Wednesday 3-28

Wednesday was the hotest day so far, reaching past twenty two degrees celcius in the sun. I started the morning building up the mounds that covered the potatoes to help with the daily loss of moisture in the heat. It took time to break up the compact paths between the ridges and hoe the soil into straight lines. It took most of the morning to get through the five rows and set up a sprinklet to ater them all. I moved onto weeding the asparagus bed afterwards whcih was covered in needles and dandilion which had to be dug up by the root and completely removed or else it would return in greater numbers around the same area. Before I headed in for lunch I gathered some tomatoes from the main kitchen window and moved them into the garden greenhouse. I labeled each variety of tomoatoe with a red pen as well as the different flower varieties I had germinated for Lesley whos labels had begun to fade from the bright sun and humidity. For lunch we had a vegetarian gree couscous and a large salad with bread. Lindsay was buisy with the kids and making school runs so Clara helped watch while one girl played in the garden while we worked. Lesley arrived back from Barcelona and went right to work helping in the garden. James wanted to get started arranging beds and planting the gardens on the patio next to the galler cafe so I helped him decide wich plants should go in now or hold off for another few weeks. We had to rake a good amount of soil and flattenout the beds to meet the patio and then arrange the lines of plants. I spent a good amount of the time pushing wheel barrows of top soil out of the old leek ben I had tilled the day before up to the patio garden. It was hot enough that this was the first day I had choosen to join the other workers in taking off my shirt and getting all the sun I could. The breeze was nice, and the smells of the spring blooms were relaxing. It was more like a day in the mid summer than the end of winter, even the pond was full of spring life. Wednesday night I fixed a plate of chips and some pasta with greens out of the garden. I sat out in the evening air playing guitar as the sun set and enjoyed every effect of the evnironment I could take in befor ethe sun dropped behind the tree line and the half moon ook over. I feel asleep early on the couch in the den that night watching old Cohen Brother's films and allowed the fire to burn out before eleven. The night was silent and peacful as a cool air settled  over the property laying a thin sheet of frost over the fields and ending the warm weather. Clouds where said to be moving in for the weekend along with cool breezes and heavier frost. I am worried that the sprouts that have done so well so far are in risk of damage, so we will try to be proactive with the plants in the the greenhouses and covering any sprouting plants with plastic in the gardens. A frost can shock and set back all of the vegetables for the season, and possibly even kill off any sprouts that have not yet broken the surface. In the past year, a heavy snow storm that outwieghed the past decade ruined perennial crops and gardens in the eary winter followed by an early and very warm spring. Many farmers planted early to make up for the lost crop but lost most of the early starts bcause of a late heavy week of frost in May. If the same where to happen this year, many farmers would lose too much of thier starting crops to have a successful season and would likely switch to more profitable short season crops that can be sold in market rather than the various greens and root vegetables popular on the dinner tabel. Sustainable food production can only be workable when the workers and family are well fed and suppourted. If crops are lost to weather and pests that would normally bring in the funds for equiptment and supplies, more land must be set aside to making a monatary income, which often would take away from the area used for property usage. Many farmers are more prepared this year with plastic covers and tunnels than ever before to ensure a succesful crop reguardless of frosts. Some growers that have been organic in the past have began using conventional methods and sprays to ensure a sellable crop according to some local farmers. Organic is the way of the land, but has become more and more difficult with the changing weather and economy in the past decade. Cool, wet weather, more so than in the long past has created an out break of various rots and mildew pathogens that have rarely affected organic growers in the previous generations of local growers. Consumers do not recongnize garden fresh vegetables the way they used to and even in farmers markets, geo engineered varieties of common vegetables are selling better than the organic providers. This weekend we have plans of traveling to Kerry, a beautiful scenic area full of farm land and sustainable projects where I hope to see a more positive opinion of the future in organic production.

