Skibbereen

View of Lough Hyne and the ocean

            I've now been at my new host's near Skibbereen for a week. We're close enough to the ocean for people to harvest seaweed for mulch and for the fish and chips to be fresh and flakey (options for fry sauce include curry and sweet chili). Days alternate between easy lulls I spend reading, drinking tea and on the computer -- hurrah for WiFi -- and harder sessions of garden work. My host's polytunnels are especially lush. Two long, covered tunnels host some expected vegetables -- zucchini, onions, eggplant, garlic, basil (at least four types including lemon and thai), salad greens, along with some more unusual tenants -- a grape arbor, a kiwi tree, a pen of corn, peppers and a fig tree scraping the ceiling. Grabbing a fistful of weeds in the tunnel more often than not turns up a few orange and red nasturtiums, which carpet the otherwise empty parts of the raised beds.

            So, a bit of weeding there, but most of my work time has been spent at the newish Community Orchard, which is gearing up for Skibbereen's Food Festival next week. 

Skibbereen's Community Orchard

The orchard's creators designed it as an educational space for the community, so in typical backyard garden fashion it is small, with apple trees, strawberries, flowers, blackcurrants and some small unsown beds to be adopted by local schools. A principal goal is to create paths around the trees and beds for visiting tours of schoolchildren, and to that end I've been a part of a team of community members and visitors clearing grass and topsoil, laying cardboard, covering the cardboard with bark mulch and doing other small jobs to ready the space. I have four tiny new calluses on my palms from all the shoveling. Maybe most exciting is the nearly six-foot tall willow snail one woman is weaving next to the entrance. People have been pulling into the convenience store parking lot across the road to give the space (the snail?) a longer look.

Apple tree mulched with seaweed at the Community Orchard

            My host has also invited me to take part in dinners with friends, one in which the Alsatian stew called Baeckoffe was the main course. The key to Baeckoffe, according to our Alsatian host, is a lot of white wine and a long cooking process; the cook starts the stew at a very high temperature and lowers it gradually over several hours. This mimicks the baker's cooling oven in which the stew was traditionally cooked after the baker had made his bread. Unfortunately, I didn't get her Baeckoffe recipe. My favorite recipe that we've made at home, however, goes something like this:

Zucchini Pancakes

(makes eight small pancakes, serves two)

2 eggs, beaten

1 medium zucchini, grated

1/2 cup cheddar, grated

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/3 cup of flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

Smoked paprika

Splash of milk (if needed)

Combine all -- you're aiming for a consistency that, like regular pancakes, is liquid enough to spread when dropped but isn't entirely runny (I don't think I'll be writing cookbooks any time soon). Fry in butter and/or olive oil until golden brown on both sides.

We ate these with ratatouille and basil leaves, but they'd probably be good with any kind of vegetable side.

           

            I also had the chance to hike up the hill next to nearby Lough Hyne (pronounced Loch Ein)...

 

...and see the holy wells at its foot. The water from the wells is said to be good for the eyes. The pagan well -- a spring sheltered under a ring of moss at the foot of a tree, is decorated with beads and ribbon, a cheerful fuchsia car air freshener, a lego man, painted stones, and tiny statues, one of a smiling old woman, and another which looks suspiciously like a Virgin Mary. Up the road, the Catholic well seems to be engaging in a little one-upmanship, with a whitewashed stone altar and rhododendrons.

            Plans seem to be in the works for a nighttime kayaking trip on Lough Hyne tomorrow. It would be my first time kayaking, and it seems a little daunting... I'll try to post a report soon.