It doesn’t take much for me to start questioning my abilities as a GIYer at this time of the year.  I wander around my veggie patch, poking at kale plants with a stick and feeling mightily peeved that there is nothing much worth eating.  I wonder - is there more I could have done?  The frustrating thing is that there is very little we can do to remedy this problem until next month when the first tentative sowings of the year can commence. 

From this juncture - the miserable affair that is January with its depressingly short days and insipid sun - it seems like a long time since the garden was abundant and trips to the supermarket rare.  In times past they had a lovely expression for the interminable length of time between the last of last year’s produce and the first fresh crops of the year - it was called the hungry gap because back then people actually went hungry.  The good news is that each year as we learn more about GIYing the hungry gap gets shorter and shorter.  The 2011 seasons spreads out before us like a blank canvass - what GIY delights will you paint on yours?  Happy New Year!

Things to do this Week

To Do
Plan!  This is a great time to decide where and what you are going to grow this year.  If you are just starting out join your local GIY group for some advice and check out our website for handy “getting started’ guides and videos.  Consider building or buying some raised vegetable beds.  There is still time to spread well-rotted manure or compost on your vegetable beds and cover them down with black polythene to start warming them up for spring sowing.  Start collecting old plastic bottles and containers as cloches and covers, and collect toilet roll inserts to use as pots for sowing.  Order your seeds, onions sets and seed potatoes.
Harvest
January is a lean month in your first few years of GIYing and it requires foresight the previous spring/summer to ensure that you have things worth eating at this time of the year.  You may have winter cabbage, perpetual spinach, chard, leeks, kale, cauliflowers and Brussels sprouts in your veggie patch and depending on how successful your growing/storage regime last year was, you may well still be tucking in to stores of potatoes, celeriac, carrots, parsnips, onions, cauliflower, jerusalem artichokes, winter squash, pumpkins, leeks and red cabbage. 

Recipe of the Week: Spinach and Lentil Soup

This is perfect, thrifty, healthy New Year food and the addition of lemon juice gives it a bright, zingy taste.  It also uses vegetables that you are likely to have in the veggie patch or in storage - onions, potatoes, garlic and spinach. 

Ingredients:

250g green lentils
1.5 litres veg stock
1 onion and 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
250g potatoes - peeled and chopped in to cubes
250g spinach - roughly chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tsp ground cumin
5 tbsp lemon juice

Bring the lentils and stock to the boil in a saucepan.  Add the onion, potato, spinach and oil.  Simmer for 15 mins.  Add garlic, cumin and half the lemon juice.  Cover and simmer slowly for 20 minutes.  Add the remaining lemon juice.  Season to taste.  Ladle in to bowls and serve with crusty bread. 

Tip of the Week - Rhubarb

Rhubarb is typically the first fresh crop of the spring, particularly if you “force” it now by covering with a layer of straw and an upturned pot.  Tender stems should be ready to eat in March.  January is also a good month to split existing rhubarb plants to create new ones.  Lever the rhubarb crown carefully from the soil using a fork.  Using a sharp spade, divide the crown in three.  Ideally each section should have a crown, a large amount of root and at least 4 pink buds.  Dig a few holes and place one crown in each and then backfill with soil. 

Once the largest car factory in the world, the enormous Lingotto building in Turin was home to Fiat and workplace to over 6,000 people. Opened in 1923, it is an extraordinarily impressive building that stretches almost half a kilometre long and boasts a rooftop test track (which appeared in the original Italian Job movie). In its heyday it was a proud emblem of the might of Fiat, but Lingotto and Turin’s car industry succumbed to decline and eventual ruin in the 1980s.

Turin turned to food to reinvent itself and more specifically to Slow Food. Food journalist Carlo Petrini was horrified by McDonalds plan to open up at the Spanish Steps in Rome, and established Slow Food in Alba in 1989 to save local food traditions, protect biodiversity and to act as an antidote to the fast food and fast living culture.

