life. As one scholar put it, he was obsessed and liked to be obsessed), and information about his plays, his interest in the occult, and his importance for Ireland during the revolutionary years of the teens and twenties.

            After the library, I wandered down to Oliver St. John Gogarty's, a pub and hostel in Temple Bar, and caught a fiddle and guitar duo while I had dinner (something tasty called Hibernian Chicken, cooked in a cream curry sauce with a bit of mashed potatoes and a side of fries). The music ranged from traditional Irish to Elton John to R.E.M. At one point, there was a disturbance in the bar, and it became clear that a woman had stolen one of the diner's bags and taken off toward the River Liffey with it. One of the staff members managed to catch up with her, and returned triumphant with the bag. The following conversation ensued between the musicians:

Guitar: Well, that's good. It doesn't usually turn out that way, getting the bag back.

Fiddle: No, we usually meet them around back after the show!

Guitar: I guess there's no dinner for us tonight, then...

Maybe you had to be there.  It was an excellent joke in the moment.

Here's a bit of one of their songs: 

A snatch of the traditional Irish song "The Otter's Holt" or "Waterdog's Hole," as performed by musicians at Oliver St. John Gogarty's. I wish I had their names so as to properly credit them.

And to end, a curious take on The Last Supper

Beginnings

Goodbye Oregon!

A delayed flight into Boston landed me on a rebooked flight to Dublin and 21 hours to kill in the Boston Logan Airport ("all hotels within one hour of the airport are full," the man at the information desk told me, and recommended sleeping in the area between the B and C terminals, where there was no music). I scouted the area, amused to discover a corridor with twelve empty rocking chairs, some of which were breaking out in purple hand-painted flowers. I eventually picked a bank of chairs that might offer a bit more head support, discovered that vacuum packing bags are decent cushions, and slept in the lulls between airport activity -- the time from 1-2AM between the Zamboni-like floor cleaner and persistent whistler in Terminal B and the changing of the guard of the airport staff (including a man who rushed back and forth from one staff lounge to another shouting "I can't believe it!") around 3 and 4AM, and finally the resumption of passenger traffic at about 5:30 with an exuberant tour group, at which point I gave up and found myself coffee and a raspberry croissant.

            The flight to Dublin itself went smoothly. I was holding my breath over Immigration, because I had scheduled my trip to be less than three months, but over ninety days, and discovered that there seemed to be some contention over which time range was acceptable without a visa. However, I had unwittingly printed off the magic piece of paper -- an immigration ID from the WWOOF Ireland website (apparently very few WWOOFers do this, and not having this information can get you shipped back across the Atlantic) and the immigration officer worked me through in a bit under three minutes.