Happy Christmas



Robert Cresswell's 1956 image of the kitchen at Cloonasee

 In 1956 Robert Cresswell, an anthropologist, lived on this farm for a year and completed a major photographic study of farming life around Kinvara.

The two room, corrugated iron roofed cottage that he stayed in, with no running water or electricity, has since been renovated. The original fireplace is the only part that remains (although stripped of its gloss paint showing the beautiul original cut stone finish.)

In 2010 Robert Cresswell donated his archive to the nation and the photographs can be viewed at Robert Cresswell photographs. It is a wonderful and valuable resource, especially the colour kodachrome slides which were very high tech at the time.

Since my last post I have been submerged in the tidal wave of work for design and tender of the nature centre.  I have handed over my voluntary job at Irish Therapy dogs to the new Galway rep Becky,  I havn't done any work with the young pony in the last month, there has been no zumba, qi gong or running and I have been unable to get time to write my blog.

We have decided on the name 'Burren Botanic' as it will focus on the rare and unusual flora of the Burren that will be viewed on the nature trail. We hope to begin work in the Spring.

To try and stay in budget we will be doing the barn conversion with direct labour so every item has to be priced for the Galway rural development board meeting at the end of January. We have to get three quotes for everything....decisions, decisions... With Christmas approaching the pressure was on but as from today there is no point attempting to work on it until after the holidays as the country will be closed for business.

I want to wish my readers a very happy Christmas and to thank everyone for their support over the last year. It has been a very enriching experience engaging with such a positive and interesting audience.

I hope to pick up my writing at a later stage and any of my readers who would like to keep track of progress on the nature centre please be our friend us on facebook at 'burren botanic' and if you ever land in Kinvara come and visit the 'Burren Botanic' nature centre and farm cafe.

Opening soon!

The website address will be http://www.burrenbotanic.com/ -hosting will begin in January and I will open up a twitter account asap.

By my sister Caroline Assheton

Have  a COOL YULE

Nice November

Last leaf

I was up Abbey Hill on Saturday and everyone I met, scampering across the rocks like goats, had a beaming smile. It was a lovely sunny day; November has been mild, unlike the ice and snow of last year.

I am going to visit my relations in London on Saturday and will visit the highly rated London Wetland Centre. It is a 105 acre wildlife sanctuary in the middle of London with a café and adventure play area. I intend to steal their best ideas for the Kinvara Nature Park. The only update on the project this week is that I was talking to a lady from the fisheries board who said there could be rare eels in the turlough, I have just been down to look under stones with no success! There were 13 wild duck which was a nice sight.

I have leant over Sunshine, the 3 yr old pony now and he seems happy to accept my weight, his mouth is made and the next step is to ride him. I normally sit up on them in the stable first but I would appreciate any sharing of ideas from ranchers reading this as although we have ‘joined up’ a bit (see video) he is extremely active and can be very wild.

News from Austria is that the grey pony Floyd has been sold on and is going really well for his new owner show jumping.

My poor cow, 79, who got cut at the TB test in September, has never recovered. The small cut became infected and despite two strong courses of antibiotics the infection only got worse. It became an abscess on the joint at the top of her hind leg (the equivalent to our knee) I changed tactics and put her on the recommended homeopathic remedy, silica, and drained it and washed it out with salt and water and everything that was suggested from cider vinegar to tea tree to cayenne pepper. The infection seems to have gone but she hasn’t put that foot on the ground for two months now and the whole muscle of her hind quarters has wasted away. She is eating well in the stable but doesn’t seem to be improving and this morning spent a couple of hours trying to get up. The vet says the joint has seized from a deep infection and she should go to the knackers. She is not in calf which is a good thing and I don’t want her to suffer. Martina, my qi gong instructor is going to do bioenergy on the leg on Friday, but that is her last chance and if it works it will be a miracle. It looks like I will be making that call. She is 12 years old which is a good age for a cow but she has been such a good patient I hate to send her off to the factory.

I was at the Organic Farmers and Growers Association AGM on Sunday and apart from sharing a table with Trevor Sargent (former green party minister for food and horticulture) which was interesting, I also came up with a great idea with the elderly lady sitting next to me. To put eco-pods on our farms (these are timber egg shaped permanent tent like things) and offer people a night on an organic farm with a basket of food to cook! We are going to plot all the organic farms on the map of Ireland and see if we can get a route for bicyclists with a pod roughly every 40 miles. They can come in and get dry by the fire if its raining!

I won’t be posting next week.