As the Slow Food movement spread around the world (there are now over 100,000 members in 132 countries including Ireland), Turin became its focal point. The old factory was remodelled by the city fathers in to an equally impressive convention centre complex and since 1996 Petrini has based his biannual Slow Food festival, called Terra Madre (Mother Earth in Latin), at Lingotto.

The latest instalment of Terra Madre (October 21st to 24th) was an extraordinary 4-day gathering of over 5,000 food communities, cooks, academics, young people and musicians to brainstorm ways to promote local, sustainable food production that is “good, clean and fair”. Alongside up to 100 workshops and talks (covering everything from biodynamics, eating less meat, bees, GMO, and fisheries), individual country delegations from around the world got together to discuss promoting Slow Food back home.

Running alongside Terra Madre was the Salone del Gusto food exhibition which was open to the public (over 200,000 people attended) and showcased endangered foods from around the world. Slow Food works with local producers and farmers to help guarantee a viable future for their products by bringing them together and helping them to promote their products and access new markets. These cooperatives, known as Presidia, are good examples of an alternative model for agriculture based on safeguarding of traditional knowledge and sustainability. Salone del Gusta brings together over 200 presidia from around the world to display cheeses, cured meats, breads, sweets, vegetables, fruits, grains and honeys.

I spent the best part of four days touring Salone del Gusta and there was still plenty that I did not see. I spoke to an Austrian producer who has revived an ancient technique for preserving Styria cabbage which dates back to the 15th century but was abandoned since the 1970s. The technique preserves cabbages for up to 3 years without the use of salt, by putting them in 4 meter deep fermentation pits covered with wool and straw. As brand names go, “pit cabbage” needs a bit of work but the taste was sublime.

I tasted Polish mead, an ancient drink that is aged for over 30 years, produced by a giant of a man named Maciej Jaros who is the only mead producer in Poland still using the traditional recipe (handed down to him by his mother). I ate Pamir mulberries which grow at up to 2400 meters in the mountain regions of Tajikistan on bushes which can be up to a century old.

The Takana is a leafy, smokey-tasting brassica from Japan which has a distinctive knot at the base of the leaf. It disappeared completely from the 1960s and was reintroduced only because a local farmer came across a plant in the wild in 2002 and decided to champion its cause. My grazing went on and on - plums and Luk garlic from Croatia; aged chorizo from Euskal Txerria pigs which almost disappeared from Spain; reed salt from Kenya; Saint-Flour lentils from France; delicious smoked cheese spindles (known as “Oscypek") from the Tatra mountains in Poland; sausage from a tubby, woolly little Hungarian pig called the Mangalica.

Ireland was represented by raw-milk cheese which is mentioned in ancient texts dating back to the 8th century, but again which was almost extinct but for the efforts of a few committed cheese makers. The Irish presidia has eight artisan producers including Gudrun Shinnick from Fermoy who says that Irish cheese is particularly valued in Italy for its yellow colour which results from the grass diet of our cows

Terra Madre is an astonishing event - a united nations of food, overwhelming really in its scale and profoundly optimistic in its remit. The key message is this: everywhere in the world the story is the same: ancient foods which have been passed down from generation to generation for millennia are at risk of being lost forever in a food system which is obsessed with homogeneity, yield and profit. Slow Food is saving these foods from obsolescence. They need our support.

http://www.slowfood.ie

Michael Kelly is an author and founder of GIY (Grow it Yourself).

One of my favourite moments each year here on the Home Farm is the moment of exultant liberation when our two little pigs are let out of the pigsty for the first time. 

We rear two pigs in our garden for the table each year.  They arrive here to our one-acre garden in Waterford in March at about eight weeks of age, cute as little puppies, and depart five months later for the local abattoir.  We keep them down the end of the garden in a little plot but when they get here first they are too small to let out, and so we keep them in a walled pigsty until they get used to the place. 

There is something supremely joyous about that moment when they are let out first.  They have never been shown how to root - but within minutes of the gate being opened, following a few inquisitive sniffs in the air (could I, should I, will I?) they are busy rooting to their heart’s content and you can tell they just LOVE it.

