Scanlan KELPED MYSELF TO SOME SEAWEED...
Helps me make a meal of it!
GOD made the world, but seaweed made my vegetable patch.
You might be thinking, ah Christ no, not another column about vegetable patches and the seasons and whatnot, and you’d be right to think that.
You don’t come here for misty eyed Irish Times style pieces like that, and — all due respect to the Irish Times — neither do I.
But — to be blunt — this week I got a tonne of seaweed and put it on my modest little vegetable patch and it felt great.
And if you are to read any column about seaweed this week, maybe let it be this one.
If I get all poetic here, like a broadsheet writer with a triple- barrel surname, I’ll try my best to stop. I’ll use “gobshite” as a safe word to snap me out of it.
Pile
And with that safety measure at the forefront of my mind, please allow me to tell you why a big pile of seaweed is my new pride and joy.
I don’t like growing vegetables. It’s frustrating. It’s time consuming. And nature stacks the odds against you getting something to eat out of it.
There’s blight. It hasn’t gone away you know. And there’s all creatures great and small who’ll rip your efforts asunder — so I leave that part to other people.
However, if there’s a hole that needs to be dug, or something that needs to be chopped — I’m your man.
I’ve never set foot in a gym in my life. But
I’ve stood alongside many a hole I’ve dug and can vouch for the physical benefits therein.
Harvesting seaweed is an even higher level of workout. First of all, you’ve to walk to a shoreline. Then you stand there for a while and look out at the sea.
Then you fill a barrow with the seaweed that has washed up (don’t go cutting any). Then you look out at the sea again.
Then you return to your vegetable patch with your seaweed, empty the barrow, and repeat the process as many times as you can take.
Easier said than done if you live in the midlands, but if there’s a will there’s a way.
You may end up with more seaweed than you need — but there’s always someone else that needs some. Give some away and you’l l feel even better.
Then watch with pride as someone else puts seaweed on the vegetable patch and the seaweed begins the work that it will continue all winter long, into spring.
Ideally, you do this “watching with pride” thing whilst tending to the beer in your seaweedy hand.
Let nature — and those who do the planting of vegetables and all that stuff — take its course.
And when harvest time comes, and if you get a meal out of it, you and your seaweed can take the credit.
At that point, I’d recommend having another beer. Slainte.
PROUD MOMENT: Seaweed I put on my vegetable patch Plenty