Beef

We have beef for sale at the moment. Every year we fatten a few heifers and sell some of the beef directly from the farm. This year the heifers came from the farm of Con and Magdalena Burns in Union Hall. This is Con below, selling his potatoes at Skibbereen Farmers Market.

And this is the bunch last May.
They spend the winter in the barn, eating silage, lying on straw and making compost for the gardens at Brown Envelope Seeds.
Finally they go to Walsh's, a local abattoir and butcher.
Price list for beef collected from the farm or delivered to Skibbereen Farmer's Market:

Sides €4/kg dead weight, plus butchering €150

10kg box of beef €100 containing approximately

2 striploin steak .4kg 1 ribroast 2.0kg 1 sirloinsteak .5kg 1 stewing steak .5kg 1 roundroast 1.2kg 1 round steak .5kg 2 bags beef pieces .9kg 8 bags mince 4.0kg Price for individual pieces

Rib roasts

Fillets @ €33/kg

Striploin @ €22/kg

Sirloin @ €15.50 /kg

Round steak @ €11.80/kg

Round roas @ €11.80 /kg

Rib roasts @ €11.80/kg

Stewing steak @ €10 /kg

Stewing beef @ €10 /kg

Mince @ €10/kg

Growing Quinoa: Feedback please

A young neighbour of mine, Oisin Coakey is starting his final year in agriculture in CIT. He is hoping to do a project on quinoa and would like to hear from other people who have tried growing it. So please let us know how you got on if you grew it. Here is a summary of my experience with it.

Quinoa, Chenopodium quinoa, is a small grain crop from South America. It is in the same family as spinach and beet, and is even more closely related to the weed Fat Hen or Lamb's Quarters, Chenopodium album, which which it can cross. It was domesticated in the Andes several thousand years ago. It is known there as 'the mother of all grains'. It is a hardy annual crop that is tolerant of both low temperatures and low rainfall. It grows from the coast to altitudes over 10,000 feet.

It is valued for its high protein content and the quality of the protein, which contains a complete balance of amino acids for the human diet. It is as good a source of protein for babies, as milk powder, and as it is not a cereal, it is gluten free. The leaves can also be eaten as salad or cooked like spinach.

Quinoa seedlings in May 2010

I have been growing small patches of quinoa for three years now. The first variety I tried, in 2009, was Temuco, which I chose from the Real Seeds catalogue, on the grounds that the heads stood up to bad weather better than other varieties. In 2010 I grew a larger patch of Temuco and a few plants of another variety, Red Head, which I got from Adaptive seeds in Oregon. Red Head had been selected for open heads that stood up to damp weather, by Frank Morton of Wild Garden Seeds. This year I got some seed from Kai Schulze Boeckenhoff, in Ballydehob. He has been growing quinoa for several years from multi coloured seed he originally got in the healthfood shop. I chose his variety this year as I found it difficult to get the awful tasting saponins off the Temuco. Kai said that he removed the saponins simply by washing the seeds in water. So, I am looking forward to seeing if his cleans up more easily than the Temuco.
Quinoa in June 2010

Like its relative Fat Hen, quinoa grows like a weed. It is almost indistinguishable from it when it is young. I grew it in rows about a foot apart and thinned the plants to about an inch apart. They could have been thinned a lot more. In 2010 it was sown on the 9th of April but it was a bit later in 2011, I think, but I forgot to record the date.

Quinoa in July 2010
Quinoa August 2010

Quinoa can cross with fat hen and I think some of the chunky looking plants on the left above were hybrids. They had more branched stems like Fat Hen and were very vigorous.

2010 harvest of quinoa variety Red Head

I harvest quinoa when I see the birds starting to do it. I left the Red Head a bit too long and the birds got a lot of the seed.
2010 harvest of quinoa variety Temuco

We got the Temuco in in fine weather, tied it in bundles and let if finish drying in the Poly tunnel. We threshed it by running it through the shredder and then winnowing. The Temuco yielded over 2kg from a bed about 8sqm. I think that works out at 2.5T/ha Given that a 1kg bag in the health food shop costs €6.92 this could be a valuable alternative crop for Ireland if mechanised harvesting and removal of the saponins from the seed coat were possible.

