Lost Arts and Lughnasadh
The ancient festival of Lughnasadh/Lúnasa is today; the 1st of August and marks an important point in the Celtic year; also known as Lammas, when crops were harvested and a feast was enjoyed; with loaves of bread made from the first gathered grains and shared with the community (The Lammas Loaf). I love the thought of this coming together and celebrating with bread, it’s essentially what Ursa Minor is all about! How connected to the land we once were, the seasons dictating our celebrations, so deeply rooted in appreciation and respect for nature. The Lammas Fair in Ballycastle was once a Lúnasa celebration but has moved to coincide with the bank holiday at the end of August; conveniently giving people a couple of days off for the revelry. Come visit Ballycastle during the fair, it is thrillingly chaotic. A little bit of mayhem before school starts again and we all retreat into wintering.
The Lughnasadh feasting was centred around grains and fruits and it makes me wonder about a comment I often get after cooking a meal for someone, ‘I didn’t even miss the meat’ sometimes followed with ‘it was actually really tasty.’ Although meant a compliment (I presume!) it does feel slightly negative; a bit of a joke with a jag, that somehow a meal is more acceptable, delicious or ‘normal’ if meat is involved. Whilst we’ve been eating meat for centuries, the way we consume it and our relationship with it now is very different.
I wonder is it a generational, subconscious handing down of poverty shame. Am I being too radical? On this island over the past few thousand years we have generally been a fairly poor nation, oppressed and exploited various times, our climate restricted what we could grow and alongside farming we relied strongly on our rich countryside offering of fruit, nuts, fowl, game and greens and from our shores seaweed, shellfish and fish. Once affluence came our way ( I’m talking about the past hundred years post industrialisation), we grew lawns where once we grew food, woodland and wild places were cleared for grazing animals and there was a general shunning of the food which had sustained us for centuries. I’m not a food historian so forgive my surmising and generalising, but it does seem our growing economic wealth made us blind to our landscape and the art of foraging was lost, we became disconnected to food; the general knowledge of seasonality is my basis here. Eating meat became an indication of wealth, big portions showed we could afford plenty and we never needed to starve again…a fall out from famine?
I’ve been vegetarian/pescatarian for six years, the result of a dare/New Year Challenge from my younger brother which has stuck and my children are vegetarian too; I wanted them to be able to make a decision from an environmental and ethical stance -there are many excellent ethical meat farmers in the north, especially worth a mention are our friends at Broughgammon Farm. I do have one weakness; I find it hard to resist traditionally made cheeses which include animal rennet. I’m not here to judge, I think it’s important to remember that we are making informed decisions, each of us doing our bit, it is my conscious decision; I don’t miss meat, I love vegetables.
To celebrate Lughnasadh and a crop harvest I wanted to share this very simple recipe with you; I made this for dinner with some delicious new potatoes and mixed leaves.
Green Beans and Tomato Salad
200-250g each of tomatoes and green beans-topped and tailed
small bunch of chives, small sprig of tarragon and mint
garlic clove
quarter of a lemon
salt, pepper
30 ml olive oil
50g Parmesan (a vegan cheese/parmesan ot savoury seeds/nuts would work well too)
First make your chive oil, add the herbs, garlic, lemon juice, salt pepper and a good few glugs of oil and blitz. Next get a large frying pan over a high heat, whilst its heating chop and slice your tomatoes, I like a variation. Put them in a bowl and add the chive oil to marinate. Add the beans to the hot pan, sear and let blister and pop, turn over and do the same on the other side, then add 2 tablespoons of water and put the lid on for a couple of minutes. Add the beans to the tomatoes and finely grate the parmesan over the top of the of beans, then mix altogether and enjoy immediately!
The taming of the countryside comes with this disconnect, it’s one of my bugbears, though a recent discussion with the hugely knowledgeable, inspiring and frankly pioneering farmer and brewer Maurice Deasy has helped me to better understand and sympathise with the difficulties the agriculture sector faces especially in terms of maintaining hedgerows. Green desserts, perfectly straight and short hedges and weed killed verges make me lament the loss of our relationship with nature. Surely we can see that neat and tidy is a perception not shared by biodiversity.
So as I shake my head and frown passing sheared hedges, where I’d noticed the blackberries were starting to ripen, green fields where once was wild scrubland and verges where wildflowers had flourished I wonder when some of these policies for the countryside will change, where farmers feel more empowered and supported to make better choices for wildlife rather than those stipulated by authority.
How many of us are thinking of rewilding? Letting nature take over parts of our gardens, iniatiaves such as ‘no mow May’ are helping get these ideas into the public shere. One camapigner locally is Ruby Free, a conservationist who runs Ballyconnelly regenerative farm near Ballymena, she and her husband are doing amazing things for nature and inspiring the next generation to restore wildlife and biodiversity.
Love this. Completely agree