Thursday 28th August 2003
Sacred Comfrey  I got a letter the other day, addressed to "The Rev. James O'Connor, The Manse, Sandmount, Beara".
Now, whereas I am happy to be called a proselitizer of causes, and prone (they tell me!) to preaching about organic/sustainable/GM issues, and, whereas I, and most others of my generation were prepared for the priesthood (Latin and Greek and Gregorian chant - handy when hand-milking cows - and Tridentine mass-saying for us Tipperary farm-boys) by the mightily peculiar, Irish, theocratic educational system of the 1950s and '60s, and, whereas I did attend Maynooth College - clerical capital of Ireland and seat of real power 'till recent times - in the 1990s (to study history incidentally), I never did receive Holy Orders (DG!). 
Reverential, I like to think of myself at times, but Reverend, I am not! 
But I did smile at the anonymous joke (and maybe I still have a sneaking regret that I didn't go for the dog collar - 50% of my class of '63 did! But, fascinatingly, none of them were consecrated in the end, and instead went on to be fag salesmen, and dairy scientists, and farmers, and alcoholics etc - but no perverts that I know of!). 
The enclosure, however, in the sacrilegious envelope, was very special. It was 5 photocopied pages of a chapter on comfrey taken from a reasonably modern source. 
The opening sentence reads; "Russian comfrey and garlic could together, according to natural health usage, almost halve the present ills of western civilization." The rest of the chapter is a wonderful panagyric on comfrey that I would have been proud to write myself.  
I have seen it before and meant to include it in my file on comfrey, But memory...... 
Would the sender please expose themselves(!) so that I can thank him/her properly. I would also like to identify the source of the material. When I get a spare moment, in the winter, I will type the extract into a dedicated comfrey page. 
Once more, I have seen the incredible healing powers of comfrey (and the antiseptic and antibiotic properties of freshly-squeezed natural garlic - as I tended my heavily-sprained ankle and fishhook-gored hand. And the fertilizing qualities, of particularly the comfrey concentrate that I make, is simply miraculous. 
No organic gardener or farmer should be without this incredible plant. If you haven't got it you are, in my opinion, more likely to be an "organic subsidy farmer" rather than the real McCoy! 
So there! 

Wednesday 27th August 2003 
Continued welcome to the streams of Country Smallholding visitors coming to the site for the first time. Subscription details. Telephone, 01 392 888 588. Fax 01 392 888 590. Email, subs.csh@archant.co.uk  The cost is £43.00 (approx. €64.00) for 12 issues. But remember - if you are balking at the cost - there are 100 pages of mouth-watering articles in each issue. The UK sub price is £27.00.

Farmers Markets Rocketing in Ireland - I will have an article next week on the phenomenal growth and consumer popularity of these markets in Ireland. See the updated Where to Buy page for contact details for all the popular markets. Please let me know of others that I may have missed.

Monday 25th August 2003 - I rewrote, again, the piece below - Archaeological Vandalism etc. It was a mite sloppy. Excuses: I'm missing the use of a digit at the moment - fish hook-speared, sprained an ankle and a hand and my head is turned by the continuing phenomena of the sea and its shores in this great warm spell. Saturday night last, there was the most extraordinary phosphorescence in the water - it was downright alien! Nobody here had ever seen anything like it before. It was perhaps to do with the Red Tide - decomposing plankton? - that is sweeping into the bay these last days. Mackerel matters and boat and engine maintenance still taking up a lot of spare energy. Guests and garden still keeping me busy. Big influx expected next weekend as the Big Big Ships come in. Expected, with many others, is the American 8,500 ton, 350 crew, guided missile destroyer, USS The Sullivans. See www.bearatourism.com 

Finding Farmers Markets  Sean Mc Ardle is the entrepreneur behind several of the Irish Farmers Markets, including the very successful Leopardstown one. Several visitors were looking for his contact details, which were not complete on my Where to Buy page. Sorry about that; here they are now, for the benefit of all; Irish Organic Trading Ltd., Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow. Tel. 0404 43885.

