The year is coming to a close, the nights are getting very long - time for a much overdue update of our year here in the West of Ireland at 53N. On the farming front it has been a very good year, though we have unfortunately had much family trauma and my partner hasn’ t been here much as a result so many things have been left undone. That's life.

The year started off terribly wet, as it often does in this hyperoceanic climate with a local average of around 1300mm of rain per year. From mid-December to the end of February it rained an average of 7mm per day, or 7 liters, i.e. a good sized bucket per square meter every single day. While it is nice to have mild winters, it often feels like a never-ending mud season.

But with February 1, Feile Bride, St. Bridget’s Day came tender shoots, longer days, seed catalogues and the excitement of a new growing season. Thanks to the mild winter there was even some fresh food to harvest like chard, leeks, kale, Par-Cel, walking onions and such.

Wild garlic (ramsons) is also making its annual appearance at this time, as are the crocusses.

Wild garlic under a beech tree.              -       Crocus and volunteer chervil

The winter weather wasn’ t quite done with us yet though and February 12 brought storm ‘Darwin’ with 100 mile/hour winds that ripped one of our polytunnels to shreds and uprooted some trees. Our beehives miraculously survived.

Battered polytunnel in the background.

Properly built dry-stone walls can withstand very strong winds. These walls have been in place for at least 170 years!

February is also the last month in which we are allowed to coppice or pollard trees before the bird breeding season commences. Our coppice wood goes to the goats who take off the bark and small branches and buds after which we leave the wood to dry and then cut it up for fuelwood which is warming me as I write now in November. Most of it is willow – not the best firewood, but certainly better than non-renewable fuel.

March brought the cheeriness of daffodils – lots of them – on the south side of our shelterhedge, along the driveway, in pots, under fruit trees. I am putting another 250 or so in the ground now, adding to several hundred already planted over the last couple years, with a view to selling some in the coming spring together with chicken eggs at our established little honour box stand by the roadside.

March, or even late February, also brings willow catkins which are eagerly sought out by the honeybees and other pollinators on their first outings. Over the years, with increasing on-site plant and habitat diversity, we have noticed a big increase in diversity and abundance of bumblebee, wild bee, wasp, hoverfly and butterfly species. Our earliest flowering willow is the Japanese Dragon Willow (Salix sachalinensis ‘Sekka’) which is the last to loose its leaves (it’s still in leaf now in mid-November) and the first to leaf out again – it photosynthesises for at least 10 months here and hence is incredibly productive in terms of biomass.

Inula hookeri with three species of butterfly - Peacock, Ringlet and Cabbage White - two species of bumblebee, various hoverflies and a bunch of flies and other insects, all at the same time.

We made sure to have the surplus roosters eaten by the end of February; they had been our working brigade in the bigger polytunnel and had turned all the crop residue from the previous season into amazingly fertile soil, had eaten weed seeds, slugs and slug eggs, leaving very little work for me in terms of bed preparation. First crops were sown from March 1 onwards: three polycultures with lettuce mixes, radishes, herbs, spinach, Asian greens and so on which provided lots of fresh greens daily from mid-April to the end of May when they had to make way for the warm-season crops. The polytunnel also houses all the vegetable, flower and herb starts as we can get frost until late May or occasionally even early June.

April brought the blossoms of currants, Jostas, Asian and European pears, plums and damsons. April weather was great and ensured good pollination of all these fruits. Unfortunately the May weather was cold, wet and windy and our apple crop got pretty much wiped out.

Asian pears in flower and blackcurrant & Josta understory under ash, sycamore and horse chestnut.

With the lengthening days and increasing warmth everything began to green up suddenly, chicken egg production went into overdrive and so did the goat milk yield once the goats were getting fresh grass rather than just hay and ‘coppice nibbles’. I had changed our goat management in that I milked three goats all through winter and not let them ‘rendezvous’ with a male. They yielded only a half litre between them in the middle of winter but with the first grass growth production quickly shot up to 3 litres and peaked at 5.5 litres by summer solstice. So we had lots of milk (and still do) and soft cheese and have even been supplying another family with 2 litres a day since early May. So far ‘the girls’ have provided us with more than 1000 litres of milk this year with about 200g of organic concentrates or oats per female and day, i.e. less than 10 % (in DM) of their food intake. The goats have a half acre ‘home field’ with direct shed access as well as about 20 patches around the farm through which they are rotationally grazed on dry days (goats are not 'built' for getting wet) enclosed with the help of a high electric net. We’ve got 5 full rotations through these plots this year and because of a very mild autumn with good grass growth they are still getting the odd few hours of a 6^th rotation now in November.