Tuesday 3-27

Thuesday, after watering the greenhouse and pots on the padio, I set up the sprinklers and got on a set of waist high rubber boots that strapped around the belt. This as the third day of high sun and record temperatures for the end of March. The sky was clear blue and the sun was bright across the Kildare valley from six in the morning until eight in the evening. I was not bothered by spending the morning wading in the murkey creek water pulling clumps of stream grasses full of muck and various critters. I started down stream near a bridge with a small dam and worked my way slowly up the waterway. I raked large clumps of the tick grass with bundles of roots and soggy muck, throwing it high onto the back to dry out and die, making a silt sod for any grasses or plants to grow along the area over the summer. each step would stir up a cloud of dirt, so I would try to get as many clusters of grass as I could for each posistion I made moving along the creek bed. Many of the clusters of weeds and muck had small fish tangled which I would release and move back into the fresh stream water. I noticed sevral water intects including diving beetles, toe biters, skimmers, water scorpions and twirlers thoughout the grass and brush along the streams edge. Around half past twelve, a bit before lunch was served, I went inside and washed the mud from my hands and face that had splashed with every sling of grass out of the water. I changed clothes for the afternoon and started a load in the washer before I joined everyone for lunch. Clara had made a pizza with spinnach and garlic along with a large salad and bread. Afterlunch I got online to purchase a plane ticket back home through a different airline for about the same price I had bought my round trip back in November. I felt obligated to myself to stay for the summer as long as I could afford in order to get the most and best out of this experienc. I only wish I had realized this before I bought the original ticket and planned a few extra hosts for the summer. At this time I am planning to spend June with my first host as well as traveling for a week with my mother and two of my three sisters that will be visiting Ireland for the first time as well. My best bud Ryan will be coming for a few weeks in June as well and I plan to spend some time hanging out in Dublin and seeing an amazing Red Hot Chili Peppers concert on the 26th.
That afternoon I joined Clara in weeding various beds in the vegetable garden. She was focusing on an area of roses and raspberries while I went over the area for herbs and rhubarb. I went over the sea kale beds once more and covered an more shoot that had broken the surface since I last placed pots and slates around the growing sprouts. In the area I had cleared of year old herbs I started to plant collections of new herbs growing in stone containers. Each pot needed a large hole in the top soil to sit even with the bi annual and perennial herbs that were already in place. Clara finished clearing the two areas of raspberries so the following morning we could start moving runners and move on to other areas that needed cleared. I used the wheeled hoe to clear out the paths between the strawberries near a section of fruit trees until five that afternoon. I gathered all of the cut weeds and moved them to a pile outside the garden walls. We spent some time gathering broccoli and kale after we washed up so we could fix some pastas and greens for diner that evening. I made a noodle and cheese mix with broccoli and herbs along with a plate of curried vegeatables. The broccolli had started to dense up and was thickening every day in the high temperatures. It is some very tender and extremey tasty broccoli which blooms forseveral months through the early spring and summer. I use it in every dish I can along with the fresh kale and leeks which must be used up shortly to make room for everything I have germinated in the greenhouses. That evening I watched the film Finding Neverland with a nice fire from some wood I brought in that evening and a batch of cossaints I baked after our dinner of cod and vegetable sauce. Tomorrow we would finish weeding and prepare to sow some more seeds with one more day of clear bright weathe rbefore a cold front moved in for the weekend.

Monday 3-26

Monday morning I got up early for a big breakfast of eggs, kale, apples, porriage with bananna, and cinnamon toast with some herbal tea I had gotten from the health store in Athy over the weekend. I went for a short walk around the property line and went right to the gardens to meet Clara to plant some forest plants for Lesley. She had bought a few anenemes, crocus and other various bulbs wtih would be spread across a few ridges in the nut groove behind her stabel yard. We had four trays of plants so we split them up, placing them randomly between patchs of lillys, pachysandra, and gallanthus. This took about an hour and a half, then we moved onto cutting back an area of raspberries and Clara started pulling weeds around the area so we could later dig up any runners and put them back into the main rows of plants. Over the weekend the wind had blown off some of the nets covering the onions so we had to gather some more rocks and lay them down the sides of the beds to keep out critters and birds that had already pulled several of the onions out of the soil. A few areas had holes, so we also too time to tie them back together with pieces of bailing twine. I spent the rest of  the morning rotovating patches from a few weeks before to tear out any surfacing weeds and cut the soil even finer.
After lunch that day, Which was on the patio again in the warm sunshine, I got a hold of my airline to discover the price for transfering tickers. Since my origional ticket was a economy saver package, I would have to upgrade classes to transfere tickets which would cost over $1500. I went back to work for the afternoon without thinking much of the ticket situation and tried to enjoy the great weather. As soon as we went out I was needed to help James agther a hundred Achillites for a buyer from a local nursury which had run out of thier own supply. We dug clumps of ten and put them into small pots with compost and enough water to make it back to his own garden. These bulbs go for a high price because they take so long to divide and spread over an area. This garden is known for having one of the oldest and largest collections of Achillites in Ireland. After potting up the bulbs I went to water all of the pots and containers in the stabel yard as well as the small greenhouse full of verebena and flower sprouts. I then went back to the garden and harvested an area of leeks that could be weeded and rotovated. I gathered the weeds and stones and moved the rotovator to the bed. I went over the area a few times to level out the soil that had been built into a large raised bed for the root vegetables, but would now be used for cabbages and broccoli. For the remainder of the day I weeded areas near the stone boarder and set up a sprinkler to moisten the potato mounds and rows of beans and peas. After we finished, James showed me a section of the stream around the woodland that had been over grown with a creek grass that had to be raked out before it was out of control. I planned to start tuesday with waist high wellies and a rake clearing as much as I could before the afternoon.

