What is it that makes us so pleased with such inclement weather?  Well, we’ve had crap weather in this country for years now - unremittingly wet and mild and awful.  So it feels good to have some proper winter weather.  And of course as Home Farmers we know that this frost is good for our veggie patch - it kills diseases and nasties that might have accumulated in the soil over the year and breaks up clods of soil too which improves soil texture.  A good frost is also good for the flavour of our garlic and brussels sprouts (which is good news for the Christmas dinner).  I like the feeling that this is the way it should be.  It shouldn’t be 10 degrees and raining at Christmas.  It should be zero degrees and there should be ice on the cobwebs hanging off the bird table.  There should be opportunities for skating across the ice that’s formed on top of puddles.  It just feels like God is in his heavens and all is right with the world.

I also love the feeling of transition at this time of the year - if we have time to reflect amid the craziness of Christmas, we are reflecting on what we’ve achieved this year, how good (or awful) it has been.  We are looking back.  But in just over a week’s time, we will start to look forward to what’s next, to what’s possible, to the boundless potential of it all.  I love this time of the year because we are momentarily, precariously, balanced between the two - between an ending and a beginning.  For Home Farmers it’s a very fine line between the end of the year when you can allow yourself a few week’s pause from the veggie patch, and the beginning, when thoughts turn to soil preparation, sowing seeds, chitting potatoes and another year of splendid toil and effort.  I love how certain and relentless that transition is - it never fails.

Yesterday was the shortest day of the year so we can take some solace from the fact that from now on the days are starting to get longer. Just as the harvest brings with it both joy and a measure of pathos at the impending winter, the arrival of winter brings, strangely, a sense of hope that it will soon be spring. Home Farmers can and should find reason to celebrate at Christmas because of course the end of December has been a time of celebration for five millennia and perhaps even longer. Historians believe that the actual birth of Christ probably took place in September, approximately six months after the Passover.  The evidence they think for this is that the nativity story tells of shepherds minding their flocks in the fields at night time which they were unlikely to be doing in December. One of the early Popes (probably Pope Julius I) decided to celebrate the birthday of Jesus on December 25th because that date was already linked to an existing pagan feast day. This the pope believed would make the transition to Christianity easier for the pagans they were trying to convert.

In ancient Babylon, the feast of the Son of Isis, the Goddess of Nature was celebrated on December 25th. In ancient Rome, the winter holiday was called Saturnalia ("Happy Saturnalia” has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?) which honoured Saturn, the God of Agriculture. In January Romans observed the Kalends of January, which represented the triumph of life over death.  The pagans of northern Europe celebrated their own winter solstice, known as Yule (from whence we get the word yule-tide) in honour of the pagan Sun God Mithras who appeared to their minds to be growing and maturing once the winter solstice had passed. The months of late summer and autumn were terrifying for early pagans because they thought that the reason the days were growing shorter was because their sun-god was slowly abandoning them.  When they saw the length of the day increasing at the end of December, they celebrated with riotous drinking, gluttonous feasting and orgies of epic proportions - so basically much like Christmas today.

Regardless of your religious faith, come the end of December we have an ancient reason to celebrate as the days gradually become longer again. So kick back and enjoy the break!  Perhaps even re-engage with the real world for a while and do things that normal people do, you know like buying Christmas presents and so on.  Happy Christmas!

Dave Curran is a good mate of mine and a member of our food growers group, GIY Waterford - he also set up a GIY group in Dunmore East which meets monthly in a local restaurant.  Dave is a guerilla gardener who likes to plant raspberry canes around the village just so there will be nice fruit for people to eat around the place!  He’s a very cool guy with a head full of ideas about growing and grower’s groups - his own garden is a testament to his enthusiasm for growing veggies and a regular drop-in centre for local growers in search of caffeine and a chat.  When Dave heard that there was going to be a farmer’s market at the inaugural Dunmore East Festival of Food, he thought it would be a good idea for us (GIY groups) to take a stall and sell our produce for charity. 

So far we have avoided getting involved in this sort of thing because frankly most of us in the group are relative newcomers to the wonderful world of growing and we don’t have a huge amount to sell - but we basically decided it would be a good laugh, good PR for the GIY groups and of course, for a good cause.  So we signed up and thankfully (and as usual) our blind entusiasm for the project was enough to get us over the fact that we hadn’t a clue what we were at! 

