Cheap Food.

I have long maintained that the food we buy is far too cheap and does not reflect the true cost of production,   the environmental damage caused by intensive farming,

All that waste!

plastic packaging and air miles.

And yet more waste.

Many workers that work on these farms are little more than slaves, work in appalling conditions, many live in shanty towns. This applies to some European intensive farms as well as third world counties. If the true cost was applied food would be far more expensive than it is, supermarkets would not be able dump perfectly good food, neither would the householder be so keen to dump food. The amount of waste from households is astounding, as is the amount that we collect from our shops.
Our pigs are certainly enjoying their very varied diet,

Strawberries from Wexford, OK, no air miles there but these strawberries were perfect, no mould and still had a day to go on the best before date.
 Mixed leaf salads from Spain, clearly we cant grow salad crops in Ireland, Mange tout peas, French beans from Kenya, both of which grow extremely well here, Raspberries, Bananas Blueberries, Passion fruit from Colombia, ready prepared fruit salads, bags of apples, amongst other things, far too numerous to name, all imported, and just about everything in plastic containers.

Perfectly good food, still in date.

 There was also perfect Garlic and Ginger, not suitable for pigs, we will pass the garlic onto friends, the ginger I have processed and we now have a lovely jar of ginger in syrup.
The fact that these shops can afford to dump perfectly good food and still keep their shareholders happy rather shows just how cheap these things are bought for, after all, supermarkets are there to make money. I just wonder how much the producers receive, barely a living wage, maybe enough to feed their family's, and for us to waste it is in my opinion a crime, but many people do not care where the food has come from or  how it is produced as long as it's cheap, yet I often hear comments of how expensive food is now, clearly not enough thought is given to where all these goodies have come from and just who has produced them, and under what conditions.
Years ago I was given a tour of an intensive vegetable farm in Morocco, this was a flagship farm, where conditions were considered good, I guess this term was used relatively in comparison to other farms.

Garlic success.

We have now harvested our Garlic, they are all big bulbs, forty eight in total, as long as we dry them properly we have enough for the next year.

A good harvest.

The tunnel grown onions have also been harvested, again they have to be dried properly before we string them, a good crop, with more to come from the outside grown ones which are looking very good this year.

The Strawberries just keep on coming, I have made as much jam as we need and am now bottling them. They keep their flavour very well this way, lovely with yoghurt during the winter months. Blackcurrants and raspberries are almost ready, as are the gooseberries, we wont have a shortage of soft fruit this year.
Life is not all work for us, although sometimes it does feel that way, we have had several trips out to interesting places,

Entrance to the ringfort.

one to a Ringfort which is very impressive,

The walls form a perfect circle.

with twelve foot walls

Souterrian

Another souterrian.

and several souterrians, we had tried to find this a couple of weeks ago when we had a friend staying with us,

Steps up to the defensive platform.

another few steps and we would have been there, still we have found it now.
Another trip was to the ruins of a castle that we had seen signposted a few days before hand, again, very impressive, but we have been unable to find out much information about it, other than it was a

It would have been a very impressive fortification.

Medieval fortress castle owned by the O'Garas who had the Lordship of Coolavin, in Co Sligo.

Remains of the entrance arch.

We both love exploring old ruins, imagining what  the people and their lives were like, most of the ancient ruins have a peace about them

Firing embrasure.

yet they would have been used against conflict, but some that we have visited still have a feeling of disharmony.

The rockery is a blaze of colour in just one year.