2-23 Weekend at Burtown

After a good breakfast and a run up the road and back I had a nice cup of tea with Lindsay and Clara then met up with James in the flower gardens to discuss the days tasks. Giles would be in today and would be focusing on weeding as many of the flower beds as he could to get control of everything before the gardens opend to the public in two weeks. Clara and I started by picking out obvious weeds around the edges and any clumps of grass growing in the beds. The cows that are being help on the property had gotten loose early that morning and had caused damage to part of the lawn and a few trees on the edge of the garden so me and james spent some time lifting prints with pitch forks. Any where the hooves had dug too deep and torn up the sod we had to leave some topsoil in place to not have and indentations left. The cows had gooten loose simply because a wire had been left unhooked by a farm worker the night before when they were bringing in the tractor from the fields. Around half past eleven I started using an edger to clip the sides of each bed and trim any over hanging grass. This was a way to enhance the apearance of the gardens and outine each curve of the beds with a sharp contrast from the green lawn to the dark topsoil of the beds. We had the same great curry from the day before out on the patio for lunch in the warm sun. After lunch I spent my extra time looking at flights to exchange my ticket home in August. I was nervous about what it would be costing me because the only flights I could find through my airline were twice the price of my origional round trio ticket. When we got out to the gardens again I spent most of the afternoon edging the beds. there were about six large curvy flower beds in the front of the house along with a few sections of hedges which had to be lined with string and cut straight in line with each other. As I moved through the beds, Clara followed with a wheel barrow and bucket to gather all of the cut pices of sod and grass I left as I trimmed. It was a long day of monotonous cutting and weeding, but we made a lot of progress in those beds, whcih would only grow more weeds to be picked before teh area was open forthe summer. After a light dinner, Clara and I went down to Lesley's where Lindsay was staying to watch some movies together with a bottle of wine Jasmes had given us and a nice pt of herbal tea. I stayed up later that night to sit by the fire and enjoy some whiskey and music until I finally tired out a while after mid night. Saterday morning the three of us made a trip into Athy to stop by the market and the health stores for odds and ends. I spent most of the day Saturday painting and writing outside in the warm spring breeze. The gardens had started to bloom quickly in the first days of spring and several Tullips and trees had began seting blooms. That evening James's sister and good friend had come by for the night and the lot of us enjoyed music and drinks for the night together.
Sunday morning most of the house slept in and we all got together shortly after noon for a cookout on the lawn. James made a few rounds of bloody marys and mojitos while the meat and vegetables were be fixed as everyone wandered around the gardens chatting about this and that going on around the country.  For lunch we had grilled chicken and spiced sausage from a local butcher in Wicklow along with chips, salads, pasta and grilled vegetables. It was a beautiful day with a light breeze so after lunch a few blankets were spread out in the lawn where everyone cold sit and enjoy a few bottles of wine and rosea for the afternoon. around Six, Clara and I took a walk out to a historic ridgeline where a large masacre had occured during the famine. We saw an amazing sunset and got to talk to some neighbors that had lived in the area thier whole lives. It was a great way to end the weekend as we all settled in back at the house preparing for the next week. James planned to have the gallery cafe completed and ready for pictures, tabels and the works for an operational serving kitchen in another month. It had already been a few weeks and I was feeling very comfortable in the place. The work was enjoyable and the house seemed like luxy, but the family and workers are laid back and enjoyable to be around. I am looking forward to the next few weeks as well. 