In late summer they also occassionally get access to standing willow (fodder bank) which they browse very thoroughly after which we coppice it and let it regrow for a few years. The Net Primary Productivity (NPP) of temperate woodland (especially young woodland) is much higher than that of temperate grassland so in addition to all the other benefits of the willows (bee food, shelter, birdlife) we are getting higher biomass production (forage and fuelwood) per unit area and forage that the goats, being natural browsers rather than grazers, prefer over grass.

In May the outdoor gardening season got underway properly. I hadn’ t done much vegetable growing except for potatoes and polytunnel crops in recent years for various reasons (including the perpetual wet and the associated myriads of slugs) but decided in 2013 to give it another shot with a new approach using round, raised, no-dig, lasagna-style beds made from galvanized expanded metal, filled with all manners of compost, chicken and goat manure/bedding, woodchips, twigs and branches, fresh-cut nettles, comfrey and Elaeagnus branches, the remains of an old turf roof, leaf-mould, woodash and seaweed meal. I had tried one such bed in 2013 which worked exceedingly well so I expanded to 7 beds over the course of spring and summer and will add 2 more this winter. They are located in a sun-trap composed of shelterhedges we planted 14 years ago and a polytunnel.

The reason for the expanded-metal edging is this: Because of the abundant rainfall here the ground often stays wet and thus cold far into springtime, so raised beds are a good idea. Many people use wooden boards for such beds but in turn they are creating perfect slug habitat. The expanded-metal edging gets around that problem and also allows the beds to dry up quite quickly. In this climate we do not need irrigation but drainage. Whether it is the much increased abundance and diversity of birds, ground beetles and amphibia that is helping now in keeping slug damage at acceptable levels, or the way the beds are constructed, or the enhanced soil food web associated with the no-dig approach I can not tell. Perhaps it is a combination of all three factors. In terms of growing techniques I am using a mix of companion planting, crop rotation, synergistic gardening[1] (a method developed in the 1980s by the late Emilia Hazelip), polycultures, and sowing and planting using the bio-dynamic calendar (if anything, the latter breaks the frantic spring sowing tasks into nice manageable chunks).

Strawberries, spring onions, garlic and Daikon radish

Broad beans and a few potatoes later followed by turnips

Polyculture of lettuces, rocket, radishes, dill, cabbages, French beans, parsnips

Carrots, onions, beetroot, dill

Early potatoes and mint

Kale, Brussels sprouts and a cover crop of buckwheat and white clover

Brussels sprouts and turnip just sown under a mulch of broad bean crop residue and Elaeagnus branches

In addition, I established a main-crop mulch potato bed in late April/early May on ground previously ‘worked’ by a flock of chickens. I just loosened the somewhat compacted soil with a digging fork, covered the seed potatoes with spoiled hay from the goatyard and then did nothing until harvest time.

May also saw our first chicks of the season hatch and more hens going broody, replenishing the laying flock and, in time, providing meat for the table.

June, mid-summer, came and went with long days seeing all vegetation going into overdrive, providing plenty of food for us, the goats, birds and insects. The sky was patrolled by swallows during the day and bats at night. Land of milk and honey – literally, as we harvested our first ever honey from a hive that had lost its queen which lead to the colony dying off. A new little milk-consumer joined us in the form of ‘Mel’ a little billy-goat born to our nanny Bee. 

With July came the berries – gooseberries, currants and Jostas – though the birds got (much!) more than their fair share, making me contemplate fruit cages. July was very warm and humid, perfect conditions for potato blight. The non-resistant potato varieties needed to be harvested a bit early as a result but gave good yields nonetheless. Together with the later main-crop varieties we got a total of 100 kg of potatoes for very little work. The vacated potato ground was planted up with Brassicas, spring onions, leeks and cover crops (buckwheat and Phacelia). Moreover, underneath the potatoes a volunteer crop of Rainbow chard had grown and really got going once the potatoes had been harvested. It originated from chard seed stalks I had fed to the chickens the previous summer after removing a bunch of the biggest seed for sowing in years to come. Do-nothing-gardening!

Daily breakfast addition to the goatsmilk and oat porridge.

'Tutaekuri' and 'Rudolph' potatoes. We also grew Edzell Blue, Bionica, Pink Fir Apple and Sarpo Mira.

August and September brought plums, damsons, Autumn olives, Gorham and Conference pears, Shinseiki Asian pears, some apples, lots of blackberries and our first own elderberries (‘Haschberg’).