Jim McKee's exhibition 'from the hearth' and funding available for Kinvara Nature Park

The Bee Orchid, one of the Burren flowers found on the farm

 Before I left for the meeting with Galway Rural Development last week I went down to the barn to feed the animals. The young doe hare sat up in the long grass and lolloped off into the wintery sun. I knew it was my lucky day. In August we were topping the fields with the tractor (cutting thistles) and my husband came in with a baby hare that had narrowly escaped the blades. It was only a couple of weeks old and so soft and adorable my 7 year old daughter fell in love with it and desperately wanted to keep it. She put her in with the guinea pigs that night but after researching on the internet it seems that the mother hare leaves her young dotted around in different places by themselves for safety sake and most likely would come looking for her. So with many tears we left her back next to the old boat to take her chance in the wild. Sure enough a couple of weeks later I spotted mother and daughter haring around together!

The meeting was a great success. The Kinvara Nature Park ticks all the right boxes for funding and although there is work to be done on the business plan it will go to the board in January and should qualify for the full amount at 50%. We are over the moon as they are the only people with any money and having their support also means a lot of other back up; mentoring, employment grants etc. The biodiversity officer is coming to assess the farm and they will be promoting it as an eco-tourism project. I am really looking forward to seeing the results from the turlough as she is a specialist in them. The turlough is a fresh water lake on the farm which   drains twice a day as it is connected to the underground Blackwater river that disperses at the foot of Dunguaire castle in Kinvara. The tide pushes the river back up into the swallow holes twice a day and this could lead to some unusual species.

Having got such a great response from Jim Mckee’s music a couple of weeks ago I have posted a video below of his exhibition of paintings in the Kenny gallery in Galway. What an abundance of creativity….

I have my own creative person in the house, 5 yrs old and totally wearing me out at the moment. Her ‘projects’ are so numerous it is impossible to keep the house in order. In the last week alone we have had: crayons unwrapped and put in a bun tray in the oven to make new colours and shapes, a penguin made from

scrunched up balls of newspaper and about a mile of sellotape, Christmas decorations made of wet loo paper wrapped around plastic bottles, lots of objects wrapped in cling film and many different items made out of wool and beads.

She has tied all her clothes together and hung them over her bed in a camp and has turned a large pink ball of wool into about 50 small balls. She wants to open a stall on the pavement in front of Geraldine’s knitting shop in the village to compete in the wool trade. Many tantrums ensue when her efforts do not go to plan, her wool gets knotted or she is told that Geraldine might not appreciate a wool stand in front of her window. Let’s hope it all gets channelled in the right direction eventually and maybe even an exhibition in the Kenny gallery!

Searching for finance for the Kinvara Nature Park



Old Irish 3 penny coin



  The original business plan for the Kinvara Nature Park written in 2007 took 4 months to complete. Now that the project is active again I have had to update it in the last week. It has changed from a new 'state of the art' sustainably built, ecocentre to a conversion of the existing barn. It reflects the fact that everyone's aspirations have shrunk. The good thing is that building and labour costs have drastically dropped in 4 years. The bad news is that finance is as scarce as hen's teeth!

It has been early starts to try and get it done before the kids get up as they have been on midterm break. Last Tuesday I had a meeting with the Galway City and County Enterprise Board. I brought the two girls with me and they grilled the receptionist about Santa Claus as I was talking to Breda Fox the chief executive.

I didn't expect any joy from GCCEB as I had heard they had very little funding but as they supported the original feasability study I wanted to approach them first. Our only real chance is with Galway Rural Development, word has it that they have only used 30% of their funding and must use it by December or they lose their quota. Breda Fox is also on the board of GRD and is going to recommend the project. The meeting is at midday today and will  determine the future of the project. They won't need much convincing that facilities are needed around Kinvara but it all depends on whether we tick all the right boxes.

I have also been working on a new logo. It is a line drawing of that mythical Irish animal the hare. I tried to post it but it didn't work so above is the lovely old Irish 3p coin with the hare design.

The concept of the nature centre is to provide an experience of the Burren flora and fauna (including the famous rare wild alpine flowers and orchids) on the nature trail around the farm with information points linking to seasonal exhibits at the centre. The barn will also have an artisan farm cafe with seasonal fresh food to keep the adults happy and indoor and outdoor adventure play equipment for children.

The idea is to motivate children around the nature walk with zip wires and tree houses to play in and information boards to collect information from. It would also be an ideal introduction for hikers wishing to experience the Burren and all its natural wealth and beauty. There have been a few initiatives for education in the Burren such as the Burren centre in Kilfenora which has a great exhibition but it is all done through photographs and film rather than experiencing and connecting with nature and the stone. There are also plenty of guided walks in the hills which are wonderful for active people. The nature centre would really be just a taster of all the Burren has to offer and what better place to start than Kinvara, the 'gateway to the Burren'. Any suggestions as to what visitors would like would be welcome.

BBC2 has been doing a beautifully filmed documentary 'Monty Halls great escapes' He has been in Connemara, where the scenery is looking magical. See below the amazing footage of diving with conger eels in the first episode. This week he was was swimming and trying to tag basking sharks off Malin head.

Michael D returns to Galway and a proper scare at Halloween

President Michael D Higgins opens the Cruinniu na Mbad festival 2011, Kinvara.

