Homestead Diary & A Tale of Two Irish Movies

Welcome to the merry month of May—I’m so glad you’re here! Read on for A Day in the Life of a Boonie-Living, Food-Raising Book Writer…

“It’s the beauty within us that makes it possible to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.” —Henry David Thoreau

View to the east from the Little Farm

Homestead Diary…or, Why I’m Always Behind in the Garden

I have a definite Pollyanna outlook about most things, including my garden. After all, I think we live in one of the most beautiful places I know! Yet when it comes to my garden aesthetics, too often my glass feels only half full. Do you do this?

Gaze out the window at your yard, and instead of seeing the reasonably tidy raised beds you worked hard on, you’re staring balefully at the remaining messy spots?

For me, those areas are the “ornamental” beds that have gone feral, where weeds, black-eyed Susan and hardy herbs are basically running amok.

As I came across this Thoreau quote the other day, his words really hit home. It came to me that if I wanted to “see” more beauty in my garden, then I had better create more!

And in early May, a well-maintained vegetable bed full of healthy seedlings is my idea of gorgeous.

However… This particularly chilly spring, the soil was cold. Even the weeds were behind schedule. As a result, I was behindhand on getting my spinach, onion and peas into the ground.

And on this Thoreau-inspired day, the weather forecast was giving me another good reason to get hustling: today would be our one sunny day before rain arrived for the rest of the week.

So the garden was calling…and loudly!

As a working writer, my goal is to always get cracking on book projects first, then do garden chores. But today, I decided to de-prioritize computer work and put the garden front and center.

So here’s a day in the life of a boondocks-living, food-raising book writer.

Morning: Not ready to get in the garden yet.

After breakfast, I tackle a few business-related emails. I also have some last-minute prep for the continuing ed gardening workshop I teach, which is just days away.

Then, another small writing task: posting to my weekly Little Farm in the Foothills blog.

And I’m a day late on the blog.

Why late? The day before, I was a little off my game. While cycling, I had a scary run-in with a pair of huge, unusually aggressive and completely untrained Great Pyrenees dogs…and their surly owner.

After I got home and got my fight-or-flight response calmed down, writing a blog seemed less important than focusing on getting my mojo back.

Early Afternoon: I post the blog, but I’m still not ready for the garden.

Because next on the agenda is home-caring: making bread.

I take the dough I prepared the day before out of the fridge. It’s whole grain seed bread, inspired by a King Arthur flour recipe.

This method calls for refrigerating the dough overnight, where it does a nice slow rise to enhance the flavor.

It’s perfect for the busy gardener. Once you’ve mixed and kneaded your dough, and you’ve run out of time for baking it, you can wait until the next day to finish the job!

(You can find the recipe on my Little Farm in the Foothills blog.)

Okay, the dough is warming up. At last I escape outside…But I’m still not ready to start my garden work.

I have another, and very unusual outdoor job in mind.

We live on a private lane—so you’ll find very little trash on it. Not like the main road.

We are lucky to live near a lovely, scenic byway, curving near the mountain in the photo above. But there’s an empty  beer can on the shoulder about every 10 feet.

Litter used to be rare here in the Foothills, but the last few years, the garbage along the side of the road has sprouted like shotweed. Is the average motorist in our neck of the woods drinking more beer? Are they keeping their vehicles cleaner?

Or do they simply not give a rat’s patootie about the earth?

But that kvetch is for another day.

Over the winter, Northeaster gales had scattered junk here and there near one of our neighbors’. They’re a farming family—both parents work full time, and besides their small herd of cattle and hay production, they’re helping their teenager raise a couple of heifers and pigs. So…busy!

Some of the trash at our farmer neighbor’s place looked like it had blown off the other neighbors’ recycling bins.

But the most unsightly stuff came from the hay bales in their pasture: shreds of plastic silage-wrapping on the lane.

Anyway, this particular day, I have this unprecedented compulsion to tidy up our immediate neighborhood. Normally, I would never give up garden time for something as low-priority as collecting my neighbor’s trash!

Really, I mean never!

Yet today, I’m somehow quite determined to eliminate this litter. Was it some way to regain some sense of control from the out-of-nowhere doggie incident?

Maybe. What seals the deal is that my husband John is totally game to join me. (Probably humoring me after the previous day’s scare, but I don’t question it.)