'Hauszwetsche' plums and 'Mrs. Perry' apples. 'Mrs. Perry' is a self-rooting variety from Co. Donegal in the very NW of Ireland (c. 55N)

Damsons from trees our friend Ted Cook gave us many moons ago. I turned them into cake, jam, damson butter, a damson&Amaretto concoction to go with icecream, and spiced damsons in red wine and balsamic vinegar to go with cheese or meats.

Autumn olives (Elaeagnus)

The polytunnel yielded lots of tomatoes (and still does), mangetout peas, runner beans, cucumbers, herbs, a few melons, some sweetcorn. and winter squash while in the garden there was a gradual shift from greens to root crops and Brassicas – carrots, onions, parsnips, turnips, beetroot, red cabbage, kale, Brussels sprouts.

'Most Northern' melon from the Irish Seedsavers

Guatemalan Blue and Queensland Blue pumpkins did great

Trying out lacto-fermentation

If you have livestock you have to get used to deadstock and so in late September we butchered the kid goat before he got a chance to get too ‘friendly’ with his mum, granny and aunts. Goats can mate at 4.5 months of age if the season is right! We finally also managed to sell our two beautiful Saanen-cross surplus nannies from 2013 to a really nice organic farm nearby, thus easing grazing pressure as well as financial pressure. Because our farm is so small we have to buy in our hay and at 4 Euro/small square bale the expense quickly adds up). We are planning to mate two of the remaining five nannies and milk three of them through the winter again.

Ally and her half-sister Lucy, both Saanen crosses, now reside in the Burren, a nearby limestone karst region and goat paradise, and will provide milk next year for a young organic cheese producer who makes the most delicious hard cheeses.

5th grazing rotation in mid-September

A beautiful golden October nicely ripened our remaining Chojuro Asian pears and cooking pears (‘Catillac’) as well as the outdoor pumpkins which grew, together with some zucchini, on a manure heap in the goat field. The first groundfrost hit in late October.

Farm food eclecticism and cucumber kimchi

There is still plenty of produce in the garden and polytunnel, potatoes and pumpkins in storage, meat in the freezer. The last chicken eggs were laid in early November when the last of the hens commenced their annual moult, but this years’ pullets should start any day now as our breeds are good winter-layers, especially the Barnevelders. The pullets typically commence laying sometime between mid-November and the end of the year even though there’s barely 8 hours daylight at that time at this latitude. The older hens tend to come back into lay in January or February.

Over the winter we will make some changes to the backyard and goat field as we have to revamp our derelict goat fence which had been in place for 20 years. The new fencing will allow for new tree plantings around the outside of the goat paddock between the fence and the surrounding drystone wall. I am planning on a mix of elderberry, apples, crabapples and Rugosa roses interspersed with Elaeagnus and alder (Alnus glutinosa) as nitrogen-fixers and for “cut & bring” (or rather “cut and throw over the fence”) goat browse, replacing the existing willows and dead ash trees which had been badly damaged by the goats as the fence deteriorated. I had originally planned to plant alder silvo-pasture-style into the paddock itself, as when it sheds its leaves in the autumn they are still high in protein and other nutrients and the goats like to eat them. However, I have been unable to find tree-shelters that are high enough (2 meters) to prevent the goats from eating the tops. Goats are facultative bipeds which means they can stand on their hind legs in order to reach forage up high. So the goats and the trees will need to be separated by a good fence (I bought RedBrand Sheep&Goat) but by planting alder on the SW side of the field I hope most of the autumn leaves will blow into the goat field with the prevailing winds and thus feed the goats as well as the pasture soil.

The new set-up will also give us back our south-facing backyard which the goats had used over the last 15 odd years. This will give us space for processing the continuously increasing amount of fuelwood coming off the land and also provides space for more vegetable beds and possibly a duck pen and small pond. Ducks would be useful if integrated with the goat field as they consume slugs which are intermediate hosts for gastro-intestinal parasites of goats. Also, there is some run-off from the entrance to the goat shed which so far is only ‘feeding’ the most luxurious stinging nettles ever seen around here. It would be good to channel that fertility into crop-growing beds by way of mini-swales.

All in all 2014 has been a great year on the smallholding. We haven’ t bought any vegetables at all since late April and have had an ample supply of meat, eggs, milk, cheese, fruit and even some honey, with lots to share, barter and sell as well. The only big gap in the larder and on the farmhouse table was left by the almost complete failure of the apple crop. Just as well then I got some cider left from last year! Here’s to 2015, to improvements and new ventures!

[1] See http://www.ragmans.co.uk/_blog/2013/11/experimenting-with-synergistic-garden/