Did you know, every €1.00 you spend with a local business can net a yield of up to €4.00 for our local economy.

This is food for proper hunger. Food that sustains, comforts, and rewards attention. And in the right hands, winter veg becomes anything but dull.

Even with heat mats, cosy kitchens and propagators, seedlings sown in January are fighting a losing battle. The daylight hours are short, the sun is weak, and plants grown without enough light stretch desperately towards it. You end up with tall, pale, leggy seedlings that will never thrive.

Across Ireland and much of Europe, pre-Christian societies marked the final stretch of the year not with quiet reverence but with noise and excess: food and drink, storytelling and song, generosity and confrontation.

The question wasn’t “Will spring be good?”
It was “Will it come at all?”
That may sound foolish now. But when elders had lived through prolonged winters, late springs, failed sowings—when cows didn’t cycle and ewes didn’t lamb—the fear was real.

He’s older than Christianity, yet he turns up in sanctified places, tucked into corners and arches, as if the pillars of the church tried — and failed — to erase him, as though the strength of older beliefs persist in this one ungodly god.

From the very first week, it became clear that the farm meant more to people than we’d expected. The shop wasn’t just a place to buy vegetables and coffee.

Persephone and the Greeks had it right — winter isn’t punishment, it’s permission. A time to slow down, rest, and prepare for the next busy growing season.

Most farmers knew something tragic was occurring. They didn’t need a scientist to tell them that the soil was dying

Supermarkets, our modern-day pushers who often aim their most addictive products at children.