The French have a saying: ‘Une hirondelle ne fais pas le printemps’, which translates as one swallow does not make the spring. In other words: seeing one swallow does not mean that the weather is going to be good. It goes along with another saying about not taking off your jumper in April, but in May dress as you please (‘En Avril ne te decouvre pas d’un fil. En Mai fait ce qu’il te plait’). That’s probably grand on the Continent, but as far as I’m concerned seeing the first swallows means that winter is over and the good times are back. In any case we’ll be heralding the start of summer, rather than spring in May, because in West Cork the seasons do not follow the meteorological calendar but rather the Celtic one. It’s not the weather that determines the season, it’s the plants, animals and hours of daylight. The Celtic calendar mirrors the changing landscape with Imbolc (Feb 1), Bealtaine (May 1), Lughnasadh (August 1) and Samhain (November 1).The weather is usually lovely in the month of May and, even if it’s not, the hedgerows are bursting with flowers, the trees are coming into leaf and the birds are busy nesting and singing. As for taking off your jumper in West Cork, you’d best keep your jumper handy – even in mid-summer. Whatever! Our swallows are back. The apple trees are coming into bloom. The wild garlic and sorrel are plentiful, the bluebells are blooming, and we’ve got the potatoes into the ground. As far as I’m concerned, the best time of the year (May to October) is back.
This is when the garden really comes into its own. After months of rest, it’s up and at’em at every chance we get to be outside. Thanks to a couple of fantastic French helpers our land is looking really good this year despite the front field still being an impenetrable wall of brambles worthy of Sleeping Beauty’s hedge of thorns. The dreadful weather we had at the start of the year meant that we could not get a tractor in to do the work of stripping it and now it is too brimming with nests and small critters to disturb. That job will have to wait until Autumn when everything starts to die back, and everyone has reared their young.
Not to worry…the rest of the garden is looking spiffy. The tunnel is a nursery full of incubating seedlings, sprouting lettuces, broccoli, and spinach, and radishes. The potatoes are in. The rhubarb is ready to pick. The raspberries are cut back and weeded in their beds, and the strawberries are already growing in their bathtubs. The season is looking good. Getting your hands dirty has been proven to be beneficial to both our mental and physical health. In addition, nothing tastes quite as good as a vegetable you have grown yourself. As a new show on Netflix declares: ‘The future is agrarian’. Growing food is wonderful. It’s good for the soul, the belly and the pocket. In these uncertain times it is also good for the future.
Many of us in West Cork are lucky to have a bit of land to grow food on. You don’t need much. It is surprising how productive a small vegetable patch can be. For those who don’t have any land, many communities have allotments which can provide lots of lovely fruit and veg.
Growing your own has always been a “hobby” of a certain group of people, but it wasn’t so long ago that everyone was at it. Even in towns, people grew the basics: potatoes, carrots, cabbage/leeks and lettuces in their back garden. Out in the countryside it was common for a family to grow most of their vegetables, keep chickens and rear a pig, or keep a cow for milking.
It may sound like a charming past-time, but the recent oil crisis should make us sit up and take note. As an island nation dependant on transportation for most of our food, we need to become more self-sufficient.
Ireland imports 80 per cent of its food and that’s a trend that is growing. Food imports jumped from 8.6 per cent to 9.4 per cent of merchandise imports between 2023 and 2024. Many are foods like bananas or avocados, which don’t grow in our climate. Fair enough. We might miss them in a crisis, but we won’t starve for lack of pineapples if we grow fruit and veg that thrive in our climate. We imported 96,000t of bananas in 2024. But we also imported 56,000t of apples.
That’s crazy. Here’s some more crazy stats: According to the CSO, Ireland imported 104,500t of potatoes in 2024, along with133,500t of prepared potatoes. In addition, Ireland imported 44,700t of onions, 28,800t of carrots/turnips,28,000t of tomatoes and 21,000t of cabbage. All vegetables which grow very well in our climate. And yet all around me are beautiful fields full of…grass. There are a few fields of corn, a field of onions, and of course a strawberry farm. That is not great for food security, now, is it? This year the European Union advised its citizens to stockpile 72 hours of water and food “in case of emergency”. Ireland needs to take a long hard look at our food security. Family vegetable plots, community allotments, and more farmers growing food will help us get through a lot longer than a 72-hour emergency.
