Butter in the Bog and a Pig in the Kitchen!

We’ve buried butter in bogs in Ireland for at least 4300 years. Deep in the bog, the butter stayed cool, safe, and secure: a way of taking a summer surplus and preserving it for winter, when food was scarcer. We also kept pigs who ate garden scraps, potato peels, and buttermilk from the butter making process. Those pigs contributed fertiliser for the kitchen garden and potato drills, and became another important food source in turn. Even the brown bread on the table was part of the same thrifty logic, traditionally made with wholegrain flour and fresh buttermilk (before the pigs got their share!) These ingredients barely travelled further than the farmyard: food miles you could probably count on one hand.


As climate change and geopolitical instability put questions of food security back on the agenda, what can the past teach us about feeding ourselves well, now and in the future? Can we re-discover food sources closer to home, without relying on lorries, shipping lanes, or a supply chain with a thousand points where something could go wrong?

Join us to make butter and brown bread by hand and plant seeds to sprout into delicious and nutritious “windowsill gardens”: a small piece of food security you can grow for yourself, even in the city centre.