URBAN FARMERS:Organic farmers' markets are all the rage, but anyone can easily produce a lot of their own organic food in their own backyard - you don't even need that much space or time, writes Michael Kelly
BACK IN APRIL, I wrote about leaving Dublin behind for the country and our novice attempts to grow and rear our own food. Some kindly Dublin folk e-mailed afterwards pointing out that you don't have to move to the country to embrace the Good Life. - While I heartily agree with the sentiment, I have to admit to being sceptical about just how self-sufficient you can be in a city garden.
After snooping around in the gardens of the four urban farmers profiled here, I discovered it's possible to be very self-sufficient indeed. In fact, many of my city cousins are producing more food in small (and sometimes tiny) city gardens than we are on almost an acre in the country.
Dublin has a tremendous tradition of urban farming, and residents of a certain age will no doubt recall a time when allotments, cow yards, dairies and even pig farms were an occasional feature in city neighbourhoods. In less affluent times, back gardens were considered an asset to be put to work rather than an outdoor entertainment venue - they were given over to spuds and carrots rather than decks and hot-tubs.
The city still has vast potential for food production, given that an estimated 25 per cent of Dublin's land is garden, but in the late 1980s, growing your own was stigmatised as a poor person's game, and with the ubiquity of supermarkets and their tantalising array of cheap food, it became largely unnecessary, too. In the past decade it has often been dismissed as a hobby for middle-class people with too much time on their hands.
Thankfully, something of a revival is under way. There are ominous worries about food security and prices. Add that to concerns that many people have had for years about food additives/quality/miles/ethics, and you have a powerful motivation to grow your own.
The beauty of it is that it's so proactive - if you feel overwhelmed and powerless about the world's problems, at least there is something you can do about your own food security. You can do it right now, or later today, or tomorrow - stick a seed in the ground and watch it grow. Growing your own is not the preserve of any one social class. It doesn't belong exclusively to country people or city people. It's accessible to anyone with the motivation and access to even the smallest patch of ground.
Michael Kelly is the author of Trading Paces - From Rat Race to Hen Run (O'Brien Press)
TREVOR SARGENT
TREVOR SARGENT'S home-made apple juice is a great example of the vast food-production potential of a small urban garden. Each autumn, armed with an old apple press and the output of just one James Grieve apple tree, Sargent churns out enough apple juice to last him a year. "It freezes perfectly," he says, offering a glass during our visit to his Balbriggan, Co Dublin garden. Very nice it was too.
The Minister of State for Food and Horticulture turns the "problem" of lack of space in his suburban garden on its head and views it instead as an opportunity. He has owned larger plots of land in the past (including an acre in Co Cork), but felt overwhelmed by the amount of work required to maintain them.
His garden is a model of efficiency and smart planning. Four deep beds are used for a three-year organic crop rotation and surrounded by neat paths. The main vegetable groups - roots (carrots, parsnips etc), legumes (peas, beans etc) and brassicas (cabbages, kale etc) - are moved around the beds each year to prevent the spread of disease. Tomatoes are grown in a planter and there's a separate bed for herbs. Apple and plum trees provide shelter and interest (the plums, he says, make a handy Dáil snack) and he grows comfrey in the front garden, which is used to make an organic liquid feed.
There's an aesthetically pleasing pond, but it too has its practical uses, encouraging bio-diversity and slug-nibbling frogs into the garden. His only concession to regular gardening is a minuscule patch of lawn in front of the kitchen window ("The cat likes to lie on it," he explains), though that may shortly make way for an underground rainwater harvester.
"Investing the time creating the beds at the start was key. They are small enough to be easily planted and because of the paths I can go out there in hail, rain or snow, or even in a shirt and tie and do a bit of weeding. When I have a Sunday afternoon free, I love to be out in the garden chilling out. There is nothing as restorative to mental and physical health."
Growing his own, he says, gives him an appreciation for the farmers and growers he meets in the day job. "By and large, supermarkets treat farmers with absolute disdain. It's horrific for a farmer to nurture a product and then see it selling in a supermarket at a loss. When I buy food I appreciate it because I know the effort that has gone into producing it."
