The elder son of a cobbler and a 9 acre farmer Patrick Kavanagh was born and reared in the town land of Macker in the parish Inniskeen Co. Monaghan left school at 13 to be apprenticed to his fathers trade and to work the land. Sitting at the end of the day upstairs in a ...

Dear ISSA,I grew 3 connemara oca this year. I got them from Seedsavers and found it difficult to get infop on them in terms of how and when to harvest and how to cook them. Anyway to cut a long story short I parboiled them first and then roasted them in the oven and we ...

We seem to have finally been given a break with the weather here. Our main concern last year was the safe storage of our precious seed potatoes over the cold spell that lasted well into February. During the extremely cold days, one of my jobs was starting a small fire in the stove down in ...

from the flower that openedblossoming in the breezeon the hill-side orchardand the seeping of the sapfrom the tips of the tendrilsaround the rugged rootsand the sun that shoneand the soilfrom the worm's workhail the fragant blossoming apples!helped by a lash of the horse-tailEquisetu-um teaand measures of manuredaubed on as dirt,and pruning by a thousand cuts( ...

Taobh an-tábhachtach don obair atá á dhéanamh againn anseo ná an obair a dhéanaimid leis na plandaí Gaelach nó dúchasach. I dtosach, cad is brí le planda dúchasach? I ndáiríre, níl freagra crinn ag baint leis, go háirithe nuair atá muid ag caint faoi na glasraí. Tá fhios ag gach éinne gur tháinig an práta ...

I have had a very uplifting week central to which was the Irish Seed Savers. On Monday I was present amongst a great gathering of growers and seed people, supporters and idealists in the seed saving building where we put our heads together in the common pursuit of producing seeds in larger quantities that eventually ...

We had quite a few interesting developments in the gardens over the past year, and I’d like to share some of them with you. The first on my list is that wonderful vegetable Sea kale (Crambe maritima). I had given up hope of seeing it again this spring on account of the ground being frozen ...

"Reprinted by kind permission of New Internationalist.  Copyright New Internationalist. _www.newint.org_. New Internationalist is the go-to magazine for people wanting intelligent, thought-provoking analysis of global issues. You can save 25% by subscribing - visit www.newint.org/biThe bad news is that giant ‘life science’ corporations have been gobbling up the world market in seeds. ...