Have yourself a self-sufficient Christmas dinner

URBAN FARMER:Bah-humbug, you might say, but you can grow your own spuds, herbs, and sprouts, make home-made wine and rear a turkey, writes FIONNUALA FALLON

IT’S 22 DAYS to Christmas today: I know this because, like everyone else, I’ve suddenly started making lists. Not just lists, in fact, but lists of lists – “to do” lists, “must absolutely not forget to do” lists, “would hope to do” lists, “would hope to do but will never realistically get around to doing” lists, Christmas presents lists, “possible Christmas presents” lists, “last and desperate resort Christmas presents” lists, Christmas card lists, “Christmas card addresses” lists, “Christmas cards that it’s now to late to post” lists, Christmas food shopping lists . . .

It’s that last one, the Christmas food shopping, that we all learn to dread. Those endless queues, the suddenly-empty shop shelves, the painful realisation at midnight on Christmas eve that you’ve forgotten some crucial constituent of Christmas dinner or that you omitted to ask the butcher to gut and pluck the turkey (I know someone who did exactly this).

Bah-humbug, you feel like saying. So in the true spirit of John Seymour, this week’s column is all about having yourself a self-sufficient Christmas dinner – your own Brussels sprouts, your own home-grown roast potatoes, your own home-made wine, your own fresh herbs to put in your own home-reared turkey. Okay, that last one may be a bit ambitious for some, but read on, and you may change your mind . . .

No-one knows more about organic, free-range turkeys than Ben and Charlotte Colchester, as over the past 18 years they’ve reared and fattened close to 32,000 birds for the Christmas market, all fed on rations grown on their 200-acre organic small-holding, Drumeen Farm, in Urlingford, Co Kilkenny. Unlike most supermarket turkeys, the Drumeen Farm birds are all slow-growing breeds, including the beautifully-named Roly Poly, the Wrolstad and the Plumpie.

“To have good flavour, the bird needs good fat coverage and that takes time, about 22 weeks on average,” says Ben, adding that some supermarket birds are only 10 weeks old at slaughter.

So what does he think of the idea of raising your own Christmas turkey? “Very young turkey chicks need a lot of heat and a lot of looking after, so I think it would be better to get them in mid-September when they’re about eight weeks old, and then fatten them up. We feed ours on oats and triticale (a wheat/rye hybrid), as well as expeller left over from the (award-winning) rape-seed oil that we produce at the farm. You also have to keep in mind that turkeys are prairie birds that need lots of fresh air and space to roam (the 1,200 birds raised this year at Drumeen were given eight acres of nice, clover-rich pasture) so they can’t be kept locked-up in a henhouse.

“But turkeys do have the advantage of being much hardier than chickens and don’t mind cool weather. I’m not sure about the idea of raising just one or two birds for Christmas, though, as I do think that turkeys are happiest in large flocks. But I know lots of people who keep maybe 20 birds each year, which they fatten up for themselves and friends.”

If you’d like to know more, Ben recommends Turkeys at Home (The Gold Cockerel Series) by Michael Roberts, which he says is “a very good, practical guide to rearing and keeping turkeys”, while he suggests sourcing the young eight-week-old chicks from Roy Turner’s farm in Balieboro, Co Cavan (042-9660106).

Alternatively, you can buy your organic Christmas turkey directly from Drumeen Organic Farm (056-8831411 or e-mail charlottecolchester@gmail.com).

But be quick. They’re usually sold out by October but a last-minute cancellation means that, at the time of writing, they had 29 turkeys left (it was 30, but I nabbed one as soon as I heard).

Either way, Ben Colchester reckons that nothing compares to an organically-raised turkey. “I guarantee that it’s the best-flavoured meat that you’ll ever eat,” he says.

For most of us, crispy, golden roast potatoes and tender Brussels sprouts (or “elegant miniature cabbages”, as Jane Grigson described them) are two vital ingredients of the classic Christmas dinner.

As both potatoes and brassicas, such as Brussels sprouts, don’t like freshly-manured or freshly-dug ground, however, it’s best to prepare your vegetable plot now, both to allow the manure time to rot down and to give the soil a chance to settle.

