Red Onion Marmalade and Pumpkin Art -- Sinead's Place, Kilkenny

The last two days have been ridiculously intense. We harvested the pumpkins and potatoes, harvested for market, ripped out the peas and corn, sowed the field with rye (to act as a green manure for next year's garden), ripped out several beds of vegetables that had gone to seed, and kept up with the general watering and maintenance. Sinead's under pressure to get an enormous amount of work done this week because it's due to frost tomorrow. If the pumpkins and potatoes had been left in/on the ground, both crops would have been lost to the cold weather. Winters have been a lot harsher here, lately. It's expected to snow before the end of October this year. Last year they had two feet of snow in December, and those who weren't prepared to deal with the unusual weather had to manage through the cold without proper heating. The woman I'm staying with for the month of December was one of caught off-guard last winter, so is very prepared for this one.

I am exceedingly thankful.

Today was market day, so I was up harvesting spinach and celery at 6:30 in the morning, packing up the van at 7:45, and making red onion marmalade for the remainder of the day. It was a long, tedious day that made me appreciate the remarkable ability of contact lenses to keep all those onion gases (as well as oxygen) out of the eyeballs.

I made sixty-one jars of red onion marmalade.

Finished red onion marmalade. Sinead is going to set up a little market for me in her driveway, and is going to give me a portion of whatever money we can make. 

Sterilizing the jars. I've always boiled jars before, but I find that it's much easier to just stick them in the oven at 150 degrees Celsius for 15 minutes. 

Sterilizing the lids and reducing the marmalade.

I've gone through so much balsamic vinegar, red wine vinegar, and brown sugar this week. The whole house smells of onions and vinegar. 

 I will be making more marmalade tomorrow and beetroot chutney on Saturday. I think I'm going to tell my next host that I'm crap at cooking. I'm starting to actually want a break from the kitchen, believe it or not.

The pumpkin harvest and Sinead's winter greens. And Cat. Who is always in the way. 

Living room yoga

My yoga practice hasn't been as consistent lately. I've been caught up in the excitement of having my very own laptop once again, and have been enjoying it more than is beneficial for my physical self. But being able to write so easily again has left me very emotionally and mentally satisfied.

Tearing out the sweet pea fence. This is a very popular item in Ireland (Sinead always sells out), but it got very bad mildew this year. The wet climate of Ireland makes mildew a serious problem for farmers. But they hardly after have to water, so you win some, you lose some. 

Yesterday evening, after a backbreaking day of harvesting spuds and preparing for market, I set to work carving three pumpkins. Sinead had received a phone call from a woman thawing a party who wanted three pumpkins, and wished to have them carved before she picked them up. Having seen the cat I'd done the week before, Sinead said, "Sure, I've got a pumpkin artist staying with me right now. What do you want?"

So this "pumpkin artist" found a couple of pictures online from which to glean inspiration, and plunged headlong into this spontaneous project. Took me four hours (I'm slow at everything artsy-like), but I managed to produce some snazzy looking party pumpkins. For which I was given ten euros. This is the only money I've managed to make in the four months I've been traveling.

Exhibit one

Exhibit two

Exhibit three

A few more random pictures...

The dead chicken Sinead left in the yard. I'm surprised the foxes didn't go after it.

The zucchini boat I made for dinner after our very long Tuesday. The top half was a segregated vegetarian section for Sinead. Kim and I shared the mince-meat lower portion. I drowned the whole thing in Worcestershire sauce, and it was "Brillo", as Sinead would say.

Zoe in the garlic. I must say, I'm growing a lot fonder of cats now that I see them catching mice every day. 

The almond flour carrot cake I made for Sinead's friends. It was beautiful. Then we went around a round-a-bout and the top layer flew into Sinead's car door. Sinead laughed, I cursed, and Sinead's friends comforted me with an, "If you want to cry, we would understand." 

Well, I think that's about it for now. I'm considering starting a separate blog to keep track of my interviews (which are not going very well at the moment... farming is so time-consuming and out of the way that I haven't had much opportunity to interview Kilkenny locals. Unfortunately.), so that might be happening this weekend.

Kilkenny