Egomaniacs make this a scary world

TRANSITION Kerry will be hosting a ‘Sustainable Space’ at Tralee Food Festival on Saturday, 23rd September, in Tralee Town Square. This is to celebrate and showcase the work that is being done by local community groups and small, sustainable, local businesses.

Tralee Allotments Project will show how the community apple press works and fresh apple juice from local apples can be tasted on the day. Through the autumn, the public are welcome to bring their apples to the Moyderwell Allotments between 9am and 1pm during the week, where Peter and the workers will press them for you and give you back your own apple juice. Bring your own containers.

Shanakill Community Organic Garden, Castleisland Community Garden and Gortbrack Organic Farm will bring some of their food harvests and promote their upcoming educational programmes. Check them out on facebook.

Donal O’Leary from Stop Food Waste will demonstrate how to compost food waste. Can you believe that the average household throws out one third of the food that it buys! (www.stopfoodwaste.

Learn about Foodshare Kerry, a food bank that rescues quality surplus food from supermarkets and food producers and makes it available to organisations to redistribute to those in need. (www.fsk.ie).

Meet members of the Kerry Sustainable Energy Co-operative to hear the benefits of membership , their initiatives such as the bulk buying of locally sourced wood for fuel, provision of the energy and moisture metres to local libraries, sourcing grants and their series of public information evenings on renewable energy in Tralee on 26th September, Kilorglin on 25th October and Dingle on the 23rd of November. (www.ksec.ie, facebook and twitter).

The Kerry Branch of the Irish Wildlife Trust will explain their work and upcoming events to be hosted by Tralee Bay Wetlands Centre.

The Transition Kerry ‘Sustainable Space’ is one of the activities of the National Convergence Festival, with events happening all around the country www.cultivate.ie/convergence-festival

At an international level, our Sustainable Space is part of European Day of Sustainable Communities, which is organised by ECOLISE - European Community Led Initiative for Climate Change and Sustainability (www.ecolise.eu).

Transition Kerry aims to bring together groups and people who are taking action locally to help with climate action and building community resilience. There are many good projects, organisations and people coming together to do this important work and they need our support and participation at all levels in our society, from home to community, business and farming.

On a related note, Transition Chorca Dhuibhne will be taking part in the upcoming Dingle Food Festival (29 September – 2 October) where, in partnership with Kerry County Council, they will be launching their zero waste initiative for this year’s festival. This aims to make the festival waste free by 2020 and is a step towards a plastic-free future for our communities. (Next year in Tralee?) To volunteer, contact Darach at 087-2153758.

If you want to get involved and volunteer in the Tralee Space, contact Niamh @ 086 7247066. Find Transition Kerry on Facebook page and at www.transitionkerry.org THE term root vegetable is a general horticultural term given to plants we eat which grow under the ground or maybe like onions semi buried. Not all root vegetables are actually botanically roots as is the case with the afore mentioned onions which are bulbs and everyones favourite the potato which are tubers. All of these crops will have been quietly growing away during the summer patiently awaiting their moment in the sun, albeit a dwindling one at this time of year.

The greatest quality a root vegetable possesses is its ability to be stored over winter in a dormant state and remain edible. These stoic vegetables put to shame their delicate summer cousins and should be lauded and enjoyed.

Advice is given in some parts that you can leave most root vegetables in the soil as a method of storing and while this is and can be true in some locations our wet winters tend to make this not always ideal. It also leaves crops vunerable to in particular slug attack but also other pests like carrot root fly.

Although cold is rarely an issue in Ireland for these hardy veg crops it may still occur. The flip side can also be an issue with our winters at times being extremely mild and this may enduce crops such as carrots to think that spring has arrived in December and cause them to bolt, start to run up to seed, leaving the root inedible. If storing your vegetables in the ground you are better taking off the foliage top by November to help prevent this.

