Gooseberries

I arrived at my second Wwoof destination last Thursday. I have been here a week and it is very different from my last farm. My last placement was a farm called Mill House Farm and it was run by a little family with two small sons. It was an actual organic farm with six tunnels where they grow in the winter and several outside fields filled with row after row of potatoes, cabbage, broccoli, lettuces, spinach, carrots, turnips and chard, all of which I had a hand in planting or picking.

Where I am now, Dunbrody Country House Hotel is a little different than Mill House Farm. Here we have a little Kitchen Garden which grows some of the organic produce that they use in the Hotel’s famous Restaurant run and owned by Kevin Dundon a celebrity chef here in Ireland and around the world. The garden is quaint but it is no farm. There are also an herb garden, a fruit garden and extensive flower gardens around the grounds. Irene is the head gardener and Seamus is the grounds keeper and helps in the garden. I am the only wwoofer at the moment and it has been very fun to lean from Irene. She has extensive knowledge about plants, vegetables, fruit and flowers. I know I will learn a lot here not only about gardening but about myself.

A few days ago Irene asked me why I am doing this trip. She kind of figured it was the cliché of finding one’s self and a direction in life. I was telling her how difficult it is for me to figure it out because I enjoy so many different things. I have noticed that I have an ability to easily mesh into a situation and make a place for myself even if is not entirely what I desire. I was telling Irene about my previous job and how I enjoyed getting dressed up, wearing a suit and heals to work, chatting with customers and getting a thrill at the look on someone’s face when you have gone above and beyond to help them with something special. But I also am not sure if I want to be stuck in customer service where it can be grueling hours that get old fast.

Today she turns to me with a laughing look in her eyes (while we are standing under a tree to get out of the sudden down pore) and says "I just can’t imagine you in a suit and heals every day. I just can’t imagine it." I smiled and replied that I have had a really hard time choosing what I want to do, and what path I want my life to follow. I love to get dressed up and look good and go to work in nice cloths but at the same time I do enjoy doing what I am doing here, in my jeans and boots.

Later on I was pinning up the gooseberries and Irene was pruning. She turns to me and says, "Ok Oceanna, it is your turn, you have to prune these and only pick one stalk to train to grow." She smiles and laughs and says, "you have to be decisive about this."

I started by asking her questions and she just repeated that I must pick one on my own. Finally once I got the hang of it, it was rewarding and fulfilling and even though it was hard to whack of those berries it made me think that the ones left will grow and flourish into something beautiful. No matter what path we choose we can grow into it and grow from it. After I was finished she said, "It use to terrify me to prune things, but really the plants want to grow."

I know that no mater where I go and what I end up doing in my life I will continue to grow and I will think about those gooseberries and how maybe it will be a struggle for them to climb up the bamboo. They will try to grow different ways but if they follow their path they will always have something to help and guide them. Eventually they will grow strong on their own, their support will be taken away and they will produce beautiful fruit. As in my life I will have struggles and it will be difficult at times to follow my path but I have strong support and the will to grow.

Pilgrimage to the Top

On Saturday Hannah and I caught the train from Castlerea and headed up to Westport. We wanted to climb Croagh Patrick, and partake in the famous religious pilgrimage. It is named for St. Patrick and has powerful meaning to the Irish people. It is a beautiful mountain and quite high. People of all ages do it and it isn’t by any means really safe especially in the rain! We caught a taxi out to the mountain after wandering around town trying to find our hostel and then eating lunch. (wonderful soup and cheese garlic bread yummm)…

Noal our taxi driver gave us his # for him to come back and pick us up when we were done. He told us to be careful and take our time and we set out!!! Not five minutes from when we started up the path did it start to pour. The rain mixed with the sweat as we clambered our way up the rocks. It got very steep and gravelly at some points and we had wished we had hired a walking stick for the journey! Everyone but us seemed to have gotten the memo at the bottom and obtained a stick but not us, “lazy” Americans as Leo likes to call us. We were determined not to be lazy and use a crutch in this instance.

            Hannah and I were positive that we saw the top, not the top of the mountain but it was about halfway from the summit and how could elderly people in bare feet make it up further than that??!! Well we got to that point sweating and panting and realizing that even young girls like us are in the same boat as grandma there behind us with her stick. Groaning and loosing momentum fast on this little excursion we looked up towards the summit as rain pelted us creating a suction cupping effect with our jeans to our legs. There was a steady line of little multi colored dots moving steadily up and down the side of the mountain. On we trudge…

            The Irish have a tendency of being sure that they know how long it takes to get places. When asked if something is a nice walk a typical response is “oh yeah, ye will have no trouble. It will take ye near abouts ten min. No problem at all.” This is usually followed by a grin and a reassuring nod. If you add about a half hour to that, give or take a little then maybe you have a rough estimate of the time it will take to do something or to get somewhere. This was the case while heading up the last bit of the mountain. Rain had created a small river where a path should have been, people slipped and slid over slick rocks trying not to tumble down the eighty degree slope. As we scrambled up, wet but grinning descending Irish climbers gave us words of encouragement, “not long now girls! Five more minutes!” Twenty minutes later we are still huffing and puffing scraping up the hill, wishing we had decided to be “lazy” Americans.