In the OPW’s organic walled garden in the Phoenix Park, gardeners Meeda Downey and Brian Quinn have been doing just that for the last month, so that the ground will be in tip-top condition come next spring.

“We’ll also be ordering our vegetable seeds and seed potatoes in the next month or two from Moles Seeds (www.molesseeds.co.uk), so that we’re sure of getting exactly what we want,” says Meeda.

For the perfect Christmas roast potato, Brian and Meeda recommend growing the Irish-bred Rooster, bought as certified seed potatoes in spring and planted into well-prepared, weed-free drills in March or April (30cm high, 75cm wide and at 30cm intervals with 30cm between each drill) after being chitted for a few weeks in a cool glasshouse.

If you’re short of space, these can also be grown in containers (three-to-four seed potatoes per 60cm high/deep container), as mentioned previously in this column. Once lifted in early autumn, the potatoes can then be put into hessian bags and stored somewhere cool, dark (and rodent-free) until Christmas. Alternatively, if you like the idea of eating new potatoes, you can try growing varieties such as Carlingford, planted in August for a Christmas crop.

Brussels sprouts seed should be sown in mid-spring (late March/April), with young plants being put into their final growing positions (somewhere well-drained, sunny and with fertile soil) by late spring/early summer. Remember that the plants become very big as they mature, so space them 75cm-90cm apart.

Keep a close eye out for typical brassica pests and diseases throughout the summer (particularly the caterpillars of the cabbage white butterfly), and take suitable precautions. This may mean hand-picking off the caterpillars and drowning them in a bucket of water, so steel yourself! Autumn storms will also loosen the roots and plants may need staking, while any yellowing/damaged leaves should also be removed at this time. Varieties like Maximus, Revenge, Trafalgar or Diablo are particularly suitable for Christmas cropping.

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme – these are the herbs you’ll need to have growing in your garden for Christmas (the rosemary is delicious tossed in with the roast potatoes). Rather than growing from seed, it’s probably easiest to grow these on from young plants bought in a garden centre, or from organic growers like Peppermint Farm near Bantry,Co Cork (028-31869, www.peppermintfarm.com) and Denise Dunne (01-8413907/087 2758896, www.theherbgarden.ie).

Many herbs are sun-lovers and don’t do well in our cool, wet Irish winters, so it’s important to give them well-drained soil in a sunny spot in the garden, particularly so if you’re planning to harvest leaves at Christmas.

Alternatively, you can grow all of the herbs mentioned here in a window-box (use the creeping rosemary, Rosmarinus Prostratus, which is smaller than the more upright forms, and trim to keep in shape). Remember to water regularly and be careful, despite the obvious temptations of having fresh herbs close at hand, not to overpick.

Wild food expert, Roger Phillips, gives a great recipe for this in his book Wild Food (available from www.amazon.co.uk for £10.79 plus postage and packaging), in which he ferments freshly-picked elderflowers in water, yeast, sugar, lemon juice, raisins and, of all things, the white-of-an-egg.

The liquid is then siphoned-off into sterilised bottles and left for at least three months before drinking.

Phillips says of his elderflower wine that “it is an exception amongst the white wines I have made in that it definitely improves with keeping”, which makes it an ideal candidate for a Christmas tipple.

But you’ll have to remember to collect the flowers next year in late spring/early summer while they’re freshly opened and undamaged by rain, and to make sure that they are well away from any obvious sources of pollution such as busy roads.

For more ideas on brewing your own wines or beers, check out the Homebrew Company at www.homebrew.ie, which stocks a wide range of home brewing equipment and kits.

They’ll also deliver to anywhere in the country, just like one white-bearded, red-suited and rather plump gentleman that I know of.

And on that festive note, Urban Farmer will take its leave until the New Year, but not before wishing all readers a very happy Christmas!

The OPW’s Victorian walled kitchen garden is in the grounds of the Phoenix Park Visitor Centre, beside the Phoenix Park Cafe and Ashtown Castle. The gardens are open daily from 10am to 4.30pm

Urban Farmer in Property will return in the new year

Fionnuala Fallon is a garden designer and writer