Archaeological Vandalism and a Stolen Goddess  (This article was originally in News, 8th July. I have changed it substantially and reintroduced it here. See About/Contact page (click on Poetry), for an introduction to the subject  of  Sheela na gigs and a potted history in verse). 
In the light of the recent national controversy over Carrickmines Castle, near Dublin - motorway endangering historical remains etc - it is perhaps instructive to the rest of the country and the authorities that one of the greatest acts of archaeological vandalism ever committed in this country was perpetrated in the grounds of another castle, Kiltinan, in South Tipperary, some years ago. This was done without so much as a whimper from anybody at the time. It was the '70s, sure, and the Merck Sharpe & Dohme doodahs in Tipperary hadn't yet given birth to the modern environmental/conservation movement. I too am at fault - we were young then, and too involved with desperate getting and spending! I and my newly-wed wife, Karen, spent a glorious 4 years living in Kiltinan Castle in the 1970s, as caretakers.  
Today, the castle estate is known as Kiltinan Stud Farm, and is owned by the famous Thatcherite, Lord Webber - he of Cats and Phantom fame.
The previous owners of the property were the mega-rich Americans, Ogden and "McGee" White, who had bought the property when we were in tenure there. I got to know them quite well and was involved in advising them on local affairs, history and so on. They seemed to be open to local traditions and respectful of the history and archaeology of that unique place and environment. For example, they acted on my strong advice not to evict a well-known and much-liked local family from a building they were legally entitled to repossess and instead enticed them generously to move. We all thought at the time that this was a good solution but were perplexed when the Whites had the house, The Barracks, a family home for generations, demolished and restored a bleak, arched gateway in its stead. We were not then educated in the whims, motives and paranoias of these new invaders. 
However, worse was to come. l had waxed lyrical to the Whites about the uniquenesss of a 25 acre field called the North Rock and the underlying remains of the mediaeval town of Kiltinan. The contours were dramatically visible from the air but also very obvious on the ground.
In a huge and efficient operation, involving some of the biggest earth-moving machines in pre-motorway Ireland, all the topsoil was peeled off from the 25 acres, and the un-excavated, mediaeval  Kiltinan village beneath bulldozed away into land-fill and oblivion. 
The topsoil was carefully graded back onto the newly-level subsoil, tilled, sown with modern grass seeds and post-and-railed into horse-paddocks.
This wanton destruction of Irish heritage was carried out simply, but unbelievably, to protect the privacy-paranoid Whites from the incursions of the unwashed "mere Irish" public (there were rights-of-way across the land to a holy well and the river), their nosy historians (like myself?) and archaeologists. This was done by people who called themselves conservationists! And also interested in Irish history - Mrs White's particular claim. Her refusal to return an invaluable local history book (usually a niggardly, priest thing) I loaned her, was, perhaps a symptom of that interest - or just sheer possessiveness. I suspect that the only conservation that the Whites and their likes are really interested in is the protection of WASP old money and privilege and privacy. 
There is a published photograph of the extraordinary contours of the ravaged field at Kiltinan before this act of deliberate, conscious vandalism.
There is a further act of vandalism associated with the Whites' occupancy of Kiltinan Castle. A Sheela na gig*, a mediaeval (or earlier) stone figure of a naked female, often referred to as a "fertility goddess", was stolen from the ruin of Kiltinan Church in the grounds of the Whites'  Kiltinan estate (today Webber's Kiltinan Stud Farm) in 1990. 
Despite an international investigation involving Interpol - even the CIA - and the indicting of several people (including a Garda sergeant!) for similar heists of field monuments, the exotic stone figure, valued by some sources at the time at £3 million, remains lost.
There is an ancient, public right-of-way from the nearby road to the old church and graveyard. The Whites tried to sever that local right and custom, but it was colourfully, and effectively fought for in the 1980s by Fethard's, doughty firebrand, Mary Healy (now sadly gone to her reward), author of the wonderful memoir,  For the Poor and For the Gentry (Geoghraphy Publications, 1989). Dear, lively, feisty Mary was ahead of her time with her passionate concerns for our heritage whilst the rest of us were grubbing for a living in pre-Celtic Tiger - at almost any cost.
It suited the haughty and hyper-private Whites very well that the much-visited, Sheela figure, like the ancient village site was "disappeared" one winter's night.
It is very curious that this now-famous sculpture (the local historical society played a major role in publicising the theft) has not resurfaced.
Could the explanation be that the figure was removed from its church-wall setting and buried nearby with the remains of the mediaeval town? 
This removal and burial was the fate - if for very different reasons -  of many of the Sheela figures in the past, as puritanical prelates and others tried (usually vainly, in the face of implacable local devotion to the images) to save the Irish from lust and images thereof. 
Someone knows, locally, I am sure. Talk to me? Talk to the Gardaí or the National Museum
Perhaps this could be a better line of enquiry for the investigative organs of the State to pursue, rather than harassing good citizens and grnuine conservationists like myself!  But, Sin scéal eile! See below.
An exact replica of the stolen figure, carved by myself and intended to replace in the church wall, the missing Sheela can be seen here in my place on Beara!
It should be in the wall of the church in Kiltinan, but there was an intereasting glitch when I was supposed to pass it over to the local historical society during a renowned celebration/festival in 1991, A Gig for Sheela.
The story of the Sheelas and the carving of the replica is told in a booklet I wrote in 1991, Sheela na gig. Some copies are still available, from myself, € 8.00 post paid to Europe. 
The intriguing, somewhat farcical developments since then, will be told in a new booklet which I am writing for publication later this year. 
And, if you ask, "What has all this to do with organics, Jim" - all I will say is, "You have not been reading my site regularly, me ould segushas. Search in Archives, for Coolmore, Kiltinan, Boodstock, Secretely Organic Stud Farms, Webber etc.