            Once we hit the summit we were greeted by a toothless man selling Mars bars and crisps, a spectacular view over the bay and the blistering wind. We quickly took shelter in the door way of the chapel at the summit. The sun peaked through the clouds for a few instances, enough for a few pictures, and then the rain came again.

            Once a year the Irish partake in a pilgrimage to the top of Croagh Patrick in honor of their beloved Saint. St. Patrick is said to have banished all of the snakes from Ireland from the top of Croagh Patrick. But since it is common knowledge that there were no snakes to be found in Ireland we can assume that these so called “snakes” were the other forms of religion, primarily the pagan religions that were present when Patrick arrived on Ireland’s coast. So in thanks and remembrance of their patron saint the Irish climb his mountain bare foot on one day out of the year. Well you know that Lazy American bit, this is where I jump in with the Crazy Irish bit. The path up the mountain is steep and full of rocks. It is not a mamsey pamsey, grassy climb, it is a hard and painful climb. You would have to be nuts or very, very dedicated to climb this mountain bare foot. It is amazing what people do for their religion…I would think they would be clear of the confessional box for a few months at least.

            The climb down was slippery but much faster. We in turn gave those words of encouragement to the Irish, while laughing and grinning. Once back down our knees were shaky and we were soaked through. I gave Noal, our faithful taxi driver and tour guide, a ring and he swung by and picked us up. As he dropped us back downtown in Westport he said beaming. “Well gurls, ye are half way to heaven now!”

            As he drove away I could only think what do I have to do to achive the other half? I have climbed Croagh Patrick, been to the Vatican, seen St. Peters and St. Pauls, am I there yet?

International Birthdays

I feel privileged to have been blessed with the most beautiful day I have had in Ireland yet, as my birthday. Audrey popped her head in the caravan in the morning and said happy birthday and we headed out to the field later on. It was hot, around 75, and not a cloud in the sky. This was fantastic but at a price, Hannah and I both ended up getting burnt. We planted purple broccoli and lettuce or as they say “salad” in the morning. Then before lunch I went and checked up on the pigs. I spent time over helping Mick fix up their shelter and going gaga over the 13 babies. That night we sat in the sun and munched cheese, apples, wine and chocolate and played hide and seek with Leo. Dinner was wonderful and I was presented with a tasty cake after dinner with candles. Mick went down to the store and got a couple more bottles of wine to enjoy and then us girls went out to the pubs.

After a few rounds of pool which Hannah and I quickly became the ultimate losers, we headed back home. We were both decked out in some kind of flashlight finery, Hannah with her handy, dandy crank light that her mother sent her after hearing that she was walking home from the pub at 3am on narrow Irish roads, in the dark.  Myself, I prefer my ever efficient head lamp (no literary embellishment needed for that statement). After dogging speaking cars twice and each stopping to use the toilet, aka a field, we came across an open gate leading into probably what we have learned is a cow pasture. Since it was and it was a gorgeous night we decided to venture in. We chose a nice bit of grass and decided to lay down and gaze up at the stars. In hindsight we probably should have known that the grass was wet, we are in Ireland and no matter how warm it seems to get a rain cloud could appear at any given moment and create a monsoon, so we got wet, and were most likely laying in dried up cow pies but hey it was a hell of a view.  After enjoying our view for a bit (not sure if it was five minutes or a half hour) we headed home to a mug of tea and shortbread.

I think I’ll have to make a tradition of being out of the country for my birthday. Last year it was watching monkeys in Costa Rica and this year I am in the little village of Williamstown in Ireland. Who knows where I will be when the next one comes along?

Car Bombs and Tea Time

Irish Car Bombs… these may be a big hit in the States but in West Ireland in the farm town of Williamstown they are unknown and the name is a little to close to home. Although it is a meshing of three of the most well known treasures in the Irish liquor cabinet, Guinness, Jameson and Bailey’s Irish Cream the Irish do not seem keen on the mix. Why mess up a perfectly wonderful beverage with “mussing” it with the other two? This is unheard of, and when ordered at a pub such as Feeney’s in downtown Williamstown (population near to 100), the owner of the pub just gave us dirty looks and we quickly changed the subject to Yeager bombs… 

Everyone knows that the English, Irish and Scottish love their Tea Time. On the farm this consists of a nice warm bit of black tea after lunch. You can add sugar or honey to sweeten your tea, but my hosts simply put in a bit of milk.  This gives me a nice bit of relaxation before realizing I have to go back out in the rain and sow more cabbages in the mud.  While on my hands and knees, I wish I had some cute Irish boy to give me a massage at the end of the day but instead I return to my trailer, with my plastic covered bed, temperamental hot water and spiders to brew myself yet another cup of Irish tea.