I ferret around the shop for a garbage sack, then we change into our gardening grubbies and fetch our narkiest rubber gloves.

Mid-Afternoon: Still not in the garden.

Before climbing into our old Ranger, I strap on my gloves…and discovered my left one has something sharp inside it! What on earth?

I pull off the glove and turn it upside down over my palm. Out flutters small shards of hazelnut shells…and mouse turds!

Some enterprising rodent had clearly found his way into the ancient boxes of curing hazelnuts John had stored in the shop. Apparently the mouse/mice had decided my glove would make a nice little pantry.

This is not the first time mice have put our stuff to use. I once found the toe of my garden boots full of squash seeds…which taught me to never keep seeds in the shop. Ever again.

Now, looking at my palm full of little dark, tubular bits, I’m completely grossed out—I mean, mouse turds carry disease! I long to go back into the house and wash my hands. Like, do a surgical scrub.

But we’re all ready to go, and this pair is the thickest rubber gloves I own.

And what kind of homesteady person am I, if I can’t tolerate a few pathogens?

So…onward. John and I pootle down to the neighbors’ in our pickup, garbage bag at the ready.

It’s strangely satisfying to clean up our lane. I hadn’t thought there was a lot of trash to collect. But as it turns out, between the empty beer cans near the main road, and the bits and bobs I’d already noticed on the lane, we fill the sack pretty quickly.

And my “mouse” gloves sure come in handy, as I fish plastic silage wrap out of some brown stuff I hope is mud, but I’m very much afraid is manure!

Somehow, though, I don’t mind our neighbors’ trash—they are wonderful people. Besides being very kind, they always plow our mile-long lane after snowstorms and won’t take a dime for the tractor fuel.

Picking up their trash seems like a very small way to repay their generosity, even if they’ll never know who did it.

John and I toss the garbage sack in the truck bed, and return home. By now my dough is warm enough for the second rise.

I butter a loaf pan and roll the dough into a loaf shape. Covering the pan with a cloth, I set it in the (barely warm) oven to prevent drafts.

Late-ish Afternoon: At last, I head into the garden!

On to my goal of creating my idea of beauty: rows of healthy seedlings in my beds. I’m determined to plant spinach, onions and peas before the day is over.

I clear mulch off the bed I’ve selected for spinach, then snug my spinach starts in the ground. I replace the mulch around the starts, then sow two rows of seed in the other half of the bed.

I won’t mulch that part until the seedlings are up.

Next, I clear the winter mulch off my onion bed. I do my usual gentle spade-forking (for root veggies) to open up the soil a bit after the winter rains. As an experiment, I’m planting some onion sets from last year’s garden—I won’t know if they’ll take until I see green sprouts.

Yet, as I nestle my homegrown sets into the soil, hope springs eternal.

Early Evening. Naturally, I’m still in the garden—and feeling like I’ve just gotten started!

I plant my nursery onion starts in the other part of the bed—well, most of them. I still have about 18 seedlings left when I run out of room.

So I try another experiment: planting the rest in bunches of three, four, then five. Although I predict the bulbs won’t quite develop properly, I can use whatever little “bulblets” and green tops that emerge in soups.

Finally, I collect some poultry wire to surround the bed. You can’t trust the rabbits around here not to chomp everything—even highly aromatic baby onion or garlic tops!

Mid-Evening: By now, the sun is low in the west. And it’s grown chilly.

I should mulch the onions, but I’ll do it another day. And it’s kind of dark for pea-sowing. This is nothing new: I generally—well, almost always—run out of light before I run out of gardening energy.

I store my tools, grab the kitchen compost to dump into an outdoor bucket, then quickly chop enough firewood for tonight’s fire. And now, we are officially out of daylight.

Dark: Back in the house.

My bread dough has risen to the perfect height. Baking can happen! Soon we’ll have big hunks of fresh-baked, buttered bread with our dinner.

After we eat, I settle on the couch with a pen and paper to record the events of the day. Then I remember something important: I haven’t yet planned out the rest of my veggie bed rotations.

This is not the first time I’ve procrastinated on my rotation plan. Still, I gamely fetch my master garden map to study—and suddenly, inspiration hits!