Tuesday 18th August 2003
Smallholders organic and otherwise Welcome to the new visitors from Country Smallholding magazine. Thank you for reading my article in this September's issue and for the supportive emails and telephone calls (especially that of WH, Cork). See the item on CS (An absolutely must-have magazine) below. There is much of interest to UK readers throughout the site. I usually have about several updates per week but I am taking time out this August for social and family reasons. Full tilt again in September. News&Comment Archive  And, as a relief from the more serious stuff, read about my Corwall-based brother's interesting trip last year - From Southern Spain to Penzance - by horseback!  Enjoy the visit. 

The Mother of all the Beets  Beta Maritima/Sea Beet, the progenitor of all beets, inluding sugar beet - grows wild by the seashore here at Bantry Bay. Can be easily propagated in the garden for an all-year-round spinach-type vegetable. Send S.A.E. for some free seeds and information to start you off.

Wednesday 13th August 2003
I'll be back! That is, I'm not back yet - fully at least. Thanks for all your emails, with holiday, good-fishing and birthday greetings, and about subjects you think I should deal with - when I do manage to drag myself away from current(!) obsessions with la mére and its wild foods and nutrients (fresh fish for immediate consumption and cold-smoked for the autumn and winter, plus seaweed harvesting and so on).
Somethings you have reminded me of: the Pope and his volte face on GM (who got to him? The New World Order?); former Irish oganic Ag Min Davern's brave stance on smoking (the bould Noel's been a smoker for 43 years and was once a fag salesman! Who got to him? Big Tobacco?), Ag Min Joe at the Galway Races (although no one, in my camp at least, thinks he's ever at the races! Everyone gets to Joe!), etc etc.
All these to be digested and regurgitated later, perhaps like the sand eels from my beloved mackerel. On the subject of fish - some are calling me Mackerel Jim rather than Organic Jim these days. The silver darlings have been giving up their wild and savage life-force for my benefit and that of friends and neighbours in increasing quantities during this astonishing, protracted, dry and warm spell. I launch the now superbly-functioning and safe (praying that I won't hit the rocks I grazed last night) Zodiac again on the flooding Spring tide this evening.

Blah Blah Blog I will have a Blog page soon, musing on such things as fishing, the weather, life and all that. I have many recent stories, of moonlighing in the bay with phosphorescent wavelets; strange creatures that go Splash! in the night: a story of local(!) elephant dung - art isn't the only use for the mammoth's gigantic No. 2 (or is it No.1?) and similar blah. 
Should I charge entry to the page? My telephone bill - elephantine! - is now overdue. Send replies on the back of a € 20 note. 

