River Cottage Diary

The Swallows are back!

2010-04-09T20:13:00.007+01:00

Just to let you know we saw our first swallow back from its long journey from South Africa yesterday, April 8th - wow! In 15 years living here, this is the earliest we have ever known them arrive. And it is all the more surprising, and welcome, coming after the hardest winter in living memory. The symbol of summer has arrived two weeks sooner than usual!

Easter at River Cottage

2010-04-06T19:10:00.009+01:00

Easter was cold and showery with south-west gales but that didn't dampen our spirits here at river Cottage. Eileen was busy attending the Achill Country Market with our free range hen eggs for sale (see www://achillcountrymarket.blogspot.com/). An Easter tree made from a willow branch graced the hall hung with coloured paper eggs and curly hens' feathers.Now we are busy painting Fuchsia Chalet/

Frogspawn!

2010-04-04T11:06:00.005+01:00

Time flies! It's difficult to believe we have been writing our River Cottage Diary for over 3 years now. I forgot to mention the frogs, and of course that won't do in Spring. Through March our drains were full of constantly croaking frogs. As a result we now have numerous jelly islands of spawn in our drains. We had to rescue it quickly and transfer much of it to our miniature patio ponds as our

Spring Update

2010-04-03T19:22:00.010+01:00

Here at River Cottage on Achill island in County Mayo, Ireland, the daffodils and pussy willow are out and we are busy sowing and planting now the days are lengthening and there is some warmth to aid seed germination.We have now doubled our raised beds to seven which will allow us to grow far more of what we enjoy eating. We sowed our 2nd early potatoes a couple of weeks ago after harvesting the

Painting

2010-03-05T20:59:00.009Z

One of Eileen's finished acrylic oil canvases of nasturtiums in the River Cottage garden.

Spring Clearing & More Horseradish

2010-03-05T19:26:00.012Z

Winter is slowly (and I mean slowly) giving way to spring. The pussy willow is out at River Cottage and the first primrose flowers despite the almost nightly frosts. We have had a bit of landscaping done to make way for three more raised vegetable beds, have enlarged the car park, and had the duck pond enlarged (the ducks are now happy - we had an egg today, the first this year!).

Happy Christmas!

2009-12-21T19:10:00.014Z

Hi everyone, and Happy Christmas from myself, Eileen and all at River cottage.We are all set for a festive feast and a white Christmas. Everything is winding down. The countryside is hushed, the birds quiet. The river is a murmur.The tops of the hills and mountains in our view are covered in snow with more expected.We have been busy decorating the tree, and bringing in holly and ivy from our

Homemade Horseradish Sauce!

2009-12-15T19:32:00.005Z

The other day, having plucked up sufficient courage, we decided to dig up our horseradish plant and make some sauce to go with steak and beef.For us, this tends to be a two-yearly operation as it takes that long for the horseradish plants to clump up and form good, potent (for potent read hot) roots. It is the roots we are interested in and which the sauce is made from. I said 'courage' was

Autumn Update

2009-09-25T18:36:00.004+01:00

We have had a bumper crop of beetroot. A new striped variety, 'Choggia', has done particularly well and has a lovely sweet taste with lots of natural sugars, even without the aid of frost. Next year we plan to grow a gold variety too.Soon, we shall be constructing more raised beds, and getting ready to re-instate our fruit garden near 'Fuchsia Chalet'. We shall plant blackcurrant, gooseberry,

2009-08-03T19:13:00.008+01:00

Here at River Cottage on Achill island in County Mayo on Ireland's West Coast we are enjoying a fabulous crop of organic carrots, broad beans, shallots and lettuce. The big success story have been the carrots - fabulous big long ones without attack from insect or disease, due to our use of bio-fleece which has increased our yields and quality of veg four-hundred-fold.We also recently adopted

Summer in full swing..

2009-06-22T12:11:00.013+01:00

Hi everyone,Growth is in full swing here at River Cottage, and we are kept busy weeding and watering the vegetables and ornamental plants.Yet again, the raised vegetable beds are proving very succesful, and crops are showing good, steady growth with no signs of disease or pest attack.We continue to use Bio Fleece, a woven nylon mesh that was designed to stop carrot fly, which we have used

A bird like an insect...

