Wild goat. Euthanise, rehome or shoot?

Goat, Wicklow

Here up in the mountains sometimes even domestic animals pose a problem. We live within five minutes by car to the Sally Gap - a wild Wicklow upland known for its wandering sheep and possible store of dead bodies which appear from time to time buried in deep bog. It's also a place of outstanding beauty but a site near enough to Dublin for people to think that driving up there with unwanted animals is a good idea. How wrong they are.

Less than three miles away from the main cross roads of tiny bog roads in the Sally Gap is our place. At the moment we are paying the price for again living in an environment where people sometimes feel a loose or unwanted pet doesn't cause a problem. This week it's a (probably once domesticated) billy goat with full horns. He is  stressed, confused, and making our life pretty much hell. On the lane outside our house he is now challenging cars, chasing sheep belonging to our next door farmer into wire fences and freaking the crap out of all animals in the area including "rescue and rehab" - our two re-homed horses and ponies, one of which nearly landed me in hospital today by knocking me over on the road in front of a car. He's 600 kilos. I'm not.

The Sally Gap Wicklow, Ireland

Ringing the Gardai isn't an option. I've done so and they've said "not our job love". As anyone knows living in an environment like this there are few people or agencies around to help you out. In the past I've collected loose and abandoned horses on roads in my own trailer and on my own time. One of them resulted in me getting personal threats and night time visitors at home. The Irish Horse Welfare Trust is brilliant at rescuing equines on limited resources and pursuing prosecutions for neglect and welfare abuses. But with animals that come between the livestock and pet categories it's much more difficult. Often the code is in the country - don't call anyone, shoot it and say nothing.

If loose animals are quiet, the SPCAs might collect if the animal is already penned but again in this area of Wicklow it's tricky .Wicklow SPCA due to dwindling funds cant afford to collect and look after animals like goats. The DSPCA, they sometimes pick up animals outside Dublin but it depends on the nature of the job. A loose dog or injured swan is one thing. An injured cow or dumped goat is another.

Sheep in the Wicklow uplands

In the meantime my neighbour wants to shoot the goat. With 400 pregnant ewes out on grass it isn't a good time to have them harassed or running loops round a 20 acre field as they were doing yesterday and possibly early aborting.

Lesson here is folks... and I know I don't have to stress this to anyone who reads this blog - do not buy animals you can't cope with once they are fully grown. That cute kid goat at a country fair will grow into a 60 pound guy that is full of territorial and sexually aggressive behaviour with full horns to boot. Unless he's in an environment with plenty of space and is free to behave in his herding and domineering way, this animal is a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands. It's sad to reminisce, but at the last house we lived in near Kilcroney in Enniskerry, the dumped animal of choice was pot-bellied Vietnamese pigs (killed) and decapitated deer; presumably shot for trophies. There was such a pile of rotting animals on the lane at one point that I rang up the council and they replied "Yeah, that's what people are doing. Get used to it."

This evening I found said goat now in the field next to our kitchen. Tomorrow I will have to make a call on it. My local farmer will shoot it if I tell him, or else I can leave the animal to take its chances. As you can imagine these kind of issues come on top of real life trundling on. I'm trying to finish up my food column for a deadline this week, I'm writing script for a piece with Pat Kenny (RTE radio one) on Thursday and a lecture for an Taisce for Saturday on genetically modified foods. We've small children sick with the flu and one of the horses suffering near fatal colic. Fantastic!

I'll let you know how it goes, and in the meantime, gather together your Christmas ham recipes for a piece I'm doing. Glazes; honey, mixed spice, marmalade, jerk Caribbean? I need the best and most tastiest of suggestions! x

Ear to the Ground and ten years later..

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I was very excited to hear this week that I have been shortlisted in the Guild of Agricultural Journalist's Awards for "Best Online Journalist". This is a huge thrill for me. I started Basketcase two years ago to keep up a discussion on issues affecting farming, food and rural life in Ireland. As you've gathered, the blog is written for anyone interested in food, where food comes from and the affect that food policy has on farming families and people who enjoy the countryside.