An absolutely must-have magazine  Country Smallholding, the popular English monthly publication, this September (but out now), publishes an essay of mine, Land of Contrasts, Organic Food in Ireland - Past, Present and Future. The 3,500 word piece, with supporting photographs (one great one of a thatched eco-house in Tipperary and, don't worry, my rugged mug only appears on one) should have "something for everybody in the audience". 
The lovely people at CS headlined me on the front cover. My ego is soaring, for the moment anyway. I apparently just missed having a photograph of mine on the cover - but the hens have it, Marans, I believe the feathered buggers are called. Mmm - chicken soup?
I'm not going to blow my own trumpet - too much that is!  But I think, in all (possible!) humility you should all read it. I lay out my cards, most of them, and because I hate repetition - and, of course, not least, owe it to CS and its excellent editor for first publication, it will not be included here on Planorganic, in part or in full, for the conceivable future.
So, those of you in Ireland who will be very interested - for attempted libel actions or whatever - you can only see it by demanding Country Smallholding in the shops (little hope with Ireland's biggest magazine seller, Eason's - they are still as useless and as inefficient as when I dealt with, and competed against, them in the '70s and '80s - toffee-nosed West Brit-run!) or by subscribing.
It will hurt some of you, a tiny if powerful minority, I know, to pay - and dream of making me pay! - for what I say about them. Pity about you. Empathy for you other decent sticks - but there are some things worth buying.
Here are the subscription details. Telephone, 01 392 888 588. Fax 01 392 888 590. Email, subs.csh@archant.co.uk  The cost is £43.00 (approx. € 64.00) for 12 issues. The UK price is £27.00. I tried to negotiate a discount for new Irish buyers, but CS has good and, I think, fair reasons for the differential. 
So there, if you want to read up - pay up! (it must be the killing of the fish - I'm developing my ruthless streak).
You might be pleasantly surprised at how much you organic (mostly anyway, there are the Ministries' and Monsanto goons who read me carefully too) types would like this magazine - apart from reading my immortal words! Its 100 pages are tightly packed witih luscious articles and photographs. It opens with Diane Cowgill's editorial piece on the UK, GM debate - "more expensive and inappropriate farming methods are not the answer to world hunger - there has to be the poltical will to do something about distribution and inequality." 
Features this month are; Wild Harvest /Wild Food (my favourite), Heather Honey (I'm looking forward to local man Donal's nectar from the heather of Hungry Hill), Perfect Partners (companion planting) and, forgive me for drooling - I'm a bit of a mechanic - I adored the article on old tractors - A Tractor for All . The leading pic is of a pristine, 1960s Ford Super Dexta - God help, I loved that tractor - took my first date (at 14) out on one.
 And the ads, there are so many - and so interesting to us organic /smallholding, product-famished Irish. 
How about a tractor for £ 2,950? No, not a model for the mantlepiece, but a new, full-spec, full-size, 4 Wheel Drive, power-steered yokybus. Don't believe it? Read the full, back-page ad. of this September issue of CS. 
New tractors at that price puts my battered, s/h Ford 3610, for sale at € 3,500 (including engine trouble and rust) in perspective. 
And the two-wheel tractors from just over £1,000 - and the diesel generators for £570 - and the Ferrari (green, sadly) mini-tractors and, and, and......................Sigh! You can keep your chickens, and your eggs  - just give me the smell of a three cylinder tractor in the morning. 
Oh, to be in England, now that summer's (and cheap mini-tractors) here.

Of clay and wattles made The Hollies, at Enniskeane, West Cork, continues with the cob-building of their hard-fought-for eco-village. Maith na buachaillí and na cailliní. 
See their Building Diary which has just been updated with new pictures on the progress of the buildings; http://homepage.eircom.net/~thehollies/pages/build_diary.html 

Leopardstown Farmers' Market  Anyone know the organiser Sean McArdle's tel no.? Several of my readers want to book a stall at this increasingly popular Friday market. One of them wants to make dried biltong and South African beef sausage available to the jaded Irish palate!
The latter has nothing to do with the story mentioned above about elephant manure, which, all together, was a bit of a circus! Ba - boom! 

Got to go - more guests arriving shortly. Need a new Long-Drop!

Quote of the week ".... Americans have eaten GM food for about seven years now and they haven't suffered. But nobody has actually investigated the effect of GM consumption on public health in the US. The argument doesn't make sense, and to have it coming from a (UK) scientific panel is really quite sad. See Prof Carlo Leifert, this week , resigning from a UK gov. GM advisory body.
Note  "Sic" means to turn on or to attack; used literally in commands to a dog or, metaphorically, any way you like. Dialect variation of "seek", evolved in the 19th C.
Some non-native-English speakers of the site sometimes have problems with understanding my writing. And then get further confused when wind-up, mischief-makers "interpret" for them.
 See examples of usage immediately below, and in Don't burn the chicken shit item, Thursday.
 No more lessons after this though - ne compromiso! - so get out the TEFL books in future and a good dictionary.