5000 people greeted our new president Michael D Higgins in Galway city on Sunday. And there are alot of smiling faces in Kinvara .

Halloween went well, if you judge it by the mountainous pile of sweets the girls managed to accumulate trick or treating. They dressed as a witch and her cat. My seven year old wore her rosary beads with the witch costume, which I thought was edgy (and got a few disapproving looks).

‘It’s my death power’

When my son was 15 he wanted to go and hang around the village with his friends on Halloween night. It’s a tricky age, too cool to trick or treat but too young to party in the pubs. None of the parents would allow it, they had got in trouble with bangers the year before, so the four boys were collected and ended up sulking in our house.

‘Why don’t you watch a scary movie?’

‘Boring’…moan moan…’

‘This is rubbish’…grumble grumble.

Then they had the bright idea of going to sleep down the field in a single skin tent. It was actually a kind of garden gazebo, totally useless in windy, wet, late October. They probably wanted to sneak  into the village when we were asleep.

I sent our neighbour Sean a text

‘The boys are in a tent in the field across from you, go and freak them out’

He took up the challenge with great gusto dressing up completely in black with a long white ghoulish mask.

He sneaked over the wall. He could see the light of a torch in the tent and hear the boys on their mobile phones acting cool.

‘Yeah…. we’re in a tent….’

Sean tossed a stone onto the roof. They fell silent

‘What was that?’

‘Probably just a bird shiteing…’

Sean crouched down beside a rock, hiding his head.

My son appeared out of the tent with a dim torch.

‘Hey lads it’s a badger’

They crept over towards him, peering at the ground.

Then he threw the torch at Sean (lucky it wasn’t a rock)

Sean lifted up his head and started dragging himself across the ground towards them, moaning.

They screamed and four black silhouettes were last seen running as fast as they could over the horizon.

My mobile rang ‘Mum, mum’ pant, pant, ‘someone was at our tent’

They all agreed it was ‘legend’

A proper scare at Halloween.

Planning was granted for the nature centre. We can’t believe our luck. I rang the appeals board on what I thought was the last day and asked if anything was in. They said that an appeal was in the inbox that morning (our objector always leaves it until the last day to drag out things as much as possible) but that the appeal period had ended at 5.30pm the previous day, so it was being sent back as invalid. We can’t believe our luck. Its back to the enterprise board tomorrow. They funded the original feasibility study in 2007, hopefully there might be some support available.

The Berwick and Whooper swans are coming in from Greenland to overwinter on the turloughs. Its lovely to hear their wings whooping above as they fly low, and look up to see their beautiful long necks stretched, searching for a nice calm stretch of water to land on .

Michael D returns to Galway 

the lad with the long ears



Irish Donkeys Finlay and Beartlai



There is something special about a donkey. It’s their naughty nature and those adorable ears.

When I first went to Ballinasloe fair in 1987 the price of a donkey was 5 punts. If I had rented a big field and bought them all up I would be a donkey tycoon today! The place was flooded with them. No longer needed to pull the little orange donkey carts full of turf, people had got fed up of looking at them standing about in the field, and loaded them up into their traillers to sell at the fairs. Tragically most of them ended up on the boat to France for salami or in a truck destined for the horse abattoir to feed the lions in Dublin zoo.

They then became quite scarce and it is much rarer now to see ‘the lad with the long ears’ leaning out over a gate. In the Celtic tiger years the price of a donkey reached 1000 euro. Now that common sense has been restored to Ireland they are advertised on the Done Deal trading website for between 50 and 200 euro.

Interestingly donkeys, who seem to be a symbol of rural Ireland, were only introduced during the Napoleonic wars, around 1800, when many horses were bought up to be used in the war and replaced with donkeys imported from Spain.

I met Finlay and Bartlai (above) this week and they are such characters they stole my heart. Finlay was put into his shed lately to await the farrier who was coming to trim his hooves. He managed to levitate and jump out of a small window. That is only one of his many amazing achievements! They really are charming and are meant to bring luck to a farm. I think we will have to go shopping.

We have had our own fair share of luck this week with my husband securing one of those illusive Irish jobs; he will be looking after a fleet of buses in Galway city. It became available because unfortunately the Brazilian mechanic who had worked there for the last few years was unable to renew his work permit. The government has clamped down on issuing permits for non nationals. What is also good is he starts at 7.30 and will therefore avoid sitting in the famous Galway rush hour traffic for hours every day.

I have been working on the young pony every day and he has stopped looking as if he is constantly under threat of attack by a mountain lion. I was very excited when he started to walk around at my shoulder, turning right and left and halting when I stop, even backing up if I walk backwards. But although he turns towards me now from the outside of the ring he refuses to approach me more than a step or two and I have to walk in towards him. So I think that is cheating a bit and I am really joining up with him rather than him with me?