2009-06-21T10:15:00.014+01:00

Returning home from a Poetry reading in Ballina late the other evening I pulled over for a break and opened the car window. And there they were. Singing beautifully in the dark stillness - Grasshopper Warblers. The air was full of their cricket-like mantra - a bird that sounds like an insect. Their song lends a distinctly mainland European flavour to the Irish countryside; like Greece or Spain,

Willow warblers, Wild flowers & Painted Ladies

2009-06-14T20:04:00.010+01:00

In the calm of this evening, the sweet song of a willow warbler drifts through mys study window from the top of an alder tree thirty yards away. Ah! He has raised his first brood and is establishing his territorial rights for his second brood. That is great! For a few days now the garden has been full of young willow warblers, easily identifiable by their light eye-stripe. If we have a good

Painted Ladies & baby Goldfinches

2009-05-30T16:40:00.011+01:00

Growth is well under way now that the warm humid Summer weather has truly arrived. Some of the birds seem to have hatched and fledged clutches earlier than other years so we are hoping it may be a two or even three clutch year for some species.In particular, jus now, we are over-run in the nicest possible way with small flocks, a 'charm', of fledgling Goldfinches, their high pitched jingles and

Nesting box Success!

2009-05-21T07:24:00.004+01:00

Over the past few years we have been working hard at making River Cottage gardens as attractive as possible to birds. This has consisted of increasing the amount and diversity of shrubs grown, not being too tidy in the way we garden, avoiding the use of chemicals, and providing food and nestboxes.For the first couple of years nestboxes we had carefully sited in our Rowan trees weren't used,

Driven Cuckoo!

2009-05-12T18:08:00.013+01:00

Despite being woke up a few times each night by our local cuckoo whose hormones have him calling almost incessantly, we are making good use of the beautiful weather.Mostly, this means continuing to clear the new 'plant nursery' area, and re-instating the fruit garden near 'Fuchsia chalet'. Despite the area being scraped by machine two years ago it had totally overgrown with grass, rushes, and '

Rain and Painting

2009-05-05T18:27:00.008+01:00

It has been wet at times here this past week. And misty. The river is swollen and thundering past the cottage. It has only a short journey of half a mile or less from us to the sea - Achill Sound, in fact.Prevented from working outdoors on a couple of days, Eileen has been able to dedicate more time to painting her flower canvases in our studio/chalet. This week she has made rapid progress with

The Cuckoo is back!

2009-04-29T09:35:00.006+01:00

The Cuckoo is back! Less than an hour ago we saw and heard the first cuckoo this year.It's always so thrilling to have them back. They will be calling here for the next couple of months or so, as they prey on the local meadow pipits which will be laying and incubating eggs just now.Cuckoo, you may be a predator but it's great to have you back. Both you and the swallows darting about the blue sky

April News

2009-04-24T21:12:00.010+01:00

Mark is pleased to have finished the fencing that needed renewing. The bottom land boundary is now secure again so that we can concentrate a little more on growing plants and shrubs for sale at Achill Country Market ( see http://www.achillcountrymarket.blogspot.com/ ).We shall now aim to re-establish both the soft-fruit garden ( blackcurrants, rhubarb, gooseberries, strawberries, and apples (

Fencing, sowing, & butterflies

2009-04-20T19:26:00.007+01:00

The Grasshopper warblers are back from Africa. We have seen peacock and small tortoiseshell butterflys about that have come out of hibernation from last year now the mild weather is here.Eileen has sown broad beans, french beans, dwarf french beans, and courgettes - yellow and green. Mark has been busy putting up a new boundary fence and setting more willow slips along our boundary. Eileen weaves

Happy Easter!

2009-04-12T09:12:00.008+01:00

Eileen and I were out taking the air on the Atlantic drive here on Achill island last evening. We are fortunate to have some of the most beautiful scenery in Europe on our doorstep. The deep blue of the Atlantic ocean stretched away to the horizon, only interrupted by islands now and again; close by, Achillbeg island and Clare island, further out, Inishturk. Fulmars wheeled about the cliffs

The 1st Swallow of Summer!

2009-04-11T08:34:00.004+01:00

Here at River Cottage it's a beautiful sunny day and we have just seen our first swallow. That is the earliest we have known them back from South Africa in the fourteen years we have lived here.Eileen thought she saw one two days ago but wasn't certain. And yesterday was rain all day. But today they are out racing about a blue sky and along the trees by the river. Welcome back swallows -

Willow warblers, carrot sowings, and straw bedding

2009-04-08T18:04:00.004+01:00

Hi everyone, busy up the hillside at the back of us collecting dead grass for straw for duck and hen bedding. This is the last chance to collect and store, as after this the new growth takes over.Sowed five rows of carrots as the weather was fine and sunny.Mark has been busy digging fence-post holes ready to re-fence some of the boundary at the front of our land which was taken down for machine