Being nominated is a huge honour. Many years ago I produced a TV programme which won a Guild award for Best Television Programme. Myself and journalist Mairead McGuinness (who is now a MEP) travelled to Holland to investigate the dioxin crisis there as part of the "Ear to the Ground Investigates" series. Our programme won and we went on to make many more investigative programmes where we tackled harder stories about the food chain and food policy. They were great times and great stories.

I learned a huge amount about both producing and writing from working with Mairead who at that time was editor of the Farming Independent. Mairead was hard to please but rightly so. Information had to be correct, properly researched with no stone left unturned. In fact it wasn't a story until at least five phonecalls had been made on it which is a pretty good rule I still tend to follow. It then had to be developed, and shaped into something that made sense quickly to readers or viewers with care and the correct emphasis. I then went into RTE television and radio where I produced and directed entertainment and current affairs programmes. Over my time there I directed shoots in France, UK, Belgium and Thailand and became more hard-bittened and cynical about the business. I interviewed both Bertie Ahern, and Beyonce, neither of whom made much sense.

The best moments are the things people say off the record. And sitting opposite Condoleezza Rice on George Bush's visit to Ireland on the Washington Press Corps bus, because it was the only posh coach with a toilet. Being in the right place at the right time always helps.

Like many people I found my creative and journalist impulses flattened by working inside a large organisation like RTE. At that point I got out to concentrate on writing. I still return to Montrose to contribute on food and farming on Radio One's Today with Pat Kenny and Countrywide, and to chat at people's desk and get the gossip. I also report for television - last season on The Daily Show, The Consumer Show and earlier this month at the Dublin Web Summit. Going in and out of television is a whole lot better than working there full time. And there's nothing like the very off the record craic you have on the road with a crew.

I'm still quite old fashioned about how I work and when I see "holes" in stories or information that is simply incorrect it drives me mad. Opinion is not reporting, but the lines between both have become hugely blurred now with web publishing and the huge splurge of content available to us. Blogging is a great medium but not when it's simply selling product. Many food blogs unfortunately have become spin shops for food brands; great for PRs, but not great for readers. There is still great writing and journalism out there, you just have to look harder for it.

When I worked on Ear to the Ground Investigates I was delighted our programme won a Guild award but to be nominated for my blog is much more a personal thing. Farming journalism in Ireland is of a very high standard with publications like the Irish Farmers Journal, the Farming Independent and Farmers Monthly writing content specifically for those who farm be it in the poultry or suckler to beef sector. These papers are vital to the farming community and for me they provide news, features and comment across all the different types of food production which in Ireland are widely varied. They also provide very strong technical content whether you are looking at upgrading your milking parlour to changing your AI to improve productivity.


With Basketcase I try to write for those both inside farming and also outside it and give a picture of how farming policy affects consumers and those who are interested in food provenance, development issues and the environment.

My print work at the moment can be found in the Farmers Journal, the Irish Independent consumer pages on a Thursday and in The Gloss magazine every month as part of The Irish Times. For The Gloss I write a food column "This Edible Life" which is the more fun, and dare I say the sarky side of both myself and the food business. I am also continually involved in TV - we made two "What's Ireland Eating" documentaries in the last two years and we have other projects in development. I don't write much about my personal life in my blog, and sometimes there is a pressure to do this if you are a journalist as personal information is of interest to people and gives them a window inside your life. I try to keep my family life fairly private but I do hope to write more about one personal project I am involved in that relates very much to Irish rural life so keep a watch out for that. Basketcase may have to produce a sister blog if I find it's of big interest to readers.

The awards ceremony is this Friday the 9th November so I'll have to pull the hay out of my hair (literally) and get the glad rags on to attend the awards dinner which I'm really looking forward to. It's always great to catch up with old colleagues, editors and people in the same field. Writing for me is a quite solitary job apart from when I'm on farms or visiting food businesses. It's nice to connect with people in the same field and start taking notes on the back of a napkin like several of us ended up doing at a recent awards dinner. While journalists are great at talking, they'll never miss out on a good story...

http://www.farmersjournal.ie

A party about ...lamb prices

I spent last night at a party with neighbours talking about farming, the price of food and how most farmers in my area now had off-farm employment in order to keep going. One neighbour told me how even when he farmed 1000 ewes he couldn't make a living producing lamb. He now works night shifts in a factory to pay the bills, keeping a few sheep but not planning about getting back into farming full time. He laughed as he looked at the drink in his hand "Basically it wouldn't put diesel in the car".