The commercial pig industry has more or less ignored the move towards free-range produce.  You can get your hands on free-range chicken, lamb and beef but free range pork or bacon is impossible to source.  More than any other animal, the pig is treated horrifically by the food chain and it is all the crueller given that they are as intelligent as your family dog.  To satisfy our insatiable appetite for pork and bacon, we kill approximately 1.3 million pigs per year in this country with almost 90 per cent of them reared on just 380 pig farms.  These pigs are reared indoors, on concrete floors in cramped sheds, fed high protein feed to get them to killing weight quickly, and so bored that they start to bite each others tails off for something to do.  Given the conditions they are reared in, perhaps their miserably short lives (about sixteen weeks) are not short enough. 

Of course the industry will say that pigs are treated humanely and kept in ultra modern, hygienic facilities.  In my experience pigs are not particularly interested in modern, nor do they put much store in hygiene.  Give them some sun on their backs, a bit of space to root in, scraps from your kitchen and an occasional scratch behind the ears, and they will reward you with gregarious company, the finest manure and the best meat imaginable.  In contrast to the ultra lean/ultra bland pork that your supermarket has on offer, a happy outdoor pig produces a deeply “porky” dark meat lined with a decent layer of fat.  The way pork used to taste. 

The Department of Agriculture reports that one in five of the country’s 2,447 registered pig keepers are “hobbyists”, that is keeping less than three animals for their own consumption.  Thanks to the growing army of back-garden pig-keepers, traditional rare breeds like Gloucester Old Spot and Tamworth are making a comeback, largely because they are better equipped than the commercial hairless breeds to thrive outdoors. 

Are there downsides?  Well, the result of all that rooting is that whatever ground you make available to them will be destroyed and in the rainy season that we euphemistically call summer, things can get pretty mucky.  Ideally then, you will need to allocate three plots to the purpose, each at least 100sq meters and rotate the pigs around to give the ground time to recover.  Pigs are noisy at times particularly if they are hungry, and they pee and pooh a lot - dynamite for the fertility of your land, but the neighbours might not appreciate the pong.  They are also big, strong, determined animals weighing up to 300kg and they treat everything (including your welly) as potential food. 

The biggest downside of all however is that at some point these wonderful animals that you have shared your life and your garden with, have to go to slaughter.  Meat, as it happens, does not grow magically on a plastic tray wrapped in cellophane - the brutal reality is that an animal has to die.  The first year we kept pigs, we called them Charlotte and Wilbur which was a mistake because it is doubly difficult to kill animals that are named after the characters from a children’s novel. 

I have given up struggling against growing fond of them while they are resident in our garden.  We should be fond of them.  We should look after them, feed them, fret about them and fuss over their health.  Afterwards, the project shifts gears from animal husbandry to food production.  We joint and carve and cut.  We make sausages, chorizo, salamis and rashers, we cure bacon and make brawns.  We fill the freezer with almost a year’s worth of food.  And we are thankful for every morsel. 

Nicky Fortune

Nicky Fortune’s son Al with pigs.  Photo credit: Nicky Fortune

Nicky Fortune, who has a one-acre garden in Tullogher, Co Kilkenny, started keeping pigs because of the quality of pork available in supermarkets.  “Every time we ate pork it was giving us cramps so we had just given up eating it.  Four years ago we got two saddlebacks.  We put them in a plot up the back where we were going to grow vegetables, so they worked as rotivators.”

The family’s first pigs were called Parsley and Sprouts.  “We were loading them up in the trailor and I remember my neighbour saying to me, “do you want me take them back out, you look miserable!”.  In the end we held on to Sprouts.  I couldn’t let her go.  Every time we tried to eat pork we would be practically choking on it.” That was then.  His three children have got used to having the pigs around.  “They see the connection between animals and meat now.  Alex, our youngest will probably help me with the butchering this year.”

Though something of an old hand at pig-rearing at this stage, Fortune had a bit of catastrophe on the way to the abattoir last autumn.  “I was going down the main road with the pigs in the trailer and the guy driving behind me flashed and when I stopped he came up and said “you are after losing a pig”.  The pig had climbed out and jumped out on the road.  In the end we found him in someone’s garden eating the flowers.”

