I was born and reared a city boy and, up to recently, spent little time in the country. Three years ago we moved, lock, stock and two screaming bairns, to the heart of the country. We live at the end of a farm track, off a country lane, off the old road to Kinsale, seven kilometres from the town.
Ezra Pound’s mistress, Olga Rudge, used to say ‘I was
brought up on mean street, and the further down you go the meaner it gets. I
lived in the last house on the left.’ I live in the bucolic equivalent. The
further down the lane, the more country it gets and I live in the last house on
the left.
So, a few months ago, I sat down with my compass and
map and drew my five kilometre lockdown circle. The circle I can play in for the
foreseeable future. My school maths calculates the area to be πr2, where r is five, or seventy nine square
kilometres. It sounds like an awful lot, and yet, did I mention bucolic?
So I started walking and, although the town of Kinsale
is not even a tangent to my circle, I discovered I live in the gourmet capital
of the world. In the summer and autumn there is a buffet of apples,
blackberries and wild rosehips. There are mushrooms and wild garlic, and baby
nettles for soup. There are elderflowers for wine, damsons for jam and sloes
for gin to be picked after the first frost. And if killing is your game there
are pheasant to be roasted, hares to be jugged and ducks to be a-la-oranged.
But, all year round, you have the honesty boxes.
Farmers who take great pride in what they produce and sell at the farm gate.
According to Google Maps, it is 2.7km from me to
Horizon Farm but, If you are not a crow, it is more than twice that. But the
walk is great, following farm tracks that once linked village to village and
winding roads following landscape and land ownership. There is a stream to
navigate that is in spate as I cross, a stream that ran red for three days with
Irish blood after the battle of Kinsale. A vertical hill slows you as you reach
Puckane but the view is spectacular, overlooking a plain where Don Juan Del
Aquilla and the two Hughs confronted the
old enemy with the intention of banishing them from Ireland for once and for
all. This was no little skirmish on the
edge of Europe. This was full on, heavy
weight, eyeball to eyeball stuff with all of Europe on the brink of war. And in
the cold mid-winter, now, the ghosts are never far away.
Horizon Farm sells eggs. It sells jam sometimes, salad
sometimes and Puddings at Christmas. But it is mostly eggs. Free range eggs
from the hens you can see running around the farm. Some brown eggs some white,
some big, some small, and all laid out on square trays like cobblestones on an
old farmyard. Taste these once and you will never again eat a battery egg. A
couple of eggs lightly poached on buttered toast is simplicity and perfection
itself.
Heading south from Horizon Farm over the hill of
Puckane and down through another battle site to the loamy soil of Ballymona and
Kielys potato farm. A sign says ‘British Queens for Sale’ and I pray they get
the geographical irony. Again, a shed stands at the farm gate but his one is
tall and narrow like a sentry hut, filled to the rafters with 5kg bags of
potatoes.
The French rely on the word Terroir to convey a sense of place and environment but it is more
than that. It includes culture and history and tradition. The same applies here
and it is difficult to convey the beautiful simplicity of freshly boiled baby
potatoes from the farm around the corner.
We head west now and across the river to Horsehill
Farm outside Ballinadee. Again, Horsehill sells a variety of fresh vegetables
and fruit in season but it is the raw milk in bottles that I have come for. The
milk changes quite a lot with the seasons and the creamy yellow of the pasture
fed summer fades to white with the silage diet of winter. Coffee and wine
manufacturers all use the concept of single estate to sell. There is no mixing
of products, no homogenisation, everything is produced here.
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