Loads of people from GIY Waterford, GIY Dunmore and GIY Tramore got involved and donated produce and seedlings.  We had a huge array of stuff to sell - produce included potatoes, chard, radish, chives, lettuce, kale, spinach, hen’s eggs, duck’s eggs, elderflower cordial, bread etc etc.  Seedlings of every type - herbs, tomato plants, lettuce, chard, mint, sage, parsley, squash, cucumber, courgette etc.  We made over eu550 for two charities (Meals on Wheels, and the Dunmore Woods and Parks Trust) - which is a commendable achievement given the average selling price for what we were selling was about eu2!  We also informed loads of people about the GIY idea and handed out fliers etc.  Above all - we had an absolute ball.  Though we were all knackered from our hard work (and it was hard work) we were all on a high last evening! Think we have caught the stallholders bug!

My humble thanks to:

Everyone who contributed produce from all the local GIY groups
Niamh and Niall for supplying the table and gazebo and dragging it all the way down from Trim in Co. Meath!  Without the gazebo we would have been rained apon (yes there was some rain).
All those who manned (and womaned the stall) - Bryan and Orlagh, Ciaran and Colette, Fionnuala, Lum, Peter (apologies if I have forgotten anyone - it’s late!)
Peter - for his hardcore sales technique which was probably responsible for bringing in about half of our sales!
Linda, Richie and kids - for the beautifully presented produce (and music)
Nicky - for taking snaps
The guy who gave us the lend of the portugese tractor thingy - which was the talk of the market and brought in lots of curious visitors!
But above all Dave who put a huge amount of effort in to organising everything - getting the “GIY Waterford” sign made, coordinating the collection of all the produce, painting an incredible original Dave Curren ‘Grow it Yourself’ sign (which you can see in the photos and which will be worth a fortune in years to come, believe me!), designing the stall etc.  You rock Davey!

Dave and Bryan take a well-earned rest:

Linda and Richie’s son (whose name I can’t remember) shows off their own eggs!

Peter’s interesting sales technique - keep at them and you will eventually wear them down! (note how cool our stall looked):

Ciaran keeps tabs of money!!:

“Don’t worry about it,” Ivan Yates said to me as we waited outside the auditorium before the show, “you don’t need to try to be funny.  Just go on and sit there and let them to their stuff.” OK then…

I was asked to come on The Panel Live and it was a great opportunity to plug the book so clearly I couldn’t turn it down.  Not that I would want to - we are big fans of the show and I have always thought it would be great craic to go on - incidentally that’s an easy sentiment to have when you are sitting on your arse on the couch, but very different when you are counting down the hours and worrying about the mauling the panelists are going to give you.

The Panel have been doing a live tour of Ireland during summer 08 and I appeared on their stopover in Wexford (along with Big Ivan)as local interest.  Clearly all other interesting people in the south east were unavailable that evening. 

The usual crew that are on the TV were all present and accounted for - the brilliant Colin Murphy presenting and panellists Andrew Maxwell, Mareid Farrell, Neil Delamere and Dermot Whelan.  Big Ive was the guest for the first hour and handled himself with his usual aplomb while I sat in the audience shitting myself, wondering could I slip out of the theatre unnoticed.  Waiting to go on a live show in front of hundreds of people with five comedians looking to make material off you - now that’s a situation guaranteed to strike terror in to the most heroic of hearts.

I was petrified going on.  Waiting in the wings for ten long minutes for my introduction - walked out, couldn’t see a thing (with the lights) and when i finally settled in to my chair and looked up, all these faces that I am familiar with from the telly, were staring back at me.  Very surreal.  Sitting beside the gorgeous Mareid Farrell - how bad?

I was on for about 15 mins, and it is all a bit of a blur to be honest.  I called Mrs Kelly afterwards (she couldn’t make it to the audience) and she asked me “were you funny?” (she obviously finds that unlikely) and you know what, i can’t remember whether I was or not.  I was just glad to get through it in one piece.  I wasn’t nervous once I got going and there were a few laughs at things I said, but mainly Big Ive was right - you really just sit there and let them do their thing.  I was in higs laughing (as they say in Wexford) most of the time.