Home Grown Sustainability

17/09/2020

So so sad

Many carcasses have little remaining fat reserves or muscle mass

18/06/2020

The river erne... Highest ever recorded water levels in Nov 2019, lowest ever recorded levels May 2020. Scary times.

News River Erne Belturbet Seamus Enright Published: June 18, 2020, 14:43 Last updated: June 18, 2020, 14:44 ‘All options’ including damming River Erne being considered ‘All options’ including damming River Erne being considered Image 1 of 2 The River Erne, viewed from the old Railway Bridge,...

14/01/2020

Low Waste Wedding Bridal Party Clothes !
The very last thing we wanted for our day was to have a the guilt of single use outfits and fast fashion hanging over our heads. So we were determined to try to avoid it.
For the men. We asked if they had their own navy trousers (they did) so we sorted the ties and waist coats for them. We didnt bother with jackets because they're normally discarded early on anyway.
For the ladies, I asked them to pick a knee length navy dress and yellow shoes, both of which they would happily wear again and then I paid for them. This served two purposes: 1. They were comfortable in dresses that matched their personal style and flattered them and 2. They could be worn repeatedly as they weren't wedding specific dresses!
For the ushers : bought the boys suits. They had a communion approaching which they could re wear them at (and they did). Forgot to add a photo of them tho !
For the flower girls: I broke my Primark (Pennys) ban for these outfits. We bought the same dress, shoes and accessories in 4 different sizes. YES these were bought in a shop with one of the worst fast fashion records but our justification was that, unlike most flower girl outfits, these can be dressed up or down and worn daily if they wanted. They weren't overly fancy for that exact purpose. More importantly the girls could run around and play just as much as the boys in them (FYI they did not wear sunglasses ! They are just for anonymity purposes !!!) So... there you have it. Our low waste wedding lost many points on the clothing front BUT we made every effort to make each item reusable and so, although there was a massive footprint hopefully it can be eroded a bit by continued use of the item !
Photos by , handmade hangers by

12/01/2020

LOW WASTE WEDDING DECORATIONS!
We decided very early on that we didn't have time or money to decorate the ceremony room or the dining hall and also most decorations we had seen in the past added unnessesary waste too so that helped with the decision. It also helped that the rooms in the hotel were nicely decorated anyway.
For the ceremony we added fairy lights (which we had borrowed) wrapped around the roof beams. We lined the aisle with jars of flowers (jars recycled from brothers wedding, flowers picked by us). The red carpet was provided. The alter was simply decorated with ivy and foliage we picked and some bed sheets and fairy lights elegantly draped by my sisters and friends. The stand they were draped over was borrowed from a cousins wedding.
The drinks reception was decorated with professional photos from our Las Vegas elopement and photos of our parents and grandparents, mounted on a board from my brothers wedding. These were later given to the parents to keep so they had a double purpose.
When we first viewed the dining hall we loved how it was decorated! The generic table centrepiece provided by the was perfect so unlike most brides I just went with that ! The cake was decorated with our bouquets, jar of flowers from the ceremony and ribbons. The place names were written with silver marker on Laurel leaves picked from my aunties garden.
We did not give wedding favours or chose seat covers or centrepiece bouquets or anything like that. Mainly because I never remember or notice those things at a wedding so I wasnt bothered.
Again, the peeled back, low waste choice was also a low cost choice which suited us just fine !!! Especially considering we had just bought a house we intended to fully move into after the wedding. Turns out this zero waste journey saves you a packet !!!! Photos by