See the donkey sanctuary

high winds and shipwrecks in the wild west

3 year old Connemara cross

There are high winds and a strange, warm, misty rain like the end of the world. It is shipwreck weather, with two Danish sailors rescued off the coast of Cork in gale force winds and a haul of silver worth 127 million found lately off the coast of Galway. We have been cowering inside by the fire most of the week.

I have made some progress with the three year old pony and can now get him out to the arena and back into his stable. I had to divide the arena into two with white electric tape to keep him away from the gate and he is now lunging on both reins and turning when asked. He is also happily wearing the breaking tack and side reins. The first day he felt the girth around him he catapulted his two back heels high into the sky and I thanked the Almighty that I wasn’t on board. The quality and athleticism of the Connemara pony originates from Spanish bloodlines. When the Armada was wrecked of the Irish shore, the white Spanish horses (something like today’s Lipizzaners swam in and bred with the tough little native ponies. A Spanish person also washed up on Island Eddie, the tiny little Island in Kinvara bay and the family became the Corless’ (Originally Carlos).

As he is so wild when you take him out of the stable I decided to try the Monty Roberts technique on him. I you tubed Monty doing his famous ‘join up’.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Dx91mH2voo

The horse is meant to run around and the human chases him. You keep your body square to the horse and keep looking him in the eye. We did that very well. I kept looking, he kept running. Eventually the horse starts to flick his inside ear towards the human. Amazingly this did happen after a few minutes. Then he is meant to slightly turn his head towards you as he goes around. He did as predicted- how easy was this… He should then start licking and chewing, like a foal and drop his head in a sign of submission. I couldn’t believe it when he started doing exactly. At that point you are meant to become passive and turn away at a 45 degree angle and drop your gaze to the ground. He should then walk over to you and start following you around like a dog and you can put the saddle on and jump up with a bond that will never be broken as he is so desperate to be your friend, you can ride him bareback, backwards etc etc and he will willingly do whatever you desire.

Only he didn’t walk over to me. I kept repeating all the steps but when he is meant to ‘join up’ he makes it quite clear that I am an impostor and he does not want to be part of my herd. He stands cemented to the ground shaking and looking terrified. I tried standing and waiting, walking away, putting the rope on him and pulling him towards me. No way José. No join up! I feel flawed. He did the horse bit right, it was the human that couldn’t speak the right language. I had visions of him following me around, with ribbons in his long black mane, bowing and lying down like a circus pony. He obviously has different ideas, mostly about getting back into the field and eating grass with his REAL friends. Maybe trying to join up with the whole world collapsing around us in a hurricane was a bit ambitious; I am trying not to take it personally

autumn berries and cows to the mart

Spindle Tree

Galway County Council has granted planning permission to open the farm as a nature park, with a farm café and indoor playground in the barn. The one objecting neighbour now has two weeks to lodge an appeal and this will take Bord Pleanála, in Dublin, 18 weeks to process.

The Autumn berries are on the hedgerows; holly, red hops, sloes and blackberries. Hazelnuts are ripe and mushrooms are magically appearing in the mornings. I love watching out for the surprising pink berries of a lone windswept Spindle tree on the side of the road, shining out against the backdrop of the blue-grey Burren rock.

The calves have gone to the mart. They made the best price ever with the heaviest at 295 kilos making €895. This would be twice what they normally sell for. It seems whilst the rest of the world is investing in gold we are sinking our spare cash into fat cows; wealth marked by the size of your herd, like the nomadic Maasai people in Kenya. Farmers are too scared to put their money in the banks and the prices at the marts have rocketed.

It is the time of year to stable the three year old pony and start his training. He is another half Connemara, a beautiful yellow dun colour with black mane and tail, about 15.2hh high. I caught him yesterday to put him in for the winter and he was very obliging, letting me put the bridle with the training bit on without any fuss. He also let me brush him all over, which I was delighted about as he hasn’t had much handling, and I cut the end off two long dreadlocks in his mane that had tangled into a rope from three years of freedom.  I was so excited about his good behaviour I decided to try and get him into the arena to start teaching him to lunge. But on seeing his sister, who started roaring at him with separation anxiety, he jumped out over the 5 bar gate back into the yard and I was lucky to persuade him back into the stable as he eyed up every other gate to get back out the field. I will have to move her and the old horse to the other end of the farm and put up a rail over the gate before we try that again.

I eventually got all the ingredients for the ‘delicious seaweed smoothie’

It looked like something that had been bubbling in a witch’s cauldron for a week; I half expected bats wings and cats eyes to float to the surface. However much I blended it did not get smooth. Every mouthful had a tiny, fibrous rubbery bits suspended in a silky mucous. I managed to drink a pint, concentrating on all the lovely vitamins and minerals I was imbibing and not the fact that it resembled a pint of green you know what.
Sorry Prannie, I blame the cook.