Charlie drake II and the 1st bees and butterflies

2009-03-18T19:11:00.010Z

A couple of weeks ago a day-time fox killed our drake (Charlie), leaving his headless corpse for us to discover. Luckily, a smallholder friend, whom we had previously given a Light Sussex cockerel, had a drake to spare. He settled in quickly and we have named him Charlie Drake II. Both himself and Daisy duck are happy.We saw the first bee and first butterfly (small tortoiseshell) of this year

Tom-Tum and his Mum

2009-02-28T20:02:00.013Z

Last year we unexpectedly became the adoptive-parents of a stray cat and four of her kittens. However, the circumstances were much more complicated and heart-rending than they sound (albeit, we are sure, just one tale of many thousands of tales of suffering due to the irresponsible actions of cat-owners).It began, (as it so often does), with us becoming increasingly aware of the most woeful

A Profusion of Primroses

2009-02-24T20:55:00.006Z

Spring is here! The weather has become milder. Daffodils, ‘Tete-a Tete’, ‘February Gold’, and our native ‘Van Sion’, are all perfect - glowing with sunshine - and not, as is the case some years, battered by storms. There are other spring beauties flowering too; helleborus orientalis, the Lenten Rose, is a lovely, velvety, maroon, with an almost white centre. The crocus tomasinius are almost gone

Spring is here - we hope!

2009-02-20T11:32:00.003Z

The spring apple-green lily leaves of zantedeschia aethiopica are peeping from the drain. Even the evergreens are refreshed; the green glow that is spring infused in everything. Our piebald cat with amber eyes rolls on the sunny south side of the cottage. The first brave saffron flowers light the one gorse bush by the duck-house informing us as reliably as daffodils that spring has finally sprung

An Extract from Eileen's 2008 journal

2009-02-19T10:05:00.006Z

On January 3rd this New Year started with a bang, or rather a storm. It began mid-afternoon and accelerated until evening when it became a force 12 storm which continued through the night and most of the next day.Despite the battering our Phormium (New Zealand flax) varieties and Australian palms fared well, as did

Spring Update

2009-02-17T19:49:00.004Z

One of the things I do here is paint. In particular, flower paintings are what are of interest to me presently. Of course the new chalet with its north-facing roof lights provides a very good studio, in addition to being private and quiet. I paint in acrylics but hope to try my hand with oils soon. This image (above ) is titled 'nasturtiums'. I painted it last year on 24 inches x 20 inches board.

A Dark Day

2009-02-10T20:48:00.005Z

On Friday, 6th February, our lovely sheepdog Prince became very poorly. He suddenly went off his legs and deteriorated further over the weekend. He lost interest in food which used to constantly occupy his thoughts. Day and night, he needed our companionship and reassurance, until the sad decision was made to have him euthanized.Monday, 9th February, dawned bright and crisp with beautiful frost

A New Growing Season

2009-01-27T21:23:00.009Z

January 2009This year began cold and frosty, then wet and very windy, turning our garden into a muddy mess, which only our ducks enjoyed.Thoughts turned to what we will be growing this year, and the excitement of choosing and chitting our potatoes. This year we are trying Epicure, the most popular early potato in

Sparrowhawks, lizards, and hawk moths

2009-01-26T08:35:00.011Z

20/05/2008 Extracts from our diary I came across a common lizard today at the back of the cottage. He must have been basking and fled across my path when he heard me approaching, wriggling his body rapidly from side to side so that he “swam”

Some Nature Notes from our original River Cottage website

2009-01-25T19:48:00.006Z

Wednesday, 20th June 2007The siskins have appeared on our feeders in the last couple of weeks, bright, slender birds, yellow-green in colour, the males particularly handsome with their black crowns.We have noticed a juvenile dog-fox frequently crossing the hill at the back of the cottage, in the daytime, recently. We

Journey To freedom

2009-01-22T20:10:00.006Z

We used to live in Macclesfield, Cheshire, England, working as nurses in the National Health Service. By the early 1990s we had outgrown both the town we lived in and the places we worked. We wanted far more. A lifestyle change beckoned. Our dream was to live a better life - a more simple, yet, much richer life. A

Welcome!

2009-01-21T19:11:00.001Z

Hi everyone and welcome to our blog. Sitting in 1 ½ acres of garden, River Cottage has been our home since 1995. It faces across the sparkling waters of Achill Sound to the mainland hills and is situated among the rugged and beautiful scenery of Achill island.