Tag Archives: easy living

A Gift

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There are few days as beautiful as a sunny Sunday morning in April. If you rise early enough you catch it before the house builds up to its usual crescendo of activity. For now, it is still, sunny, wakening, calm. From my coffee perch, I hear a cow bellow, the birds twittering over green fields, the farmer getting the parlour ready for milking. The gate closes for the cows arrival, there is the familiar drop of buckets on the dairy floor.

The cows wait outside the parlour for their turn to bring us their milk. The milk tank will fill with their bounty and as they wander from the parlour out to the gorgeous green grass that April has brought here, the milk will be collected.  It’s off to its destination, a fridge away from here, filling another little boy’s breakfast bowl we tell them.

Here is the gift of another beautiful Sunday in April, fresh milk for our pancakes, growth in the  fields and good health for the family and animals in our care. No better gift.

Have a lovely Sunday.

Come on

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Why are you coming in the back door? Never mind. Oh yeah, might want to hold your nose, farmyard odours and nappies battling it out for attention in the back kitchen. Oh, and block your eyes to the mountain of dirty washing and opposing basket of clean washing yet to be folded. Any year now. Come on, to the kitchen. Oh mind the bicycle. And that one.

Ah now, this is a bit more social. Keep it down boys. Yeah, that’s Nina Simone. “Ain’t got no, I got life.” Might want to pick the self pitying mother with no sleep up off the floor and tell her to throw on a bit of lipstick and put on the kettle. French toast and strawberries anyone? Turn off the TV lads. Come on, it’s a bit nippy but there’s sunshine and we’re eating brunch alfresco. Hold the baby a second. Perfect.  Sam, stop scratching! Never work with children or animals they say. Sit down for yourself. One lump or two?

In Praise of the Sponge Cake

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You know those Sponge cakes that smell of yellow, they are so full of fresh eggs. Eggs that are beaten into local creamery butter (because you have to support the local creamery) and castor sugar. Eggs that soak up the sifted flour and baking powder and that flirt with anyone who smells them baking in the hot oven.

And you just have to heat the strawberry jam and when just warm, you have to add fresh chopped strawberries. And when sponge and jam are cooled, you just pour jam on your lower sponge and top it off with whipped (not overwhipped) cream on top. Best to have little boys watching this bit for maximum dramatic effect, jaws dropped.  Spongy bedmate placed on top and sprinkled with icing sugar.

This is beaten in minutes, baked in twenty; friends, family, children and husbands will remember you in their wills or at the very least, will remember you for the lovely sponge you made on the day they came to visit, started school, needed a friend, or lost a calf.  According to the Hearthill School of Thought, there is nothing a ‘dirty’ Sponge cake won’t solve. Lastly, throw on the kettle and slice.

May All Your Sons be Bishops

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I’m right in the middle of the nesting phase in Hearthill. The fine weather has allowed me to get all the necessary baby accoutrements and clothing washed and aired and so we’re ready for the arrival of my little Brosnan. The fine weather and by fine I mean, warmish, dampish, soft (a great Irish word for describing the rain that just dampens the grass and ground enough whilst leaving the rest of us soaking) has meant that silage ground is ready for mowing. It’s an unspoken topic here really. Should he mention to the hormonal other that a silage dinner may need to be cooked in the next few weeks? Best not. But we can see the grass grow now. Everyone in Hearthill is happy and ready for what this fine Summer has to offer.

As for the title? I overheard it last weekend in the local hospital where one nurse was thanking another for lending a hand. First coined by Brendan Behan, the lovely Kerry nurse had used it in thanks. So to you who has been reading along this last while and to you who has helped the grass grow, in the Kerry way; ‘Bless you and May All your Sons be Bishops.’

Buona Domenica

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It’s been one of those weeks in Hearthill, everyone from the tetchy toddler, sick older brother, cranky mommy and patient farmer need a dose of tender loving care.  And so, administrating the dose, I refer as always back to the Italians in praise of all things bright and beautiful. They do it all so well; abundance, style, living, delight.  As an Italophile I try to bring a touch of La Dolce Vita into our home as often as I can moreso to remedy any lack of lustre that the Spring might impose. Just for today, Indulge me……

The Italians take the ordinary and translate it into the exquisite on a daily basis but more so on La Domenica, Sunday. It starts on Friday evening, down the little sidestreets, at the clink of the espresso cup on saucer after the obligatory fix of caffeine coming home from work, on collection of pastries for weekend treats, you begin to hear the echo of ‘Buona Domenica’ in big cities and small villages alike throughout Italy. ‘Buona Domenica’, ‘Have a Wonderful Sunday’ and even though it’s Friday, that Sunday moment is brought forward to signal the beginning of something special at the end of a week’s hard work.

Here, in Hearthill, Sunday is the day when the wellies are abandoned, fresh coffee is brewed, hot French toast is placed alongside the Sunday newspapers. There is normally a walk on a local beach, a leisurely chat with neighbours, delayed milking. It is a day for homemade pasta, fresh herbs, bambini covered in tomato ragu, leisurely dinner time. As with all good things alas, the moment when the milk machine is fixed onto the udder arrives and the familiar thrup, thrup, thrup of the milk machine comes echoing from the parlour signaling the end of a lovely Sunday and the beginning of a new week of work on the farm.

Buona Domenica….

The Walk Back to Sallies

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In the villages, towns and cities of Italy, ladies and indeed gentlemen put on their Sunday best of an evening and stroll up their main street or piazza. They are there to be seen, to have an icecream and chat, often dressed in their finest Gucci (a flurry of Italian past-times all in one walk). Our tribute to La Passeggiata in Hearthill is the stroll back to Sallies. The Wellies replace the Gucci alas.

The romantic in me loves that we have a field named ‘Sallies’, named as far as I can gather after a lady who once had a cottage there named Sally (Funnily enough) in the late 1800’s. It is exactly a quarter of a mile from our red gate and it has been a Passeggiata of sorts for us, the newest generation of Brosnan’s, since 2009. 

Generally, our Passegiata starts out as an escape from the house,  a venture out into nature, a ‘wearing them out before bedtime’ or simply a walk out of the madness for Mommy.   Sometimes, it involves actual work when cows have to be accompanied back the road when grazing there. Even then it is relaxing saunder with cows whose tummies are full and whose udders are empty and therefore not in a rush back to pasture. I cherish the memory of Summertime when the living is easier.

This morning’s stroll took myself and and young Master Daniel back the road. For the two year old whose vocabulary is widening by the yard and whose curiosity is awakening in every step, the walk back to Sallies is a wild adventure.  Our entourage also extends to our two farm dogs, Sammy and Pepe, with the occasional cat wandering along too. There are times, like this morning,  when the stroll home is not always as carefree.  One of the strollers had to be cajoled into leaving an interesting corner of a field having found a family of ladybirds and so the the quarter of a mile home seems more like a marathon to a mommy who is getting heavier by the day.

Our stroll is an exercise in manners, learning to wave to a passing neighbour whilst also being lucrative with blackberries on offer and wild flowers for picking at various stages of the year. This Passeggiata is a nod to my favourite Italian pastime, in appreciation of ‘La Dolce Far Niente,’ the sweetness of doing nothing which in itself is so much. Adapting to life as a country girl has meant a slowing down in pace, strolling alongside seasonal changes and understanding the value of the country childhood where children chat with animation about new discoveries with the freedom to run around a much loved field.