Zumba and Seaweed to beat off the rain



A pint of the green stuff



The rain has settled in and the view ahead is disturbingly dark grey and wet. Depression was beating at the door, with no sign of work and the prospect of being stuck inside for the next six months...

So attack being the best form of defence I am trying a two pronged approach- exercise and healthy eating. I have joined Zumba, a craze that seems to have overtaken the whole of Galway (see flash Zumba mob video below in the city recently.)  There are three jam packed classes a week scheduled in the village alone. The nice part is that you pay for eight sessions but you can take them as you wish and Arisa, the beautiful, sunny, blond, tanned, Polish Zumba teacher (so skilled at twirling the tassles on her back pockets) punches a hole in your card when you attend so you don’t have the pressure of committing to one time slot each week.

When I walked into my first Zumba class in Johnston’s hall it was apparent that I was the last person in Kinvara to take it up. All ages were flamencoing, bellydancing, salsaing and cha cha cha-ing. Even senior members of staff from the school had all the moves off for Tina Turners ‘Rolling down the River’. Combining mambo dancing with aerobics is guaranteed to leave you sweating and put a smile on your face. And your muscles won’t let you forget that you did it the next day. One lady had a calorie monitor on and we burned 620 calories last night!

Inspired by Prannie Rhattigan’s cook book ‘The Seaweed Kitchen’ and the benefits of eating seaweed- full of vitamins and minerals (and also free..), we went down at low tide to the Flaggy shore searching for ‘Alaria’ the ingredient in her super green smoothie (see the photo above) that I wanted to try and make. Alaria contains vitamin C and K, all the B vitamins, calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, zinc, copper, potassium and iodine. It is meant to grow on stony ledges just past the tide level on wave beaten shores. I peered over the edge of lots of rocky ledges and got soaked by beating waves but didn’t see a frond of Alaria even in the washed up piles on the beach. We did find Duileasc, Egg wrack, Saw wrack and Sugar kelp. Duileasc is also commonly eaten and potently nutritious.

So I made a power packed quinoa salad with roasted carrots and beetroot, sprouting broccoli and feta cheese, dressed with olive oil and lemon juice and topped with shreds of Duileasc. It was delicious, the seaweed tasted nutty with a nice tender, rubbery texture.

So far the two pronged approach is working and I am really excited about zumba-ing through the recession and cooking more seaweed recipes!

the guard



The G Hotel, Galway

We are probably among the last people in Ireland to see the film The Guard. We had a delicious M50 hamburger in Eddie Rockets beforehand (topped with melted Swiss cheese NYC cart onions, grilled mushrooms and ER secret sauce) not knowing the diner features in the blackmail scene from the movie and the cinema is next door to the G Hotel, where Gerry Boyle spent his ‘day off’.

The G Hotel has won over even the grumpiest begrudgers with its pink walls, silver chairs, sumptuous carpets and velvet furnishings. It was decorated by the celebrity hat designer, Philip Tracy, originally from the tiny village of Ahascragh. It is inspiring to know that it is only one small step from Ahascragh to world hat domination.

We are grateful to have The G as a vibrant remnant of the Celtic Tiger (the bonsai tree outside the front door is reputedly insured for €30k.)

The movie is a good introduction to Irish dead pan humour (see video below for the main character’s take on this). Trying to ‘knock a rise’ out of people, just to raise a smile is a national pass time. Or interspersing the truth with swathes of lies, just to brighten up the day, and to stop people taking themselves too seriously, can be confusing for the uninitiated. Brendan Gleeson is an expert. It also illustrates brilliantly the boredom and monotony of being loyally stuck in a small corner, of a small country but craving the bright lights and mental stimulation of the metropolis.

Somehow the brazen jokes manage to take the power out of the racism and show that sometimes precious PC behaviour can be more divisive than cohesive. The stereotypical bigotry, bad language, corrupt gardai and weak drug running gangster plot are lifted to box office triumph by the skilfully written script full of snappy one liners, that mature nicely on reflection, and the brilliant casting of the magnetic characters. It is a movie that is destined to wear out many DVDS and sit on the shelf with Man about dog, Into the West and box sets of Father Ted.

Back to reality- the Kinvara Minors hurling team lost their semi final. It was a hot, messy, overcast game with very little good play that deteriorated from an even match at half time to an all out thrashing. But the good news is…

The Cardiac First Responders Group saved their first patient yesterday. There was a collapse in the hotel and CPR was started, someone raced down to the school for the defibrillator and shocks were delivered. When the ambulance arrived the casualty was breathing. So our neighbour’s death, that inspired my sister in law to start the group, has saved a life. (She is a bangarda and everyone from the station loved the movie by the way..)

Enter the stillness

The meditation hall  at the Sunyata retreat, Sixmilebridge, Co. Clare

I spent the weekend at the Sunyata retreat centre in County Clare, looking for a bit of silence. It was a weekend course  called ‘Enter the great stillness:the mystical side of Qigong.’