Thursday 3-22

Thursday is cleaning day, so Clara and I split the three areas and spent an hour straightening and hoovering. Lindsay was staying at Lesley's to watch her dogs while she was traveling for the week so she was not around to lead the cleaning spree as she normall would. We headed out into a warm sunny day, one of th first Clara had seen since she arrived. We were going to start the day preparing beds and planting onions which required rotovating, raking and placing a few hundred bulbs before lunch. I first had to gather tools and take apart the rotovator from its trench digging model back to a tiller. I spend a while piecing together the blades and forcing pins to hold them together and took the machine out to the rocky dry soil that we had to work with. I first went along and lightly scraped the surface of the bed, tearing jup roots and rocks on the surface as Clara quickly followed behind picking them up in a large pot and piling everything ito a wheel barrow. Once tje surface was mostly clear of weeds I readjusted the anchor of the tiller to pull the blades deeper and started turning the soil. I went slowly to shred the larger clumps of hard soil and ensure the machine was digging deep enough. I passed over the bed two or three times until the topsoil was light and easy to work with. WE used a string line to mark the edges of both onion beds and used a rake to start pulling soil into mounds along the line. One side was raked into a straight mound and then we would switch sides and rake a mound one the other line then flattening the two mounds together into oune large raised bed. The raised beds were raked and smoothed for a good planting surface and fiverows were lined out to plant about twenty five collumns of onions. One bed was all white onions and the other was all red. We finished planting just around lunch and went in for an amazing vegetable curry Jo had prepared with rice and potatoes with fresh bread. I was so hungry from a buisy morning I helped myself to seconds of the curry which they had a spiced mango chutne to add even more flavor. After cleaning up from lunch and taking a few minutes to relax, we headed back out to the garden and began putting nets over the onion beds to prevent crows and pigeons disturbing the sprouts. black flexible tubbing was placed a few feet apart in an arch over the beds down the entire length and black nets were streched over the tubbing covering the entire bedding area. Rocks were placed down each side of the netting to hold it to the ground and keep a strong tension across the top. We waterd both beds, cleaned up the tools and took the weeds and rocks to the compost piles.
We worked on transplanting bulbs again from half past two until quarter to four until James was back from Dublin and free to help us plant trees in one of the planations. We focused on moving blubs that were growing in the path of the lawn mower and tansplanting them farther back into the field. We also moved a load of snow drops to the pillars by the front gate mixed together with daffodils and white tulips. When we met up with James, we got the left over bags of trees from the previous Friday when we planted a few large sections of Birch and Ash and carried them out into the fields were a several hundred small trees had already been planted the year before. Several of these trees had been damaged by rabbits and needed replaced, so we used the left over trees to fill in all the gaps. We split up around the plantation, each taking a long row of trees and searching for any sparce areas. We emptied four or five bags of various trees across the large field and did not get every gap filled. It was after five when we finished and we were all worn out from the long day. We agreed to miss out on the pub that night and take an easy watching movies by the fire. We made seperate plates of pasta and shared some puddings for desert with a bottle of wine and headed to bed early. The weather was going to be warm and clear again the next day so I planned to rise an hour early and go out for an early run down the road.