Sargent is spearheading Transition Initiatives in Balbriggan and Malahide, which will see the towns attempt to move to low-carbon futures. Central to that plan, given the amount of energy required to get food to our plates, will be encouraging individuals and communities to grow their own food. He will address a public meeting on the initiative on Saturday, June 28th in Balbriggan Town Hall.
Meanwhile, back in the garden, he's identified a corner where he wants to grow grapes and he is wrestling with the idea of keeping hens. "I'm aware there's a time commitment required, so it's up to the people of north Dublin to decide whether I'll have time or not."
BREFFNI AND KATHLEEN GALLIGAN
BREFFNI AND KATHLEEN GALLIGAN live about eight kilometres from Dublin city centre in Ballycullen (near Firhouse and the M50) and they keep chickens, hens, ducks and pigs in a tiny garden and a rented paddock. For Breffni, it was the desire to bring a little bit of country to their corner of suburbia (and a love of rashers and bacon) that convinced him to start keeping pigs. Just over a year ago he began renting a quarter-acre field a 10-minute walk away from their house from a local farmer and sourced three wriggling, squealing Gloucestershire Old Spot banbhs from a rare-breed breeder in Loughrea, Co Galway.
Tough as old boots, the Old Spot thrives on the outdoor life and produces top-quality meat. "The meat from old breeds tastes far better," says Breffni. "The new breeds are mostly hybrids and they are bred for quick growth. Little attention is paid to flavour. When you buy supermarket meat you don't know where the meat has come from or how the animals have lived."
He opted for two gilts (female pigs before their second litter) and a boar. Breffni spends about an hour with the pigs each day. "I am up there twice a day, morning and evening. I take great joy from watching them have a nice life." He feeds them a mixture of pig nuts and kitchen scraps - vegetable peels, apples, stale bread and left-over biscuits.
Someone once told me that naming an animal that you are rearing for the table is classic townie behaviour - Breffni called his boar Jasper - but he never allowed himself to become too attached to him, which presumably made it easier the day Jasper made the trip to O'Gorman's abattoir in Castledermot.
"I knew all along that was his fate so I had no real qualms about it. My wife was quite upset though." Kathleen admits shedding a tear, but adds that the meat was delicious.
The two gilts were kept for breeding and Breffni recently "rented" a boyfriend - another Old Spot boar - from a man in Roscommon. If their tryst is successful, he plans to sell the piglets, keeping one or two animals for the table. "If it goes smoothly I can't see why we wouldn't continue on with it. It's a fantastic de-stresser, great fun and gets you back to basics. I think we've become so helpless as a society when it comes to feeding ourselves."
While Breffni busies himself with porcine husbandry, Kathleen keeps ducks and hens for eggs and is rearing chickens for the table. The ducks were reared in an incubator and spent their first weeks in the house under a heat lamp.
She loves having them in her back garden (where they splash about in a paddling pool) but she admits they've turned her lawn into a series of bumps and hollows, completely devoid of grass. It's worth it, she says, for the eggs. "I'm sure our neighbours think we're nuts, but every road should have its eccentric couple!"
ELLA MCSWEENEY
JUST A FEW minutes walk from the centre of Blackrock, RTÉ Radio 1 presenter Ella McSweeney's house is hidden away at the bottom of a laneway in a suburban housing estate. Behind a wooden gate lies a treasure trove of an urban garden - secluded, leafy and, from a food-production perspective, incredibly productive.
A walled vegetable garden with neat lazy beds at the back of the property is the venue for most of the serious growing, but there is evidence of a desire for self-sufficiency pretty much everywhere. A converted dog kennel with a small run attached is home to three laying hens, while a sun-drenched porch is choc full of vegetable plants at different stages of development - tomatoes, peppers, courgettes and cucumbers.
"You get hooked into growing things," she says. "You put a seed in the soil, feed it, give it some sun and it grows. It works. I just love that. Making a dinner entirely from the contents of the garden is an amazing feeling because our day-to-day lives are so far removed from that."