Friday morning was difficult.The cows had to be put in the pen for the second half of the TB test, which entails looking at the injection site to see if it it is inflamed. Having all been stabbed in the neck on Tuesday they decided it was a really bad idea to go back in the pen. They ignored the bucket and raced up and down the fields refusing to go in the gate. Eventually my husband got into the car and tried to turn a VW golf into a cattle dog. It resulted in a broken headlight and a cow with a nasty cut on her back leg. So we gave up and hours later got them in using patience, stealth and lots of confusingly placed buckets of feed.

Then I started on the computer. I had agreed to turn the Kinvara Cardiac Response Guidelines, that we are drawing up, into a nice little A5 document. After downloading a huge and complicated free publishing software package and eventually understanding how to work it, I was about to complete the last page of the booklet and a message popped up ‘if you need another page please send $90’ at which point the children were home, exhausted, starving and clingy after the first two days of school.

So I got out the credit card, googled ‘meditation retreat’ rang Marion (originally from Texas) at the Sunyata centre and she said their was a place left on the course. I had never heard of Qigong, all I saw in the title was ‘stillness’ and thought it sounded perfect. It was. My husband had got through to the next stage of interview with Boston Scientific, an engineering aptitude test, which he did on Friday. As soon as he got home I was winging my way down to County Clare.

Qigong is the ancient practice of gathering the healing energy of the universe through gentle, graceful, mystical movements. For two days I did 8 hours of Qi Gong with about two hours of meditation in between. I did movements such as 'arrive at oneness' and 'bridge over heaven's river.' The hall was beautiful, looking out over a vast expanse of green countryside and trees, with little birds chattering. The retreat is in the middle of nowhere and the only visitor we had was a lone white puck goat that wandered into the courtyard. A short stroll away through a bit of forest brings you to a waterfall where dark peaty water pours in rivelets, over two boulders, into a pool and rolls over a log to splash into the stream below.

I returned on Sunday buzzing like a buddah, my head clear, full of energy, with my feet firmly planted on the ground.

Our teacher Max Weier, learnt his skills from Master Lee (see video below for a short introduction to sitting qi gong) who was a famous kung fu expert, even winning a Chinese oscar.
He gave up kung fu to become a Qigong master.

Hiking in the Burren hills but Summer is nearly over, back to reality and a lost job.



Pirate enjoying Abbey Hill on the Burren with Galway Bay behind



My sister in law’s mother died suddenly on Thursday. She was elderly, but just not the person you would expect to vanish so unexpectedly. Peggy was part of the furniture. I thought the best compliment you could wish for came from her daughter. She said that whatever happened there was always someone there to say ‘it’s ok’. She has her own lovely family, but that was different and age 41 that unconditional security was gone and she knew what it felt like to be an orphan.

I was walking up Abbey hill in the Burren. The late summer flowers are carpeting the little pastures that separate the limestone flags. Ox eye daisies, eyebright, devils bit scabious, self heal; white, blue and purples predominating at this time of year. Just to get an hour up there in the late summer air, looking out over Galway bay, past Galway City, as far as the 12 bens of Connemara and the Aran Islands is powerful medicine, and washed away the anxiety of my husband losing his job last week. But as the old saying goes ‘you can’t eat scenery.’

Thoughts of moving or commuting to London are encroaching again. It’s not a great time of year to be looking for a job, with winter drawing in and the kids going back to school, with all the extra costs that entails. The holidays are really over. When school starts on Thursday we will have to sit down, assess the situation and make some decisions. I am trying not to panic.

The cows are having their yearly test for TB today and the calves are fat and shiny and ready for the mart at the end of the month. Also the farm area aid payments come in October but with just 50 acres and only 9 calves that will only keep us afloat for a few weeks. The only company that seems to be recruiting in Galway is Boston Scientific, who make medical devices, and are one of the companies that benefit from Ireland’s low corporation tax of 12 ½ %.They have always been a great employer in this locality, but I imagine the stack of CVs is hitting the ceiling at this stage. Hopefully my husband’s is on top.

With Peggy in the ground it made me very grateful that I managed to spend so much time with my parents and my children over the Summer. When you are working full time you do not have the luxury of complaining about how many meals you have to cook for your relations, or that the kids are driving you insane (and they are at this stage) as you bump into them every time you turn around…that time is precious.

birds

Talking about holidaying in Ireland…

I have been host to part of my family who have been visiting us for the last week. We have really enjoyed ourselves. The first day I took them up through the Burren and we had lunch of salad and local cheeses at the Burren Perfumery. It is a little gem of a spot with a new tea room, a wonderful herb garden and a free audio visual about the Burren.(www.burrenperfumery.com) I was bought a gift of Cedar and Lemongrass bath salts and Camomile, Sage and Shea butter hand cream. You can view soaps and creams being made on the premises.