Ella McSweeney

Ella with pig in Garden.  Photo credit: Kyera Grant

Keeping pigs in the garden is not necessarily the preserve of country folk.  A couple of minutes walk from Blackrock, Co Dublin, RTE presenter Ella McSweeney is rearing two Gloucester Old Spots in a third of an acre garden.  “When is the last time you saw a pig in a field?,” she replies when I ask her what possessed her.  “In 1840 there were 350,000 pigs in Ireland kept on under an acre.  I was looking at old OS maps of Dublin and kept seeing “piggery” on the map.  There is massive potential to re-introduce pigs to Dublin, particularly in those old council houses that have huge gardens. I wanted to experience meat production and be an honest carnivore.”

Her approach has been to keep things as thrifty as possible.  “I got plans for a simple pig ark and made it for eu100 from sandbags and salvaged wood.  I feed them barley and I go to a local veg shop and fill a bucket with stuff they are throwing out.”

The Department of Agriculture Inspector, she says, thought she was mental.  What do her neighbours think?  “They love them.  Pigs are endlessly entertaining.  I have never had so many friends.  People just come around and want to stare at them, touch them.”

McSweeney’s pigs are being killed soon, and she will do the butchering herself, having done a pig butchery course with Philip Dennhardt at Ballymaloe.  “I will miss them because they are a huge presence but I was very clear from outset that they are not pets.”

5 Traditional Breeds

Saddleback: black pig with a white belt around shoulders
Gloucester Old Spot: hardy white pig with black spots
Tamworth: a hairy, red pig
Berkshire: one of the oldest breeds, black with white legs
Oxford Sandy and Black: excellent temperament and high quality meat

5 Tips

1) Always keep more than one - pigs are incredibly sociable animals and like company.
2) You will need to apply for registration as a pig herd owner under the Department of Agriculture’s National Pig Identification and Tracing System.  You will receive a herd number (and possibly an inspection).  Call 1890 504 604.
3) If you are keeping pigs in an area of your garden and they escape, they will do serious damage to the rest of your garden.  Try a combination of sheep fencing and a battery powered electric fence.
4) Pigs are not fussy about housing but it must be weather proof and sturdy.  A pig ark, outhouse or stable would be ideal. 
5) Typically pigs are fed pig nuts or a mixture of grains including barley.  Keep a pig bucket under your sink and put all leftovers (but absolutely no meat) in it. 

Michael Kelly is author of Tales from the Home Farm and founder of GIY (Grow it Yourself) Ireland. Visit the pig forum at http://www.giyireland.com

We harvested the last of our red cabbage yesterday - four decent heads which have survived the frost and ice. I was looking for something interesting to do with them (apart from coleslaw!) and came across this recipe from Delia Smith that used up all four heads! It’s nice and sweet and goes well with a baked spud or some chops. It freezes and re-heats well which means it’s a good way to “store” them too.

2 lb (1 kg) red cabbage
1 lb (450 g) cooking apples, peeled, cored and chopped small
1 lb (450 g) onions, chopped small
1 clove garlic, chopped very small
1/4 whole nutmeg, freshly grated
1/4 level teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 level teaspoon ground cloves
3 level tablespoons brown sugar
3 tablespoons wine vinegar
1/2 oz (15 g) butter
salt and freshly milled black pepper
Pre-heat the oven

First discard the tough outer leaves of the cabbage, cut it into quarters and remove the hard stalk. Then shred the rest of the cabbage finely, using your sharpest knife (although you can shred it in a food processor, I prefer to do it by hand: it doesn’t come out so uniform).

Next, in a fairly large casserole, arrange a layer of shredded cabbage seasoned with salt and pepper, then a layer of chopped onions and apples with a sprinkling of garlic, spices and sugar.

Continue with these alternate layers until everything is in. Now pour in the wine vinegar, lastly add dots of butter on the top.

Put a tight lid on the casserole and let it cook very slowly in the oven for 2 to 2½ hours, stirring everything around once or twice during the cooking.

Red cabbage, once cooked, will keep warm without coming to any harm, and it will also re-heat very successfully.