Ballydehob

Making Butter

Robert take a turn, supervised by Kevin and young butter maker

Robert takes a turn, supervised by Kevin and young butter maker

At the recent Autumn Fair (known as the Thrashing) in Ballydehob, Robert and I got a chance to take a turn at the butter churn and to watch the magical transformation of milk into butter and buttermilk.

Pouring off the buttermilk

Pouring off the buttermilk

It's ready!

It’s ready!

Washing, salting, shaping

Washing, salting, shaping

To reward us for all that labour (turning that handle was so hard), we had a butter feast – homemade soda bread made using the buttermilk, with homemade butter and homemade jam. There are lots of good Irish soda bread recipes on the internet: here’s the one I used. And yes, you can get buttermilk in North America – take a really good look on the milk shelves and you’ll see it lurking in a corner near the cream.

Homemade soda bread by the fire.

Homemade soda bread by the fire

Homemade jam – this is a fabulous five minute jam recipe I found from a link on a friend’s Facebook page and adapted slightly. Mine is blackberry (bumper crop this year!) but you could use any berry you want.

1 cup blackberries

1 tbsp honey

1 tbsp warm water

1 tbsp chia seeds

Blend (in a blender) and pour into something (yogurt container? Glass?). Put in fridge for an hour. Hey presto – delicious jam! The chia seeds jellify and that’s what binds the jam. You have to keep this jam in the fridge and eat it within a couple of weeks, since it’s not cooked. It will freeze well. I was introduced to chia years ago by my friend Christi from El Salvador. It’s available in supermarkets and health food stores.

Autumn Comes to Roaringwater

leaves

Just as the leaves begin to turn, the gales have come to tear them away and send them flying all over the Bay. Autumn is bringing angry seas with wild white horses, while the trees on our exposed acre are bending sideways. I admire the small birds who manage to find their way to our bird-table in the face of it all: we have just been visited by a whole flock of ravenous Goldfinches who hang on to the wildly swaying feeders in a determined frenzy to fatten themselves up for the coming winter and squabble noisily with any Great-tits, Chaffinches or Robins who try to get in on the act.

Byway in Ballydehob

In Ballydehob (our local community) it’s time for the annual Thrashing. This event always takes place just before Hallowe’en, a festival which nowadays overlays the old Celtic Samhain (1 November) – when the souls of the departed are remembered. Here it’s a good time to bring in the threshing machine and lay up sacks of grain in the barn. It’s also a reason to hold a fair and show off vintage cars and tractors, to make butter, to watch performing dogs, to gamble on mouse racing – or just to chat over a cup of tea.

Byway in Ballydehob

Byway in Ballydehob

show

Don’t miss it!

fair

dog

thrashing

The Thrashing

mice

Mouse Bookie

We look forward to the turning seasons: what we see from Nead an Iolair changes constantly, is never dull, and can’t be taken for granted. Skies can be steel grey – or still as gloriously blue as they were in the summer; and our sunsets can be even more beautiful.

rwpan

Ballydehob

The Ballydehob 12 Arch Bridge: the last train on this narrow gauge railway ran in 1947

The Ballydehob 12 Arch Bridge: the last train on this narrow gauge railway ran in 1947

When I was a child, people would use the name Ballydehob to conjure up an image of a quintessential small Irish town. I thought it was a made-up name until I was doing my fieldwork in West Cork in the 1970s and realised it was a real place. It was a typical rural town with a dwindling population and few services, but around that time the ‘Blow-ins’ (mostly English, but also German and Dutch) started to settle in the area. They were hippies, looking for freedom in the hills; artists, finding inspiration in the landscape; or refugees from urban culture starting a new life in an unspoiled environment. Here, they found a welcome. As one of the locals said to us, “If we were depending on Irish people around here, nothing would have happened. There just weren’t enough of us.” In the 90’s another influx of Blow-ins arrived: the newly affluent Irish, converting derelict cottages to holiday homes. Ballydehob flourished: according to a 2005 account it was “a patchwork of colourful gables, with antique shops, craft galleries, a bookshop, and many good places to eat and drink.”

L1080249Walking down the main street in these recessionary times we pass empty store fronts and boarded-up windows. The galleries and bookshop have gone, there is no longer a fine dining establishment and the only bank has just closed. There are still eight pubs, but not all of them appear to be open every day.

L1080237Ballydehob may be down – but it is definitely not out! Amazingly, there is a Social Club run entirely by volunteers who staff a coffee shop and lunch place and who organize classes, film nights and concerts. There is an active community council who maintain an excellent up-to-date website and a community hall that is constantly in use for local events (including the annual buffet supper where we dined and danced the night away in November). There’s a Community Sanctuary established ‘to promote L1080220holistic activities and methods, encourage self-awareness, and nourish the human spirit… ‘ It’s where I go for yoga. There is a jazz and a traditional music festival (both of which we will miss, sadly) and of course, our beloved Friday night traditional music sessions, in which Robert plays and Finola is the cheering section.

Today, Ballydehob is cheerfully decorated for Christmas, and a traditional crib occupies pride of place beside Danno, the 1935 world wrestling champion.

danno2