How things change. A few short years ago, growing your own food was merely trendy. A few years before that, it was seen by many, farmers included, as a sign that you were not making enough money to buy your own food.Now, the decking is being replaced by raised beds in back gardens across Ireland. Allotments have sprung up in an amazing array of towns and cities.
I've even started getting my hands dirty. I'm helping out a neighbour on her new allotment on the outskirts of Ennis. There, Jimmy Spellisy's farm hosts a plethora of 10 x 20 yard plots. Ennis is one of the many towns which, almost overnight, have started up allotments.
More are planned or already started in Clare alone: Shannon town has just launched 30, while Ennistymon has begun an initiative too. Cork and Kerry are particularly busy, from Bantry and Ladysbridge to Blarney and Ballintubber.
Different levels of on-site supports are available in the various allotments across Ireland. Some offer a plot with water, others offer tool storage, access to sheds, toilets, options to plant in orchards, space for bee hives, and varying sizes of plots.
All of them offer up learning, growing, getting to know other gardeners, getting a bit fitter and spending less of your hard earned cash on tired imports of far flung fruits and vegetables.
Along with allotments, formal and more informal courses are being offered for the backyard and allotment grower. Courses for many types and levels are being held, from beekeeping to berry wines in an impressive spread of geographical locations.
Most established locations such as the effervescent Organic Center in Leitrim and the Irish Seed Savers in Clare have been joined more recently by places such as the The Kerry Earth Education Project on Gortbrack farm in Shanakill in Kerry and Carrig Dulra in Wicklow.
However, it is not just in backyards or on allotments where people have begun growing. Perhaps most impressively, 2000 schools have again partaken in the Agri-Aware growing initiative. Last year it was Meet the Spuds, and this year it is Incredible Edibles.
Every primary school nationwide received an Incredible Edibles growing kit in February containing seeds, trays, compost and an instructional DVD. Participating schools must grow potatoes, scallions, lettuces, cabbages and strawberries and document their farming adventure in a classroom growing diary.
These diaries are then entered into a competition, where there are prizes of over �10,000 in educational funds for the ten schools shortlisted as finalists.
Agri-Aware Chair Mairead Lavery commented, "The huge uptake of this challenge among primary schools proves there's an appetite to educate children on where their food comes from. Pupils will have the opportunity to take home what they've learned about fresh produce in the classroom and impart their newfound knowledge among family and friends. This will help to communicate the valuable work of Irish farmers to hundreds of thousands of Irish consumers."
According to Minister for Food Trevor Sargent TD, there are a number of benefits to this initiative: "It's fantastic to think that at least two thirds of Ireland's primary schools are now growing crops of Irish fruit and vegetables. It's important to build on this learning and link in the nutritional benefits that a fresh five-a-day has on our health and wellbeing. The finances of the country would also benefit from more people eating Irish grown fruit and vegetables. Already obesity is costing the state over �4 billion a year."
Approximately 20 of Ireland's leading fruit and vegetable organisations and distributors are supporting the drive, from Begleys and Bord Bia to Teagasc and the Wexford Fruit Producers company.
An interactive website, wall charts, growing calendars, a DVD, nutritional advice and a booklet called �Lettuce Eat!' are all great resources to have provided, but in the end it is all about getting outside and getting clay on the hands.
I visited the Kilnamona National School west of Ennis in Clare to see how they were getting on with Incredible Edibles. As it happens, they are getting on incredibly well.
Pupils, teachers and parents alike have gone above and beyond the basics the initiative itself. What's more impressive again is the fact that they really have very little space to do it all in.
Along with the five crops, they grow a range of other fruits, leaves and vegetables. The pupils of third and fourth class, and their teacher Mary McMahon, showed me around their handiwork. As an example of the parent's helping out, many of the plants were was potted in catering containers provided by one of the parents who happened to be a chef.
The project started in February when the Incredible Edible basics - potatoes, cabbage, strawberries scallions and lettuce - were planted. Compost, soil and manure were brought into the school, which in itself allowed for one of the first of many learning experiences to unfold.
However, they went beyond this, with gooseberries, blackcurrant, redcurrant, parsley and mint also planted. According to the pupils: �the mint is very slow growing, but the parsley has thrived�. They also planted flowers (dahlia, begonia) weeping willow and pumpkin.
�The school is in a rural and farming community here in Kilnamona, which has been a great help� according to Mary McMahon.
She continues: �one of the parents, local farmer Michael O Keaffe, came into the school to help out and to give advice�. In the diary the pupils have made to chronicle the project, there are numerous pictures of Michael O Keaffe and plenty of text too:
�April 10th: Michael came into our school to thin out the lettuce and explain about the benefits of eating vegetables. He also gave us advice on separating the cabbage. He talked to us about sowing potatoes. He advised us not to use chemical sprays�.
The diary is in fact a treasure trove of learning by doing, of getting outside and getting a bit mucky with the real stuff of nature, farming and of life:
�We covered the cabbage on the 05/03/09. We put stones on the end of the pot, as it is good for drainage�...we planted the lettuce on the 04/03/09. First, we put a line in the soil with our index finger. Then, my brother and I put seeds in the soil. We saw our first signs of growth on 16/03/09. We watered it on 04/03/09. The type of lettuce we brought in is called Butterhead. It is growing really well�
Pupils have come up with ingenious little slants on the project. They have written acrostic poems: poems that go through the alphabet letter by letter, from adorable apples to sweet strawberries. They have also learned and written about the characteristics and benefits of vegetables: root, fruit, leafy, flower, bulb and bud.
The subject range the school can involve through this project is wide: history has come into it, with Sir Walter Raleigh and the famine featuring in recent months. Even art has been implicated, with bright pastel drawings and, very impressively, cute little potato people festooning the fringes of the gardening area. What will become biology and home economics when they enter the post-primary system have been integrated too.
The school also ran a healthy eating initiative, which they connected to their growing. The creative writing strand in the curriculum was even integrated through their records and poems. Plus,
�we made up a song called fruit glorious fruit� which was sung to the tune of food glorious food.
I spent a morning outside in the growing area and inside the classroom with the pupils of third and fourth class. We wandered around the small but brimming growing area, which was a testimony to their creativity.
I was amazed myself to watch their own amazement at something as straightforward as water pouring thought the unexpected holes in the bottom of a tin after watering the plants. They then figured out why there were holes and carried on, one more nugget of knowledge added to the memory bank.
Inside the classroom, I asked them about food, farming and growing. Many of the children have started growing various crops at home, including peppers, tomatoes and strawberries. Others have developed an interest in cooking, and are willing to try foods they would not have dreamed of a few years ago. Others again spoke of the fact that they now have something to talk about with their grandparents, who come from a generation where growing was the norm.
�We will be visiting the Irish Seed Savers in Scariff for an end of year trip� according to Mary McMahon. There, the pupils will be rightly rewarded for their work in a veritable gardeners' Garden of Eden.
The Seed Savers is another place where people can engage in a variety of growing courses, from kitchen gardens all the way up to sowing winter cereals for tillage farmers.
The Association has an eight hectare site in Co. Clare with a range of purpose built facilities. These include a seed bank with over 600 rare and endangered vegetable varieties, a native woodland, an apple orchard and nursery.
One of the most striking aspects of this Incredible Edibles initiative is the fact that it makes learning fun: it achieves this by being based in the outdoors while also being brilliantly practical.
There may be a place for filling numbers into boxes in books indoors, while the sun splits the stones outside, but surely this sort of initiative is exactly what primary school learning should be all about: getting outside, getting real and getting a bit of clay under the fingernails.
For more on Incredible Edibles, see: here
For more on allotments go to: here
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