Wednesday March 21

On Wednesday Clara and I started transplanting bulbs from the main garden to the drive out by the front gate. Lesley showed us around the different beds with different varieties of snow drops and various other bulbs. She directed us to separate the clusters and spread them around in groups of three to five bulbs so they would have a good chance at spreading furthur throughout the gardens. We started with a group of achillites covering a large area under a few trees near the front car park and filled wheelbarrows to be taken down to the main gate. We spread these plants throughout the areas on each side of the road, surrounding the trees which lined the drive. We transplanted about three loads and then moved onto snow drops. One variety we had been asked to start with had a thicker folliage than I had seen on galanthus and were said to have larger blooms as well. As I dug up each giant cluster I had to use a spade to separate the bulbs since the roots had grown so dense. once the clusters were separated I scaatterd small groups of bulbs along the paths where we had laid the achillites. We continued on with this variety of snowdrop which was growing in large numbers close to the house and spread them half way from the gate to the main car park, leaving room in the beds for each cluster to spread and set new flowers the following years. It was a fast paced transplant process given the amount of plants we had to move. I simply stuck the spade into the sod making a good wedge and pressed the bulb in place. stomping the sod back down around the plant for suppourt. The strip of grass closest to the road, about three meters wide was left bare so the lawn mower could easily pass and trim the sod without tearing  up any flowers or small trees. Around noon, Clara headed inside to help Lindsay prepare a lunch for us and I finished two more loads of snowdrops on my own. It was a tedious but easy process of digging, lifting, pushing and replanting a bit don the road. It was laid back and simple for a nice clear day giving me a chance to enjoy some music and clear my head from the past few weeks of fast paced weeding and preparingthe vegetable garden. For lunch we had a large salad with potatoes and curry. It was very appetizing and filling for the day even with the work being a bit lightr than usual. I started the afternoon germinating the rest of the vegetable seeds and sowing some flower seeds into trays for Lesley. She had gotten some snapdragons, corriathus and cosmos along with a few small packages to replace areas of annuals that had dies out around the gardens. I planted a good amount of cabbage and a lettuce variety called rocket which the family uses a lot in salads and stews. I had gotten another batch of carrots of a different varietym wich I sowed into a plug tray. I also planted a few more brussels sprouts and spring onions. Clara joined in to sow a package of leeks onto a styrofoam fish cooler that had been saved and works well for starting root vegetables. Leeks are used in the spring for soups, curries, fried dishes, as well as mixed in with other baked or cooked vegetables to add a soft onion flavor. I went back to the root vegetable I had sown in the beds the day before to build up the ridges a bit more since I had only layered an inch or so over the seeds and the top soil was drying out very quickly in the dry weather. Clara and I went back to transplanting bulbs for the rest of the afternoon until she left to help Lindsay with the kids and learn some of the guidlines of thier daily routine. I worked a bit later than usual as I wanted to mov a final load of snow drops around an area that had over grown with grass and wild flowers. In the fall when other bulbs would die back daffodils, muscari, and tulips ould be transplanted to this area as well to creat a screen of various colors stretching from the road into the tall grass and cattle fields. When the gardens open next month, this will be the path visitors follow from the car park to the main gardens and should be a welcoming and colorful scene as guests arrive. That night we enjoyed some tasty pasta dishes with garlic bread and wine for dinner. I stayed up late playing guitar and chatting with Lindsy until she headed up to bed and then built a small fire for myself. I enjoyed a few pices of the pumpkin cake I baked the evening before and watched a movie call SLC punk which I had seen years before and always admired for its ciniacal truth of subjects like anarchy and rebellion with men and women my age searching for truth in thier various views of the world. It kept me awake and thinking for most of the night as I returned to my Chili Peppers biography which would touch on similar topics that influence passion and music. The next morning we would be planting trees again. Lesley had left to visit Barcelona for a week and left a list of tasks around the garden that me, Clara and james would need to tend to in order to keep evetything in line for the opening of the gardens in only a few weeks.

Tuesday March 20

I started with planting some root vegetables Tuesday morning. I used an area near the potato plot I had sowed the early varieties in last week. I sowed a full row of shallots, which are mild Allium type onions next to a row divided into raddishes and beet roots. I divided each package of seeds throughout each row I had dug and covered them with a light cover of topsoil. I watered the rows with a light spray from the nearby hose and put labels next to each small mound. I took time to water the trays in the green house by the garden as well as the other small greenhouse in the stabel yard. The verbena I had cut the first week I had arrived had started to produce shoots from the auxillary meristems on the nodes I had left. In anothr few weeks when these stems produce a few nodes, I will cut them back again to provide a bush like plant. The verbena are spread around the house in various pots and small beds intersowed with other herbaceous species. I spent the rest of the morning weeding some potted plants and adding orgainic fertilizer to old soils. The weeds were easier to pull from the potting soil than the normal hard ground so I moved quickly among several containers spread among the doors, patios, and windows around the main house and the two small houses in the stabel yard. On my way in to wash up for lunch, I stopped by the chicken hutch and gathered the poultry waste and used beding for compost. This compost will bespread throughout the garden late in the winter amoung the various gardens and tilled in as soil is prepared before planting. After a break for lunch with the family I started germinating a few seeds in the potting shed. I started some more cabbages and brussels sprounts in trays and sowed two small rows of baby spinnach next two the previous planted rows of lettuce.
The weekend had been filled with rain, so not much needed watered today. I spent the rest of the day tidying up the stones that edged the garden beds and weeding areas that the tiller had not hit. We had discussed planting onions soon, so I focused on an area on the upperside next to two rows of Autumn rapsberries where I would rotovate and build beds later this week. After work I put together ingredients to bake a pumkin spice cake from some pumpkin puree from the freezer. I added ginger, cinnamon, nut meg, rosemary, and lemon peel to the mix for a interesting treat. This was the second time I had put this type of cake together, and was looking forward to progress with the recipe. Lindsay put together a delicious couscous with greens from the garden and some noodles with herbs for dinner. It was an early night since we were all still worn out from Galway, and the last night that Sean would be around.