7 minute read
THE ALPACA LIFESTYLE
Nathalie Markiefka and Sinéad Moran, founders of Foodture
produced by industrial methods might well be labelled to give the illusion of quality, but that does not necessarily make it so. The impact of those methods on soil, for example, can be harmful.
“Industrialised methods deplete soil, both [in terms of] quantity and quality,” Markiefka explains. “Soil is the base for plant and grass nourishment and determines the nutrient density of the food we eat. Calories alone don’t nourish us, we need much
more than this. We need a policy approach to food production that supports a balance between the structural, biological and chemical needs of our soil – a focus on farming soil to improve availability of trace elements, macro and micro-nutrients.”
“IT IS CRUCIAL THAT TRULY WELL-BALANCED, SUSTAINABLE METHODS OF FARMING ARE DEVELOPED AND THAT FARMERS RECEIVE INCENTIVES FOR REGENERATIVE, AGROECOLOGICAL AND ORGANIC PRACTICES.” “WE NEED A POLICY APPROACH TO FOOD PRODUCTION THAT SUPPORTS A BALANCE BETWEEN THE STRUCTURAL, BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL NEEDS OF OUR SOIL.”
DEVELOPMENT
The Foodture network is, for now at least, quite modest. Markiefka explains that, at the time of writing, the group has around sixteen members from across the food system – from farmers and restaurants to change-maker associations such as the Organic Growers of Ireland and Irish Seed Savers – but the group has been growing since its launch of the Fair Food map in January 2018. Ultimately, of course, there will be lots of work required to transform the nature of Ireland’s agricultural sector, but initiatives such as Foodture are perhaps an indication that things are beginning to change. While there’s still plenty to accomplish, it is perhaps reassuring that there are movements out there that have a coherent vision for how a sustainable manner of food production might look, as Markiefka sets out.
“Ideally, food would be produced mostly by ecological intensive farmers, providing food for the communities around them,” she says. “Citizens would have a direct link to the farmers who produce their food, either through meeting them at a market, a farm shop, a community-supported agriculture group or through a direct interface like Foodture. Farmers would get a fair price for their work and be able to sustain a livelihood, now and into the future. Citizens, aware of the benefits of nutritious food and environmentally-friendly farming, would support these farmers by voting or advocating for regenerative practices through their purchasing choices, and directly by letting their voices [be] heard at local, national and international decision-making levels. We would have institutions that work for a common food policy, where local food councils and governments enable ecological farming and [provide] access to it in urban and rural areas.”
Ultimately, the Foodture initiative believes that there needs to be a change from food consumerism to citizenship. It seeks to do this by changing people’s attitudes towards food through spreading awareness of positive practices and encouraging people to ask “Is this food fair to animals, people and place?” Perhaps the first step toward food citizenship starts with this question.
HOME SWEET HOME
EAR TO THE GROUND
PRESENTER DARRAGH MCCULLOUGH REFLECTS ON HIS RECENT MOVE INTO THE FAMILY HOMESTEAD.
They say that moving house is only second to a family bereavement when it comes to stress. So moving into the farmhouse, complete with the detritus and heirlooms of several generations, turns the dial up a few notches further.
It’s not that we didn’t have plenty of warning. My parents had been threatening to downsize for years, given that it was just the two of them rattling around in a house of nearly 5,000 square feet. To be fair to them, they had never flinched on continuing to invest in the house right up to the end and, as anyone with an old house will attest to, it’s not a job for the faint-hearted. Despite the oldest part being built some 250 years ago, settlement cracks began to appear in the outer walls only a few years back. Cue a mass concrete injection project. That came hot on the heels of the time that a windy night left a slate askew on the roof. When my dad sent a chap up the ladder to have a closer look, it was soon apparent that not only were the lats around it rotten, but the main beams in the roof were looking dodgy too. Some €40,000 later there was a nice new roof on the house, but it was a pricey fix for a loose slate!
Talking to farming neighbours also lucky enough to have an old farmhouse on the land, one of the biggest recurring themes is heating these old piles. True to form, the farmhouse at Elmgrove has the quintessential Aga stove at its heart, throbbing a low, constant heat through the ancient heating pipes. While it has been switched over to gas in more recent times, the efficiency of keeping the old dear ticking over is still very questionable. When the folks tried turning off the Aga during the hottest months of the summer, they found that damp began
rising from the cellar up. But even the alternative of running at a low setting during most of the year eats its way through over €2,500 of gas annually. That’s a lot of heating for two!
But Elmgrove is one of the warmer farmhouses, courtesy of the double glazing and extra lining installed over the last two decades. I know of farmhouses where the warmest room in the house is the bathroom thanks to an electric mat under the tiling. Thankfully, we’ll have no trouble staying warm during the long winter months.
The old Aga range cooker.
An old bell-box that you could use to summon your breakfast, a relic of a by-gone era.
Then there’s the cleaning. How my gran ever kept on top of all the dusting and cobwebs I’ll never know. And that’s before any mention of keeping the brass fittings on the stairs polished, the plants watered and the carpets hoovered. Suddenly, housekeeping becomes a career choice all by itself. That might have been a possibility back in the days of stay-at-home mothers and wives, but with both myself and my wife Aoife out the door at 7am every morning and not back in until after 6pm or 7pm in the evening, we figure there’s got to be more to life than dedicating our evenings and weekends to completing house chores.
THE MOVE
In reality, we are still recovering from the initial move itself. It’s one thing clearing out a decade of living from your home, but it’s another story altogether getting the rest of the extended family to clear their intergenerational clutter to make room for us to have a clean start. It’s one of those things about old family homes I think – that brothers and sisters and aunts and cousins all feel an attachment to the homestead and always consider it the touchstone whenever they are back in the country.
That’s a really nice thing in many ways – there’s always somebody calling and due the next week, and we always have space to accommodate them. But it does require a slight change in mindset to accept that your home has a dual role; that of accommodating your immediate family but also being the natural go-to for extended family when they are in the region. Over the years, the regular visitors have ‘their’ rooms, and often bits of furniture that got parked along the way. This, combined with all of the usual motley collection of cut glass sugar bowls, broken oil lamps, faded pictures of various popes and bishops, pewter cups to mark christenings and herd competitions, tennis rackets and so on needed to be dealt with if we had any hope of making the place our own.
For the first couple of weeks you are full of motivation to tackle the next stash, sort them out into crates for St Vincent de Paul, ones ear-marked for a particular family member, or those heading straight for the dump. But you lose momentum by the time you get a couple of key living spaces sorted. Life gets in the way with the farm getting into top gear as the summer rolled in,
