Irish Farmerette Goes To Wales

As you can probably guess by the silence here, it’s been a busy week. I went to Wales last week for a two day trip (more on that in a moment), then I was teaching in Co. Meath and then catching up on everything and getting ready for teaching my first online pinterest course over at We Teach Social.

The silage was cut while I was away! We started it on the Bank Holiday but it became misty so they stopped mowing and Tuesday was incredibly hot so all was well. All went according to plan this year, the weather was beautiful and while the quantity was down with the cold spring, the quality seems to be good. Brian managed to cook for them and throw it on the table and no one died of food poisoning!

I thoroughly enjoyed Wales, went over there as part of the ACT Ireland Wales project. If you ever go to Swansea, stay in Morgan’s Hotel. It is a beautifully old Port authority building which was converted about 11 years ago. The bedrooms are beautiful – high ceilings, spacious, deep skirting boards, huge bed, soft pillows …..

We were incredibly busy though and had little time to relax there though I desperately wanted to relax with a book for an hour. When I was having a relaxing bath, I almost felt like a housemaid might come up with a bucket of hot water to pour over me – just like the valet did to Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. The rooms all have individual names too – mine was Benjamin Boyd and I loved it – soft relaxing greens. ?We ate in Hansons on the Chelsea and no, I didn’t take photos of the food but I can thoroughly recommend the foie gras, the seabass and the sticky toffee pudding.

On the first afternoon, we visited a cheese maker and distillery on a 50 acre organic farm in West Wales.

They started making the Teifi cheese there in the 1980s and continue to sell their various cheeses (I’d particularly recommend their nettle cheese) at farmers ?orgnmarkets and to delis mostly. ?They buy milk from their farming neighbour who has Friesien Holsteins and they make many different hard and semi soft cheeses.

About 20 years ago, they brought their organic barley to Scotland and got a distillery there to make their whisky and they still have large barrels of their 1992 and 2000 whiskys.

They have now installed their own distiller which looked very impressive and will make their own whisky onsite for the first time this year.

They also make gin and an orange liquer. I have never tasted whisky before so I think it was a bit wasted on me as we all had a taste.

The following day, we went to the Botanical Gardens which were just beautiful.

The morning was spent at social media workshops (will write about these over at Write on Track) and the afternoon was free to wander around and benefit from a mentoring session.

There’s beautiful walks through the fields where sheep graze and you can still see the outline of the roads on which carriages once swept up to the big house (which burnt down in the 1930s but you can still see the footprint).

A beautiful spot and I thoroughly enjoyed it – after all, a change is as good as a rest 🙂