Blogs

Wooden hives, frames, feeders, wax foundation, queen excluders, varroa treatment... bees don't need any of this, or at least wild bees didn't long ago.

These inventions are all for the benefit of the beekeeper and the crop. Just like in conventional agriculture, we've harnessed a natural process and have bent it to our needs. Our concern for the bees stretches as far as trying to ensure their survival to continue to give us a crop.

Work in the northeast corner of the land has intensified over the past couple of weeks, as we prepared an apiary for the arrival of our first bees.  Luci has been an amazing help building a woven willow fence as a windbreak. I managed not to get too upset when she had to pull out what was several hours of my work because I had weaved it wrong!

We hosted a private birthday party of 8 year olds today, and as part of this I did a few bushcraft/awareness exercises with the kinds, ending with a demo of friction firelighting. This was optimistic because I'd never succeeded in getting past an ember before! However, today it worked and it was thrilling and freeing to produce a fire without modern technology.

It was a busy day: we had another party afterwards (two of our sons), we set up a Tipi with Tipi Dave, later eating our meal in the Tipi sitting in a circle on sheepskins around the fire.

We have been back at it all again since early february with Primitive living courses and preparing the ground for the arrival of spring. Our first wwoofers have been and gone and we really enjoyed having them. The abilty to travel while actually stationary was felt once again as we experienced a bit of Detroit and Japan second hand. Work on the second half of the circular garden got off to a good start as we went back to gathering East Coast seaweed and manure for the lazy beds.

As we come close to the end of the our first year, it's hard to believe how much, with help (and that was critical), we have accomplished. We are enjoying literally the fruits, well more specifically vegetables, of our labour.  Cabbage and veggie mince peroshki, chard lasagnas, and cream of broccoli (purple sprouting) soup have been hits.  Our Friday night spelt pizzas have seasonally varied toppings and courgettes hidden in the red sauce, as our eldest has an aversion to them.  

We would love Carraig Dulra to support and enrich the natural habitats that are so rare now. Native plants are adapted to this environment and other species are adapted to work with them too, and, well, it just feels right when you see an Irish tree in Irish soil. So to help this along we're looking into the Native Woodland Scheme, which gives a grant towards costs of planting native tree species. We just had a visit from Katharine, an ecologist from Natura, and Michael, a forester, to walk the site just to give us an idea of what was feasible.

We had a short visit from Suzie's cousin Juliet and her boyfriend Sean, and they brought a few days of some of the best weather we've had in weeks! We brought the kids up and we all camped up on the land for a few days. It made it so much more enjoyable when all of us (including our 3 current WWOOFers Meg, Petra and Chantall) were out working on the land.

When deciding on the shape of the central herb garden I had first thought of a spiral, but then I came across labyrinth designs and became intrigued.

On the morning of yesterday's open day we arrived wondering how the day would go, especially considering the mixed weather.  As we got to the kitchen, Maria, a friend of ours, said, "oh, you have a fox", and we saw curled up in a corner, a small and very still fox!  Alive, but barely responding to us.  We all wanted to scoop it up and cuddle it, but fought those instincts and left it be, as best we could with kids and guests around.  The fox eventually got up and limped around between our feet, drinking a little milk.