It's the same story on so many farms across the country."So what's your solution?" I asked. He shrugged his shoulders - "no one wants to pay more for food and that's what lies at the bottom of it". He's right, we do want our food cheap and retailers know that; employing hugely competitive strategies to get our business. Competition between them is relentless and they use two for one offers, discounts and sell some goods like milk below cost to get customers in the door.

Milk is a KVI - a retail term which means "known value item". Many shoppers search for bread or milk at the lowest price possible as households use a lot of these foodstuffs. But consumers will also pick up food other than just KVIs in a store, so the retailers sell product at a loss in order to to make profit on other lines. Unfortunately the person at the end of the chain - the farmer, is who suffers. Recently in the UK, huge pressure on the retail price of milk caused farming protests and eventually, agreement on a code of practice between the dairies and the farming unions. Some retailers also agreed to put up the price for milk, a surprising move in a market that is as sharp as Ireland if not more competitive.

Food prices in Ireland actually have varied little in the past five years, and one of the reasons for this is huge competition among retailers for a marketplace that is in recession. Incomes have fallen and so has our food spend. Research shows we look for KVIs, discounts, offers and are shopping around more. The growth of Aldi and Lidl in both Ireland and the UK are testament to our lust for bargains. While retailers say the customer wants cheap food, we also as customers don't want a food chain where the retailer takes huge percentages of the price we pay for an item, while the person who sowed the crop or raised the livestock gets the smallest slice of the pie.

What's interesting about the farming and food policy of the present Government is their sluggishness or lack of courage in implementing a retail code of practice to encourage fairness in the chain. There's been consultation on this done by the previous Government, it was set to continue and promoted as a badly needed policy in the last election campaign but so far there is no movement on it. Yes we want cheap food but a code of practice spreads the price of that food item more evenly to all the people who contribute to it.

Lamb prices are good now but my neighbour is still not tempted to re-enter the full-time farming fray. We also talked about how Harvest 2020's targets for more sheep on Irish farms could knock back prices as higher supply tends to do. There are no easy solutions but what we all agreed was that the massive power the supermarkets wield has been let go unchecked despite promises to engage with the issue. At the end of the night we took our torches, hi viz vests and walked home on country lanes underneath the stars, stopping at another house for a nightcap, which we needed like the proverbial hole in the head. One thing that keeps rural areas strong is people talking to each other, sharing issues and concerns and also laughing - about kids, animals, livestock... or the financially perilous predicament many now find themselves in. It would be great though to see policy addressing the inequality in the Irish food chain..If we're to see a vibrant rural sector and future generations still farming, we have to step up to the plate and engage with the elephant in the room.  

Feeling unwell? Have some chicken soup - Jewish medicinal cooking at its best

The runny nose, the headaches, the shivers, the huge bill for useless products at the pharmacy... Manflu - we all get it from time to time. Despite not actually being a man I've suffered from three bouts of manflu this year and I've found many people reporting the same. Colds, coughs and flus seem to be increasing in number and severity.

What's the reason? It could be many things - an increase in warm, damp weather or higher levels of virus mutation and activity. What's not helping is the rise in antibiotic resistance of many bacterial infections.

There are moves in the EU to reduce antibiotics fed to animals which can only help the problem of bacterial infections and viruses in public health. What was thought to be good farming practice is increasingly viewed as something that has created giant health problems - generations of factory farmed animals have had antibiotics routinely included in their diets. This promotes organisms in their systems to become resistant to antibiotic treatment. And once those organisms spread from the animal population into the human population they can do real damage, such as the prevalence of MRSA in hospitals.

MRSA has been found on packaged meat in Europe. Other antibiotic resistant organisms that are now present in human health have been found to have originated in poultry populations in Holland and in pig farming in the US.

The FDA in the United States which is one of the world's slowest moving food bodies, is finally also examining antibiotics in the food chain. Farm and food groups are lobbying the FDA for change. It's greatly needed and consumer pressure can have huge influence so don't underestimate the power you hold in helping your own future health.