12/01/2020

Low Waste Wedding!
After getting a resounding YES when i asked if people wanted to hear about the low waste aspects of our wedding last March I thought i would start with the bouquet !
For the most part wedding flowers are not only extremely expensive but also have quite a high carbon footprint. They are grown in large hot houses whose carbon output alone is huge, never mind factoring in the transport and refrigeration carbon and the w**d killers etc.
I always wanted a wild flower bouquet but I thought getting married in march was going to pose quite a challenge. Between a field of wild daffodils, one aunties flower garden, another aunties heather garden, branches of twisted hazel and 2 bouquets of babies breath bought in Lidl (yes, we did have a carbon footprint here) we managed to make these fabulous bouquets. The ribbons were bought as a role for both the cake and flowers. The hession cloth was recycled from my brothers wedding 6 weeks earlier.
The bridesmaids bouquets were all daffodils, the brides a mix of all and groomsmen had wild flower button holes. The alter was decorated with ivy, flowers and twisted hazel wrapped in borrowed fairy lights.
The night before the wedding my sister, sisters in law and good friends sat in the hotel and made up the bouquets while we set up the room.
Yes, we saved nearly a grand by doing this but I think they turned out better than anything i could have paid for and with only cost of the baby's breath (financially and environementally). Photos by
See the 14th of march for the post i put up about it immediately after the wedding

20/12/2019

This is such a beautifully written and well thought out article about the real magic of Christmas. As i read it i realised that she's right. I remember very few of my santy presents or any other present from my childhood. But I do remember the presents that an aunty had to quietly teach me how to use with her arms around me, noisy dinners with too many people and silly jokes, visits from cousins that last 10minutes and caused mayhem, card games with all the mocking and arguments BUT i mostly remember the magic. Christmas is so magical. As an adult i realise that the magic is all of the other things mixed together. Not just Santy.
We have to be careful not to get too absorbed in or stressed about what wont be remembered and instead think about what you remember from your own childhood.... and make that the priority x

They'll remember the people.

17/11/2019

Anyone got any space at all for some wee chickens? Anywhere in ireland at all. Even just two is better than none!! I can guarantee they're great craic!

We were devastated this morning 😢 we had to leave about 200 little hopeful faces behind, looking out from the sheds as we drove away, we had way way too few home offers 😢 these girls just did not get out in time 😢
So, the reality is this is their last night of life 😢
We struggled with this all day 😢 and we just can NOT let them die .. we can NOT ! Soo we will try, again, next week end and see if we can find homes by then ..
Can you help ? .. offer a home ? Share ? Spread the word ? Put up posters in your local Vets or Shops ? We have six days to give them a lifeline .. still in the farm - no love no sunshine no treats no kindness .. ..

03/11/2019

A few weeks ago I got a phone call from our county's local paper, The Anglo Celt, who wanted to interview me about my attempts at a lifestyle. I originally set up this page to document my failures as well as my successes because I found some pages were too perfect and therefore made Zero Waste seem unattainable and alienated people. Despite this being my message, when I was asked to do the interview I instantly felt like an imposter, a failure and a fraud. "What do I know?", "I eat meat and have an addiction to crisps, I cant educate anyone", " I commute to Dublin for work, what right do I have to preach", "i like flying for holidays", " my pizza is wrapped in plastic, I'm a cheat". But then I remembered. Those are the exact reasons stopping other people from EVEN TRYING Zero Waste. Those are the thoughts that initially turned me away from all the perfect instagram accounts and I realised.... its the little changes that make the big difference. I was so focused on what I didn't do that I had forgotten all the massive changes I have made.
There is no such thing as Zero Waste ... just Reduced Waste. Some are more reduced than others. As the saying goes "we dont need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly, we need millions of people doing it imperfectly" .... So !
Choose one item of plastic in your house right now and vow that when its used up and needs replacement you will swap it with a reusable non plastic item. .

27/10/2019

Interesting. But who is to blame? The consumer who purchased and then littered? The shop which sold a plastic item ? The country that allowed the sale of the item and did not provide enough bins, recycling facilities or inventive to not litter OR the large multinational corporation pumping out unrecyclable items to countries they know have these issues?
I think all 4 have responsibility but if the company was better regulated and the country had better laws then the second 2 would naturally fall into place.

Coca-Cola was responsible for more plastic litter than the next top three polluters combined.

25/10/2019

With all the brilliant scientists that oil companies had its IMPOSSIBLE they didnt foresee this climate crises. Whats most likely is they thought they'd be faaaar too rich and old to be impacted and they carried on regardless. Strange now that they're denying the severity of global warming when they had it spot on in the 80s !

Martin Hoffert testified that in 1982, Exxon scientists predicted how carbon dioxide levels would rise and heat the planet as humans burned more fossil fuels

24/10/2019