We also went for walks on the flaggy shore, picking our way across the limestone flags as the Atlantic crashed beside us and ending up swimming at the little beach by Mount Vernon, the seaside house that belonged to the famous Lady Gregory. We took the bikes to Coole Park, spent time wandering around the village at the market, visited the Aillwee caves and had a great night out and some delicious turbot at the new Gallery Café in Gort.

The Bird of Prey centre at the Aillwee caves impressed everybody. (See the lovely Barn Owl above.) The Harris hawks displayed some amazing acrobatics catching food thrown in the air and the falcon showed phenomenal speed in dives from over 100 ft towards the lure. There is a great selection of owls and raptors that are in top condition, with beautiful aviaries and a fabulous location for flying.

The highlight of the week had to be the Kinvara minors hurling match against Portumna. Somehow this was another quarter final match and not the semi final but obviously slightly more important as we were charged 5 euro at the gate, even if you were a player... that’s the GAA for you! Portumna are tipped as the best team in the group and at half time when they were a few points ahead we were already accepting defeat. But even though our hurlers are a year younger and a bit smaller they managed to catch a wave and ride it right up to land.

It was a fast, skilful, controlled, desperate match. And just to impress the relations (as they leaned on the fence in the sun, confused with the score, shocked at the speed and ferocity of the hurling and startled by the expletives being fired over their heads by the supporters) my son scored a goal a couple of seconds before the whistle blew to put Kinvara in the lead by 1 point.

5-10 to 2-18, phew..now on to the semi?

cappal

It was the Cruinniú na mBád festival this weekend (‘the gathering of the boats’).

The traditional sailing boats ‘hookers’, some of them 180 years old and crewed by the same families for five generations, symbolically brought the turf from Connemara to Kinvara on Saturday, as they used to do for centuries, until the 1950s when the Bedford truck took over and they ceased to trade.

The breeze was stiff on Sunday, for an exciting race out past Island Eddie into the choppy waters of Galway bay to turn around the buoy beyond Trácht beach. In the heat of the race these large sailing boats were tilting so far into the wind they were virtually taking on water, completely exposing their colourful keels on the far side. Only three years ago The Morning Star sank as one small error of judgment, a rope tightened or loosened at the wrong moment, tipped her too far over. All the crew were fished out to the safety boat and she was hauled up from the bottom a few days later. The Cappal (the boat nearest the castle in the photo) was the eventual winner yesterday after a hair raising battle.

There was a full program of music at the festival with a stage on the quay featuring Jim McKee on Saturday, The Rascals and Sean Slattery on Sunday and plenty of traditional music. The grass along the water’s edge was bustling with stalls selling crafts and food; the guy doing the wood turning display in the main marquee was very popular every time there was a shower. There were also art and photography exhibitions, a fancy dress competition and a model railway of the newly re-opened Gort-Adrahan railway line. Other events were the climin (seaweed raft) race, the crazy raft display and an attempt to break the world record knitathon in aid of Somalia.

On Saturday the Kinvara Minor hurling team, (my son in forward), played Kiltormer in the quarter finals. They won 7, 11 to 1, 13. It felt so right to see him in the purple and gold again and I was drowned in happiness (and rain) when he scored a goal and a point, especially having just recovered from a badly broken right wrist. The team, who have played together since age five, have always shown promise with excellent hurlers, but have a history of getting to the finals and then losing. This year, although they are young for their group, they are looking hot. It was heart warming to bathe in their joy on the way home and a good night to celebrate in Kinvara with 23 bands listed throughout the pubs over the weekend. So on to the semi final..

snakes

I am back from France, a slightly different colour and with what feels like two fat ducks strapped around my waist. We ate a lot.. After the second week I forgot what I was meant to be worried about, so the holiday obviously worked. Both of the girls are swimming without arm bands which is brilliant (all those swimming lessons paid off at last) We stayed an extra week because the first week it rained, which is very unusual for the midi-Pyrenees in July. When I got home the thing that hit me was the lovely fresh summer air with no humidity and the absence of scary creatures such as hornets and snakes.

There was one objection to our planning application for the nature centre when we returned; it is from the neighbour who makes it her business to object to everything and everyone, so that is no surprise. She even wrote to the council and threatened court when we put a sign up at the gate at Christmas saying ‘organic turkeys for sale’

The main points of her six page rant were;

• the extra traffic would be a hazard
• the noise would be a nuisance
• the waste water treatment would effect the environment

We are in the process of getting letters of support from the other six houses in the townland and have been assured by Galway County Council that all of these issues have been dealt with appropriately in our application. But an objection like this, (costing her €20), means that even if the council grants permission she has a right to appeal to the planning board (An Bord Pleanala) which could take over a year and their decision, made by an engineer in Dublin, could go either way. They have a bad relationship with Galway County Council and a history of ruling against their decisions.