Does it save her money? "Food, especially organic food, is ridiculously expensive, so it's a really good investment. I find it connects you with your friends more and I know that probably sounds hideously middle-class, but we give eggs to our friends or swap produce with them. I know you can romanticise the whole thing and that a lot of people are glad to turn their back on it and be able to buy in the supermarket. That's fine. It doesn't fulfil everything in life, but if you can do a bit of it, it's a really nice thing to do."
Star performers in the McSweeney garden are tomatoes - last year, while expecting her first child, she grew 60 tomato plants in her porch. The tomatoes were "juicy, sweet, gorgeous", but as the pregnancy developed she discovered that the very notion of tomatoes repulsed her. "In the end we gave a lot away and made sauces for the freezer."
Keeping a few laying hens, she says, is possible for most urban gardens, even the tiniest ones - though you shouldn't get them if you like a pristine lawn. "They love splashing about and digging holes - very funny to watch but they definitely make a mess. On the other hand, the eggs are amazing and it's very satisfying to eat an egg where you know what the chicken that laid it has been eating.
"They are a cinch to look after. I let them out in the morning and I close the hatch at night - both those things take about 30 seconds. You need to make sure they have food and water and every few days I clean out their house."
Her advice to anyone interested in growing or rearing their own is to get stuck in. "Make a decision to try it this summer. Get a grow bag, put two or three tomato plants in it and keep it watered. See how it goes. What's the worst that can happen?"
Ella McSweeney and Fiona Crowe (Highdell Organic Farm) are running courses throughout the summer in Blackrock on keeping hens in an urban environment. E-mail glaslower@gmail.com for details.
BRUCE DARRELL
BRUCE DARRELL HAS a cautionary tale about allotments. For five years until last year, the Canadian architect and Feasta committee member tended a plot in the Cappogue allotment in Finglas, but he says it was, at 400sq m, simply too big to handle by himself. Now, he's happier to focus his efforts on growing in his petite Phibsboro garden. He also believes that the clamour for allotments can divert focus from the potential for back-yard and community garden growing.
"I'm much more in favour of people growing in their own back garden than saying back gardens are for entertainment and allotments are for growing food. With the allotment I did exactly what I advise people not to do - I tried to grow too many things."
His own garden is a shining example of just how much can be achieved in a small space - every available inch is given over to some useful food production enterprise. In raised beds he is growing tomatoes (grown under some old windows), potatoes, peas, runner beans, broad beans, lettuce, onions, radishes and artichokes. Containers are used to grow herbs and carrots, and there are also fruit trees and a productive-looking compost heap. Hearty greens such as kale and cabbage see them through the lean winter months and he's completely self-sufficient in garlic - two impressive braided bundles hang in the kitchen.
His daughter grew swedes last year and, though she didn't like them, she ate them anyway because she had grown them herself. "It's great for kids - to have a child who has picked peas and knows what a carrot plant looks like, that's just fantastic."
He's keen to emphasise the benign climate that is available to city growers - because they are surrounded by buildings and walls, urban gardens are less susceptible to frost and enjoy less wind and higher temperatures. "The climate in Ireland is amazing for growing - it is so mild, you can grow pretty much all year around. In Canada there are entire months where you literally can't get anything in the ground."
Darrell is one of the organisers of the recently formed Dublin Food Growers' Network, an ambitious project dedicated to food security in the city. "One of our long-term goals is that anyone who wants to grow food in Dublin can grow food. That means they have the space, the knowledge and the ability."
There are examples of guerrilla gardening in his native Canada, where armies of urban farmers have taken over unused green spaces (such as grass verges) and planted vegetables in them. Darrell sees potential in a slightly less radical variant. "We are hoping with our website that there might be people out there who have gardens they don't use who are willing to make them available to people who don't have the space but want to grow things. Now that's exciting."
The primary limitation for most people, he says, is not space. "It's the lack of knowledge about how to grow food that is our single biggest issue."
www.dublinfoodgrowing.blogspot.com