For once, tonight my garden plan falls into place: I swiftly assign this bed and that bed, and jot it down. Studying my completed map, I feel a strong sense of relief.

Done and done!

Garden Rotation Plan 2023

Do you have a system for rotating your garden beds? You can leave a comment, or reply to this email… In any event, may your food garden thrive this spring!

Meanwhile, over here in the Irish Corner…

A Tale of Two Irish Movies

Hits like Brooklyn and Sing Street, classics like The Secret of Roan Inish and The Snapper…I’m a huge fan of Irish films. Comedies and dramas, I love them all.

And since I also love sharing my finds, I have a list of favorites on my website.

When I had the chance to watch a couple of recently released Irish movies, I was on it!

Disclaimer: I don’t pretend to be a film critic! You know, keen on sussing out metaphors or aiming for a deep- dive analysis. I just know what I like. Anyway, I promise no spoilers.

First, the drama:

I’d been eagerly anticipating The Banshees of Inisherin. I mean, it was Oscar nominated, and just look at the cast—Colin Ferrell and Brendan Gleason, written and directed by an acclaimed Irish playwright!

Clearly, the movie was Irish through and through. I heard it was a dark film, difficult to watch, which is not my jam. But…well, Ireland!

I popped the Netflix DVD into the player (yes, we’re some of those Luddites who still watch DVDs) and prepared to be entertained.

Filmed on Achill Island off the West coast of Ireland, the scenery was beyond breathtaking—five-star worthy. And the sunny weather in many scenes was surely unusual for County Mayo, where rain showers mostly prevail 24/7/365.

Here’s a view from St. Patrick’s Mountain, Co. Mayo—Achill Island is just across the bay

Still, despite the reviews I’d read, I was not prepared for how very dark this film was.

The tragic history of the Irish, with the many “pressions” encoded in their DNA—oppression, repression, and depression—was encapsulated in the story of dull, compulsively chatty Padriag and his artistic friend Colm.

It was interesting that Padraig—to get up to all he got up to—sure had a lot of extra time and energy for a small-plot farmer. There were some humorous moments, and Irish-brogue dialogue was lightning-bolt snappy.

Yet not even Padriag’s adorable miniature donkey Jenny could lighten the mood. And as the movie unfolded, it only got darker… And darker still.

Since I promised no spoilers, that’s as far as I go. To sum up, I was riveted by this film, but I couldn’t call it entertaining.

Last night, I started watching it a second time, just to see the scenery again. But I turned it off halfway through. Despite all the film’s stellar attributes, I just couldn’t go through the rest of it again.

Now the comedy:

On the sunny side of the street, we have As Luck Would Have It, a romantic-comedy so light and frothy it could blow away in the slightest breeze.

Now, I generally write about a book or movie only if I can give them five stars. But I have no idea how to rate this one. As Luck Would Have It wasn’t completely awful…it’s just that the movie could have been so much better.

You see, for a rom-com about an Irish matchmaking festival, Luck actually had very little “com.” It was also notable for having little plot as well, and pretty much zero “rom”…i.e., romantic conflict.

The hero was played by Alan Leech, whom I loved as the handsome chauffeur in Downton Abbey. Really, he was the only reason I kept watching.

He was in nearly every scene, and while his acting was wonderful, I admit I was kind of embarrassed for him.

“Alan!” I wanted to tell him. “You’re better than this!”

He looked so young, however, I figure he made this movie long before Downton Abbey made him a celebrity.

For all Alan’s efforts, it was a shame the heroine (and many other actors) seemed to be on autopilot. The scenery was mostly that fakey-adorable movie set look, perfect shopfronts and lush flowers, and the greens greener than anything found in nature.

Imagine my surprise when discovered the movie really was authentically Irish! It was produced by the Irish Film Board, and the end credits indicated the other Irish characters were actually Irish. It was also filmed in County Wicklow and at Howth Castle, north of Dublin.

I’ll give Alan and the scenery in Luck five stars. But I still don’t think I’ll add this movie to my website list of recommendations!

What are your favorite Irish movies? Please share in the comments, or you can reply to this email!

Thank you so much for sharing your time with me. And if you liked this post, please hit the ❤️ button—it can help other folks discover Little Farm Writer!

Have a wonderful May ~ Susan