I haven't found an easy way easy way to remove the saponins from quinoa seeds yet. I have toasted it on a pan until it starts to pop like popcorn and then rubbed it in pestle and mortar, simulating the process used in the Andes of heating it and then dancing barefoot on the grains in a stone basin. Yellow dust accumulates and can be removed by sieving the seeds. This removes a lot but it must still be rinsed a good deal while cooking, several changes of water will pretty much remove the rest. Alternatively, soaking the seeds in an alkaline solution before cooking, with several changes of water also works. For an alkaline solution I have used bicarbonate of soda and wood ashes both of which worked better than plain water but it still took a lot of rinsing.

Innovative 'no dig' method from Austrailia

An old Italian gentleman lived alone in Wonthaggi (Victoria) wanted to plant his annual tomato garden, but it was very difficult work, as the ground was hard. His only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament: Dear Vincent, I am feeling pretty sad because it looks like I won't be able to plant my tomato garden this year. I'm just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. I know if you were here my troubles would be over. I know you would be happy to dig the plot for me, like in the old days. Love, Papa A few days later he received a letter from his son. Dear Papa, Don't dig up that garden. That's where the bodies are buried. Love, Vinnie At 4 a.m. the next morning, The Piranha task force from melbourne and local police arrived and dug up the vegie garden without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left. A couple of days later the old man received another letter from his son. Dear Papa, Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That's the best I could do under the circumstances. Love you, Vinnie

Does size matter? Newton Wonder Seedlings

A few years ago I grew about 10 apple seedlings from Newton Wonder pips. Now as I am sure you know, apples do not breed true from pips and each seedling is a unique 'variety'. In fact apple varieties, like potato varieties, are clones. It is supposed to be very rare to get an edible apple from a random seedling, so I stuck these seedlings behind a bit of fence on the side of the road and forgot about them. I saw there were a few apples last year but the crows got to them before me. Mike picked one from each of three trees recently and we were pleasantly surprised. The two on the right were a bit sour but might improve on storage like their mother. The one on the left was crisp sweet and tasty. It was small, but does size matter? It has been named John Hope.

Tomatoes 2011

Inspite of savage balckbirds, half the polyunnel blowing away, and a crap summer we have a pretty interesting selection of tomatoes. As always the Tumbler was the first tomato to ripen here this year. Even in a rubbish summer, this little fellow produces ripe fruit outside in June. We grew some Tumblers outside in pots where they look pretty and provide a passing snack. They are really delicious when left to fully ripen which happens a few days later than they turn red.Below are a selection of the polytunnel tomatoes. The new (to us) varieties, came from Jean Perry of Glebe Gardens. These are Chocolate Stripe, Paul Robeson, (not in the picture because we ate them all) Ananas Noir, Federle and Vintage wine. The others are old favourites whose seeds we had run out of.

I really like both Paul Robeson and Chocolate Stripe, which are red/black beefsteak varieties. Like Black Crimea and Black Russian they seem to manage good flavour, even in cool sunless summers.

School Garden

I got these photos from Fionnuala Fallon today. They are of her kids' school garden in Blessington. It includes some of our seeds, Gortahook cabbage, Daniel O'Rourke peas and Hungaria Black Seeded sunflowers.
My earliest memory is of standing under the clothes line in the garden and the thing that all gardeners seem to have in common is memories of a garden as a small child.
So, if you have any small people around, get them out there a little bit. It could be life changing.

Home Bred Potatoes

The central row of potatoes in the picture below is of three varieties I kept from a grow out of seedlings from Nepalese potatoes someone brought back to Ireland a few years ago. The mother plants were big and sprawled all over the garden. We didn't like the taste much, but they had terrific blight resistance. I blogged about them last year when we harvested them in the autumn. They are the central row in the picture below, which shows how much bigger they are than the Sarpos on either side. The original seed potatoes were bigger than the Sarpo seed, but the Sarpos don't seem to have coped with the dry spell, as well as other varieties. The field they are growing in only has about a foot of soil so the affects of the drought were clear when this photo was taken at the end of June.

I just lifted one plant from each variety and you can see that the white 'Autumns' yielded the best. The pink and white 'Susans' also did well but the pink 'Hollys' did not yield much at all. The small pot of white potatoes at the back are 'Colleen' which I added for comparison. They are my standard early potato.
The next photo is of them cooked. We thought they all tasted as good as the Colleens but were still pretty immature, especially the pink ones. All the plants are still growing well and showing no signs of blight.