In terms of the common cold there are over 200 viruses around us that are actively causing colds and flus at the moment. And if you're anywhere near small children, you'll get all 200 of them, in the one year. Or so it seems in our house.

When I examined foods that might help stave away colds, I found good evidence of some that actually do work. Others, like vitamin C, have a reputation for curing or preventing colds that simply doesn't stand up. Particularly if you're spending money on vitamin C supplements, think again - the research sadly proves that it doesn't do much good for colds.

In Shelf Life in today's Irish Times I give a run down of the best food bets for beating colds and give ideas for rustling up some traditional chicken soup. It really does work, the ancient Greeks and Jewish medicinal cooks were on the money! Check it out and take hope - feeding yourself properly will boost your immune system and it's pretty easy to do. Nothing complicated, just simple sense x

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/health/2012/0501/1224315399589.html

Irish food, embarrassment of riches or plain embarrassment?

This is Donal Skehan, isn't he lovely? More on that later. This Friday I'll be locking horns in a debate with some premier Irish and international food writers at Savour Kilkenny. The topic is "Irish cuisine - embarrassment of riches or plain embarrassment?" Funnily enough I could debate either side of this but on Friday I'm on the "embarrassment" bench. Can't wait; I've got some great hideous Irish food examples lined up; the pub sandwich in the bag, rubbery, watery chicken in a wrap, the ubiquitous beef or salmon dinner - so awful they named a racehorse after it. Whatever side you might ally yourself with it's sure to be an entertaining debate. And hey opposition, don't think for a second you've a chance in hell of beating us.

Savour Kilkenny has a brilliant line up of food events - demos by Donal Skehan and Catherine Fulvio (above and right), food trails, wine workshops, children's cookery, blindfold sensory dining and a foodcamp on the Friday. Going to festivals is one of the nicest parts about writing about food and farming for a living. It's where I meet people who farm and produce food, other food journalists and all kinds of people who just like cooking and eating. Whether you write as I do for print or television it's still a solitary job. So going on the road; hanging out in windy fields with farmers and laughing with people at food festivals is where you see it all come together.
It's also where you see changes happening in the way food is presented and discussed. Five years ago in Ireland food festivals were all about food on the plate. Now they focus increasingly on where the food is coming from. What's the point offering a dish with tiger prawns intensively farmed in Vietnam, frozen and flown here god knows how long after they were harvested, as Irish Food? Unfortunately we still see this kind of thing in many good restaurants around the country. More and more chefs are realising the value of local ingredients, cooking accordingly and food festivals are thank god, following suit.

I spent five years producing Ear to the Ground - filming in stifling hot chicken houses, cold milking parlours and on wild wet mountainsides amid hundreds of black faced sheep. Learning how food is produced and handled at its early stages is essential to understanding what we have here in Ireland in terms of our food potential. Having visited factory farms in Holland, Belgium and documented GMO farming nightmares in Thailand and Vietnam, it's often sadly the case that don't know how lucky we are here, and how good and "clean" our foodstuffs are.

If you are near to Kilkenny this Friday drop into the foodcamp at the festival - it's a series of workshops where food professionals (chefs, producers) mix with foodies (journalists, bloggers, consumers) and agencies learn and share with each other. There's a day of speakers and discussions planned from 09:30 through to 15:30 running in 4 simultaneous rooms.

The day finishes with the Food Fight debate at 3:30 chaired by John McKenna of The Bridgestone Food Guide, the debate poses the question:
“Traditional Irish Cuisine – an embarrassment of riches or just an embarrassment?”
On the embarrassment side are:

Colman Andrews – Journalist, founder of Saveur magazine and food writer
Suzanne Campbell – Journalist, author and broadcaster
Regina Sexton – Author "The Little History of Irish Food"

On the opposite bench are:
Birgitte Curtin of the Burren Smokehouse
Kevin Sheridan, food campaigner, Sheridan's cheesemongers
Catherine Cleary – Journalist and food writer, The Irish Times

I'll keep you posted on how we get on and how soundly we trash the opposition. Happy eating x http://savourkilkenny.com/