It seems to make no sense for an enterprise that would generate jobs with so little impact on the area (the building is already there) to be refused in the current economic climate, but who can tell? If it goes to appeal we will start a petition as the village as the area is desperate for facilities and we already have the backing of the Galway Enterprise Board and all the local hospitality businesses.

The other news is the young pony, Floyd, who competed in two shows while we were away and won first and second prize, has now been sold. He will be going to an excellent yard in Austria in September, which is good news but I will be sorry to see him go.

So back to reality and a reduction in calories.

market

Kinvara was traditionally a market town. On the borders of Clare and Galway and accessible from the sea it was a natural meeting point. Cattle and sheep were traded and vegetables and eggs brought from local farms to sell. Turf was brought in by sail boat from Connemara in the famous Galway hookers and much Guinness was drunk in the ten pubs. 

The market now opens on Fridays between 10 and 2 behind Johnston’s hall on the main street. A covered area for coffee and teas, live traditional music and a walled garden contribute to the family atmosphere. There was great excitement last week as amongst the hens for sale were ‘giant bunny babies.’ The babies were the size of a fully grown rabbit! Although under great pressure we managed to leave without a giant bunny baby but with a pot of Catriona’s delicious tabouleh, some of Annie’s freshly pulled carrots and some excellent value fresh hake and sea bass fillets. You can also buy delicious lobster and Dublin bay prawns, a great selection of breads and baked goods, and every sort of fresh fruit and vegetables.

This week a new sweet shop opened in the village. It sells old fashioned sweets like lemon bon bons and home made chocolates. The traditional shop front is painted a pretty duck egg green and inside the owner has built a lovely wooden display dresser and hung old fashioned wall paper. It is an asset to the village and its reputation is spreading like wildfire through the playgrounds and summer camps, drawing much needed footfall to the village. Geraldine Blackwell, another local organic farmer, moved from there to a larger premises with her shop, ‘Ger’s Place’ The shop front design of buttons might give away what she sells and she also runs the popular and expanding ‘stitch and bitch’ knitting mornings. Another new venture this year is ‘DIY pursuits’ which is doing a good trade selling and renting bicycles. Cycling has become another recession hobby with a recent 60 and 120 k organised cycle drawing over 1000 participants up the Corker hill and around the Burren. Other shops on the main street have had a fresh coat of paint and this seems to be generating a slight spread of optimism.

I wont be posting for the next two weeks as we are going on holiday. We will know on our return if planning permission for the nature centre has been granted.

level headed

 

This week I have been designing a house for a friend who needs to convert an outline planning permission into full consent before it runs out. It may never be built. It is a simple, traditional design, with nice proportions and plenty of insulation- nothing flashy.

It brought me back to a few years ago when I was spewing out 3 or 4 houses a week. The fact that I had started a part time engineering degree was enough to instantly qualify me as an architect. I designed hundreds of houses, probably half of them on Nama’s books now.

Anyone who could get their head around Autocad was employed drawing up house plans. It was Celtic tiger fever. You had to learn on the job- draw up plans, take levels, survey sites, do trial hole tests and design waste water systems. I could often be seen wandering around fields with a level (those intermediate levels still confuse me), a shovel and a bucket of water, searching for a trial hole, or trying to find a JCB driver to dig it, in the pouring rain, on a random hillside, so I could look into it. And don’t bother asking the boss for advice; he was far too busy running around in circles trying to keep up with the deluge of work.

The desperation on Friday to get the applications submitted before the newspaper notices were out of date was head bursting. Each one was at least 4 inches high with six copies of all forms, reports, plans, elevations, cross sections, site layouts, waste water treatment system reports etc etc. My boss would tear off after lunch to Galway with a towering pile of paper to join the fight at the County Council office planning desk to get them in before 4 pm.

The houses got more and more elaborate. It started with en-suite bathrooms for every bedroom, then walk in wardrobes, then laundry shoots, then bar areas, games rooms, swimming pools, loggias (never quite worked out what they were) The most lavish house I designed was a home for one of the big building contractors. It included all of the above, the master bedroom was 1000sq feet (the size of a cottage) and the en-suite bathroom included ‘his and hers’ wash basins and to top it all a pair of ‘his and hers’ toilets side by side….

I then upgraded to a structural engineer’s office and was immediately employed in specifying reinforced concrete for foundations and columns. There are countless different shapes of bent steel that are of varying lengths according to the design of the building. These have to be picked and placed on the drawing with the help of one of the dullest, but most useful computer programmes called CADS RC. The steel specifying job was a race to get the lorries to site and keep ahead of the builders. One Christmas Eve I was doing overtime specifying steel for a new retail development. Every now and then I would feel a wave of panic as I ordered yet another lorry load of cut and bent steel, absolutely useless if any was the wrong size, and costing thousands. Every time I emailed a drawing to the suppliers I felt like sprinkling the computer with holy water.

That was how crazy it was. And then the deluge stopped