Saturday 2nd August 2003
Spring Fever That old warrior, Willy Spring, is pitching into battle again this afternoon in  Killarney. The issue that ignites the voluble, organic activist* this time is the use of South American beef in the hotels and restaurants of the tourist capital. He will be leading a cavalcade of farmers into the Paddywhackery capital, and local traders are trembling at the prospect of losing sales of Keltic Kitsch (to cheer them up though, there may be an up-turn in sales of shillelaghs!).
Willy is a Kerry, organic beef farmer and a lively member of the board of the Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association. I understand however that he does not have IOFGA's sanction for this action. Indeed he doesn't have the support of the main farmers' bodies, the IFA or ICMSA, either.
But Spring and Kerry, undeterred, are ever a law unto themselves - in any case it's the middle of the silly season - and a big turnout is expected to rattle the war drums. No big names, but ex-Jun.Ag Min O'Keefe (pig scandal?) is expected to speechify beside Spring.
Today Kerry leads - tomorrow the world will follow!
Sic it to 'em Willy! 

A spokesperson for Killarney's beleaguered (tourists, like the mackerel this year, are scarce) hostelries says that the problem is not theirs; that they are unwittingly using foreign beef. 
He claims that S.Am. beef is being imported, relabeled and sold to caterers as Irish beef. 
That any Irish beef processor would do such a thing! Unheard of! 
Maybe we need another tribunal to look into it?
So, Willy, now that you have brought attention to the "problem" (WTO rules - not for Kerry)  of imports as you currently see it, how about going one further step and tackle the source of the illegal re-labeling. That's, surely, a more serious issue,  indeed a criminal offence, is it not?

*It seems to me to be a bit ironic that an organic beef farmer is demonstrating against consuming near-organic beef from Brazil's Matto Grosso and the Argentinian Pampas (I have seen it at first hand and once considered buying a 25,000 acre  - for $50,000! - hacienda to produce organic beef) and promoting our own dubious - BSE, Angel Dust etc - and expensive, conventional stuff instead.

Sowing Wild Oats   As the conventionally farmed salmon industry goes down the tubes - our immediate local one here (800 yards off-shore) for example, has been seized by the banks - it's interesting to hear that organic farmed salmon* has somewhat different prospects. Clare Island Sea Farm, off the west of Ireland, has secured a contract to supply a U.S. health-food multiple. Wild Oats Markets Inc. is to introduce Irish organic farmed salmon into all its stores that currently carry farmed and wild-caught salmon. The company says that the Irish product meets all their requirements and that the fish are equal to Alaskan wild salmon. Except for price that is. You can buy a can of Alskan Wild for not much more than a € in Aldi or Lidl. You'd have to mortgage the house to buy the Clare pelagics in any form. See Archives

*An organic standards' inspector once told me that "organically farmed" salmon is "a contradiction in terms". 
What do you think?

The Irish Organic Event of the Year - certainly in spirit. The Organic College in Dromcollogher, Co Limerick will be having their annual Féile na Bprataí - Festival of Potatoes - on Saturday 13th Sept. Contact the Director, Jim McNamara for more details at jimmcnamara@eircom.net and tel. 063 8604.
Look up my Archives for reports of previous Féiles. 

Gone Fishing  I'm putting up a "Gone Fishing" sign for the next few days as I lie back to enjoy the mackerel fishing, The Castletownbere Sea Festival weekend, my birthday, and the company of friends. No emails will be looked at, no update posted, until Thursday next - or thereabouts - depending on the fishing. So save your cents and get out and about - preferably on the water
Apropos fishing, I must tell you sometime about the salvage of my half-rotted, ant-eaten Zodiac and its final midnight re-launch. And the joys of being out on the Bay on a nice day and the mackerel - and the way they might look at you, just before being hotsmoked over a hazel twig fire ......Bliss! 

News Freaks  For those, who for one reason or another, aren't getting themselves aired next week, and are still hungy for organic news, subscribe to this newsletter - Organic Update July 2003 - in the meantime.  Apply to listserv@cgnet.com orr  organicresearch@cabi.org. 
Tell Doroszenko I sent you.