bedheadchicken

Ireland

The pile of rocks was about 15 feet long and about mid-chest high. It was sort of absurd. Our job was the spread the rocks around and fill out a driveway on Rupert's Farm in County Cork, Ireland. Yes, a driveway. I had gone to work on a farm and here I was shoveling load upon load of insanely heavy rock. It was myself and my friend Megan, who I was traveling with. And a young American couple, Katie and Ian, who had arrived on the farm a few days earlier. It was unusually hot that day for an Irish summer. I was sweating and all fulla grossness. My hands were already blistering. My arms felt like spaghetti. I turned to Megan and said "Do you know what other people do with their vacation? They go to the fucking beach!! What are we DOING!?"

Our deal was this: we had decided to hook up with farms via WWOOF.org. (Working Worldwide On Organic Farms. Or something). We work on the farm during the day and they feed us and put us up. Megan picked Rupert's Farm out of the literally dozens of Irish farms on the site simply because it looked cute. And she was right. (Check it out: www.rupertsfarm.com.) It looks like a small, struggling farm run by an eager young couple. They grow vegetables which they sell at the local farmer's market. They're working on creating a brewery. The place is adorable. We write them. They write back and say we're welcome to come work on their farm for a week. We head to Ireland.

I had heard before I'd gone that Irish food was terrible. But I can eat anything and I paid that no mind. I had NO idea. For the first three days I was in the country (before we got to the farm) I ate a fried chicken sandwich covered in sweet and sour sauce, some sort of meat poptart that I can't explain in any way, and pasta in some sort of celery and carrot sauce. All of this is MORE disgusting than it sounds. Megan would just look at her plate at dinner and sigh sadly.

We got to Rupert's Farm on day 3. We drove up this long dirt row past cows and the biggest bull I've ever seen. We pull into the farm and Rupert comes bounding outside. Rupert looked EXACTLY like a hobbit. He had a sturdy build. His hair was wild and unwashed (at least for the whole time we were there) and his hands and feet were caked in dirt and mud. Rupert didn't wear shoes the entire time we were there. Ever. Or wash his feet. Ever. Later in the week he'd take us to pubs in his bare hobbit feet. Unwashed.

"Hello!" He greeted us. "Emmm...would you like to get started?"

So much for pleasantries. He introduced us to Katie and Ian and showed us the plot of land that he wanted us to weed and prep for the rocks, which were coming after lunch. And just a few minutes after we arrived Megan and I were on our hands and knees pulling up weeds.

"Is this what you thought you 'd be doing?" Ian asked. It wasn't. But I didn't mind. Yet. Ian did. He and Katie had already been there almost a week.

"We do all the work!!" He said. "He tells us what to do and goes inside and smokes weed. When Lydia (Rupert's wife) isn't here he doesn't even remember to feed us!"

Lydia did arrive soon after and came over to greet Megan and I. Elegant, refined and a bit reserved, Lydia was Rupert's opposite in every way. Amelia, their 1 year old daughter, greeted us with "Hello, People!" Apparently WOOFERS were so common there that Amelia couldn't remember any of their names. So everyone was "People."

"She comes from money," Ian said about Lydia when she was out of site. "Her mom is a famous chef. And we're doing this for FREE?"

From the looks of the farm, tidy and adorable, but pretty small (3 acres in total) it was hard to believe that Lydia came from money.

We weeded until lunch then a HUGE dumptruck showed up and dumped a pile of rocks on the ground we just cleared. And we spent the next two days shoveling stones and spreading gravel.

"I think we're splitting" Ian said to me Tuesday night. They were supposed to stay for another week but they had had enough. At least he had. Katie was too sweet to object to anything. They were WOOFING at different farms in Ireland until December and this is NOT what he had in mind. He was ready to try his hand on another farm.
With that they were gone.

The funny thing is that after Katie and Ian left we were part of the family. Rupert and Lydia warmed up to us like long lost relations. It was decided that the next day we were gonna go to Ballymaloe.

Ian was right. Ballymaloe is the estate belonging to Lydia's parents. It was about 10 minutes away. Check it out here (http://www.ballymaloe.ie/). The pictures don't show all 400 acres. You can see the cooking school here (http://www.cookingisfun.ie/). Check out the photo gallery. Lydia's mom is basically the Martha Stewart of Ireland. She has her own cooking show, a cooking section in the weekend sections of Ireland's papers, countless books, and the crown jewell in her crown-the Ballymaloe Cooking School, where future chefs come from all over Europe (and America) to learn their trade. The Cooking School was famous all over Ireland and had an incredible reputation. It sat on a majestic estate, had dozens of employees, and represented far and away the best of Ireland's culinary institutes.