Obviously leaving your crops in the winter soil and harvesting them when needed is by far the easiest method to keep root vegetables but just beware of the possible problems. Beetroot, carrots, celeriac, parsnip, turnips and swedes can all be soil stored or kept this way over winter. Onions should always be lifted, dried and stored in dry cool place.

Maincrop potatoes are probably the most stored vegetable of all by the home gardener. Once the tops begin to yellow it is possible to begin harvesting. Dig them up on a sunny day and leave them out to dry for a day to toughen their skins. Only store the healthy undamaged tubers. Potatoes are best kept in a hessain sack or other breathable container in dry, dark, cool but frost free location. Garden sheds and garages are the usual spots. With all stored root veg keep a frequent check for rooting.

If you decide to lift and store your root vegetables, as with potatoes, only atempt to store undamaged heatlhy roots. Remove all the foliage and wipe clean with a gloved hand or rag to remove all excess soil.

If kept in the same methods as with AM I the only one feeling it? The only one imagining it? Or is anyone else just a little concerned about us possibly being on the cusp of nuclear annihilation?

Back in the eighties I saw a little known film called ‘ Threads’. It was set in Sheffield, England and it followed the fictional lives of a pregnant young couple. At first they were the viewer’s only interest as we followed them setting up home, bickering over money and being compromised by in-laws; an ordinary drama about ordinary people with universal resonance.

As the film progressed I began to note that in the background of every scene there was a radio playing. It was never the boom of a popsong or the inane chat of a DJ but invariably a news bulletin. Much like the central characters, I ignored it at first – irrelevant in the face of human drama. However as one scene rolled into another, the radio became louder and the content of its messaging became clearer – the world of our protagonists was at risk and I am not talking about their small Sheffield world but the actual world.

We heard of growing international hostilities, loaded threats and positioning of missiles. The radio was no longer the white noise of a scene but the centre-point. Painting walls, planning nurseries and even making love was suspended potatoes most root vegetables will begin to dryout and shrivel within a few weeks so they need to be covered with moist sand or a light fine compost, peat or soil. This is easiest done in wooden boxes but heavy cardboard should see you through one winter. Put a layer of sand in the box bottom then a layer of roots ideally not touching each other. Repeat the layer of sand and a layer of roots until the box is full and finishing with a layer of sand. Store in a dark frost free shed or garage.

If you have a lot of root vegetables to store or limited indoor space you could implement the traditional old method of creating a clamp. This is done by selecting a dry sheltered outdoor site, usually by a wall. A raised base layer of light soil or sand about one metre square and 150 mm deep is created and covered with straw. You then build a pyramid of root veg using the largest at the bottom working up to as high as a metre.

Cover everything again in 150mm of straw then 150mm of soil or sand and pat to compact. As you harvested from the clamp replace the covering of straw and outer layer of soil or sand to reconstruct the clamp. In our busy mordern world this is probably a step too far for home gardeners and also comes with the caveat of possible rodent problems. Probably enough said. every time the radio piped up. The film ended badly. Nuclear war broke out and with it the subsequent inevitable end of the world.

At the age of 12, apart from Dracula, it was the scariest thing I ever saw.

And it stayed with me. You see I feel a little like that fictional couple today. Just like them I have lots going on, plans to be planned and life to expand. Yet in the background there is a radio. Sometimes I ignore it because my world is more important but mostly now I turn it up because this is my world – every last corner of it.

Of course some of the commentary is reassuring. I hear voices telling us not to worry; that Trump is a cowardly lion, that your man in North Korea is just a poser and that China will ultimately take control – whatever that means. But whatever it means, it does sound better than nuclear warfare and the child in me wants to believe them.

So too do I want to believe that, enormous egos notwithstanding, things could never get that far, could they? I hear my naivety but apparently that’s what happens when we get scared – the child takes over. And I am a little scared.

So am I alone in this? Or is anyone else feeling it?

I never did watch a Dracula movie again and ‘Threads’ as a reality show really wouldn’t work for anybody.