It is now December in the garden and there is still plenty left to do. But in December it can be hard to get outside to do anything with the weather. And this year was one of them. Many jobs unfortunately went on the long finger, but the weeds keep growing and an effort has to be made to keep on top of them.

The days are now at their shortest so it won’t be long until the days are getting longer again and an exciting new cycle of growth will begin so it’s a good month to make plans but in the meantime there are plenty of interesting things to see and do. It is a really good time to get wrapped up and out into the fresh air.

The dark nights recently have made me think about how we spent our time years ago. When I was young, a committee got together in our town of Portarlington to form a Macra na Feirme branch.

Talks

A current member recently asked me what we did back then. I said that we went to other local clubs, vets would drop in to give talks on the latest farm animal medicines. Imagine that injections were only coming in and it was mostly drenches that were the cure all for flukes, coughs and lots more.

We would go on outings, we once went to the Isle of Man which was our first time on a foreign trip. We even went to the old Ford factory in Cork and saw the last cars coming off the production line on the day before the factory closed. The workers put together a complete car starting from just the chassis.

With festive season almost upon us, I wish all our readers a happy Christmas and great new year.

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