So, to recap- Megan and I went to Ireland thinking we were working on a small family farm and end up basically working at Alexis Stewart's house. And living down the block from Martha.

Ballymaloe was incredible. Long tunnels of crops, sprawling fields of cows, pigs, chickens, etc. The gardens. Well you can see. I worked in the tunnels picking crops for the market the next day. Since Rupert's crops hadn't grown in yet he simply had me pick crops from Ballymaloe and he passed those off as his at the market. It gets better. Ballymaloe jams and cakes sold for a pretty good sum at the gift store. Rupert had Megan go to the kitchen and make the SAME jams and he put his own label on it and sold it at the market. It's all in the family after all.

I met the farm manager working in the tunnel. Anna was a 23 year old from Zimbabwe. She had a number of tattoos and a tongue piercing. She spends her days on the farm and her nights in the clubs. She was SO excited that "50 FUCKING Cent!" was in Ireland, performing in Co. Cork. She couldn't wait to come to the US and "fuck some shit up" in the Bronx. She was amazing.

(And-for the record-never get into a storytelling situation with someone from Zimbabwe because their stories are BOUND to be better than yours. I told some dumb story about being in a car crash and she told a story about being surrounded by lions. Or a story about an elephant putting his head into her jeep. Insane.)

We ate like you couldn't believe that week. Lydia not only grew up in Ballymaloe but also taught a class there. Incidentally not only was Lydia's mom a famous domestic guru, but Lydia's sister in law, Rachel Allen, had her own series of books and show herself. People came from all over the world to learn cooking from these people and they were cooking exclusively for us. It was amazing.

Our days went like this- we'd work on the farm (or at Ballymaloe) until 5 or so. Then Rupert took Megan and I to the pub (barefoot, of course), which was about 20 minutes away. (The Blackbird in Ballycotten, by the way. Highly recommended). We'd have a few pints and Rupert would drive us home for dinner around 8, smoking pot as he drove. We'd eat for at least and hour and then go to bed. That was our time on the farm.

It was hard to go. Lydia and Rupert were wonderful. Their friends were fantastic. And I really wanted the bull from the farm next door to come charging through the hedges at us. It never happened. Clearly I have to go back.

For the next week Megan and I drove around the country. Lydia gave us a list of restaurants to go to which we followed VERY closely and never ate badly again. We saw Bruce Springsteen in a TORRENTIAL rainstorm in Dublin with 50,000 drunken Irish people. It was amazing. And Megan is SUCH a trooper, shivering in a 40 degree hurling wind insane downpour for 3 hours. That's a friend.

Ireland is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to. I've kinda put off the trip for a while. My grandparents on my father's side are from County Cork. My great grandparents from my mother 's side are from Roscommon. Growing up my family took in a kid from Belfast to get him away from "The Troubles", as did my cousins and a lot of my friends' families because our local pastor got everyone involved in the program. Basically I had Ireland up the ass growing up. When I came of age I was expected to take a trip there, as my older cousins had done before me. So I went to London instead. And Paris. And Amsterdam. Anywhere but what was expected of me.

My grandfather fought the British in the Irish War of Independence. He was captured, stabbed with a bayonet, and sent to a prison camp on Bere Island, an island to the south of the country. I went and stood on the steps of the dock that he was shipped out from on Cobh, at the southern tip of the country. I never even knew him. We forget sometimes, living in America, how much of the world that came before us. Most of us know our grandparents and MAYBE great-grandparents. But standing in a place where people have lived for 1000 years and thinking about generation after generation of people who have lived, fallen in love, gotten hurt, laughed, had moments of triumph, despair and everything in between- stories lost to time forever that we will never, never know again-it's hard not to be humbled. Some day all of us will be like them. By some miracle we're alive in this moment at this place. And it means everything and nothing. Cause some day ALL of us will be forgotten too. And that's fine. It's exactly the way it's supposed to be.

Lots of people ask for pictures and Megan took a bunch. I'm sure she'll put them up and we'll get them tagged. But she erased a LOT of them right after she took them because as you're standing on this lush green mountain overlooking the ocean, or on heaven's doorstep under blue skies and rolling pastures a picture hardly does anything justice. Ansel Adams couldn't do justice to Ireland. But it was great to be there with my feet on the ground. And my hands in the dirt.

For a while, anyway.