Features
Into the archives
A few years back, as part of my PhD research into organic farming in Ireland, my supervisor mentioned in passing that it might be a good idea to acquaint myself with the history of the organic movement.
It was a quick and easy thing to say, but that one statement of his back in 2003 led me on an expedition into an Ireland I never really knew about. I ended up interviewing twenty-seven people, including three people in their eighties. I also read as much archival material as I could. As a major part of this, I tracked down a series of magazines which morphed into and also spawned each other: the North West Newsletter, Common Ground and the one you are reading now, Organic Matters.
Alternative beginnings
I was lucky to do this research in Sligo Institute of Technology, whilst having a supervisor based in Trinity College Dublin. Sligo was in the North West, where the first of these magazines, the North West Newsletter was initiated, while Trinity had an extensive archive of the back editions.
In a way, this one hundredth edition of Organic Matters can trace its history all the way back to 1976, to a festival called the Mustard Seed gathering, and indeed others that can only be called pure hippy gatherings in the mid 1970s in Ireland.
These gatherings were organised by migrants mainly from the UK and mainland Europe, who left for Ireland to homestead; to live and survive in an extremely minimal, self-sufficiency style, with inspiration from Rachel Carson and practical help from John Seymour's famous book.
These homesteaders decided to get a magazine together to network and to learn, to buy and to sell the bits and bobs of their lifestyle, to rant and to convince each other that they were not alone. It ran uninterrupted, with a name change to Common Ground, until 1996. The main change it experienced was the birth of this magazine, Organic Matters, in that most tumultuous of years for the organic movement, 1991.
Gillies' musings
With Rod Alston of Eden Plants in Rossinver, Leitrim, as a founder member of both the magazine and indeed IOFGA, it is not surprising that organic gardening featured in every issue of Common Ground. The small ads and the letters pages were the lifeblood of the magazine. The small ads defined and enabled the self-sufficiency lifestyle people lived, and the letters page often ran for pages.
Here's a synopsis of topics covered in Common Ground, from 1976-1986, in order of popularity, to give you a flavour of the content:
Organic gardening (featured in every issue), DIY/building/tools, ecology, conservation, health, small-scale farming, trees, goats, craft, alternative energy, co-ops, herbs, wine-making, poultry, politics of alternatives, bees, education, preserving, lifestyles, earth energies and cheese-making.
Don't be misled by word like 'education': this meant home schooling, and occasionally considering setting up a Steiner School.
My favourite aspect of these magazines was undoubtedly the writings of Gillies MacBain, which spanned much of the era. Indeed, Gillies contributed to Organic Matters until a few years back.
Despite having a specific bit of work to do, with a particular set of information to look out for, I parked my task. I ended up reading all his articles in sequence, eagerly rushing through them as though they were chronological parts of a classic page-turner novel. The breath of the man's imagination and knowledge, as well as the eminence and elegance of his writing style made these articles compelling reading. Who else would even think to write about religion on other planets (Common Ground, December 1990-January 1991)? A google search today throws up just four comments on the theme, 17 years later!
Defining dirt
Perhaps my single favourite piece by Gilles was called 'A new definition of Dirt' a barnstorming preacher man's polemic, from the October-November 1989 edition of Common Ground.
In it, Gilles compares the supposedly clean but nonetheless polluting society to his own mucky-farmer-with-cobwebs-in-the-car lifestyle. The story begins with Gillies pontificating on different people's preferences through the medium of surplus-to-requirements slugs - Gilles expressed a fear of eating fried slugs from a conventional garden. He then analyses the contribution things other than medicine made to hygiene (such as town planning, sewers, drains, running water and flush toilets), conceptualises differing disease epochs, and then lets rip on the hypocrisy of a clean, dirty society: "At a personal and domestic level, disinfectants clean the place - on a global level they foul it…so disinfectant is dirt".
He points to a lack of rubbish collection at his place, and the massive mess left behind by well meaning ecotourist types who pity him for looking poor and dirty.
He asks if clean is the 87,000 tonnes of bleach flushed down UK toilets? Is it a white starched collar, or processed bread, or a waxed apple? Is it "a fine spray of an agro-chemical poison between the barley stalks?"
He concludes: "to be clean means not to have fleas, flies or beetles but to find pesticides in the body fat of polar bears thousands of miles from the nearest farm, let alone fly or beetle.
"We need a new definition of dirt. It is time to recognise deodorised, vaccinated, aftershaved, sun creamed, hair sprayed, bleached, disinfected, fluoridated, mouth-washed, nicotined, shampooed, fast-food-fed man for what he is: filthy."
Wow. Proud, prophetic and powerful.
Birth of Organic Matters
Slowly, organic issues became sectioned off in Common Ground, with organic and then IOFGA pages getting their own sections for their own topics. Perhaps it was inevitable with the increasing professionalisation of organic farming and growing, but the split in the movement of 1991 may well have precipitated the next phase.
Organic Matters emerged at the same time as this split, where IOFGA and what became the Organic Trust went their separate ways. The Irishness or otherwise of IOFGA was a running theme throughout Common Ground from the mid 1980s on, when the first 'native-born' Irish, people like Michael Hickey and Gerry Browne, became involved. Until then, IOFGA was made up, in the main, of Anglo-Irish and migrant members. This dynamic tension made for letters' pages (as opposed to page!) that sparked and sparkled with vibrancy and controversy in equal measure.
The front cover of the first edition glamorously featured a mug shot of a pigs head. The second one featured Charlie Haughey, Paula McCann and Desmond Thorpe, Taoiseach, IOFGA co-ordinator and IOFGA chair respectively. IOFGA was now an organisation with paid staff, its own magazine and in CJ himself, some official state recognition. CJ even sent a letter into the October-November 1992 issue congratulating IOFGA on its new symbol launch, the same symbol you currently see on food and on this magazine. A lot happened in organic Ireland in 1991-92.
Incisive wit
A mainstay of Organic Matters, from the April-May first edition in 1991, was the contribution of the late David Storey, a former editor. In particular, his ability to combine healthy cynicism with a genuineness of spirit and intent stood out. As a grower, inspector, IOFGA chair and writer, he could cover a lot of topics in his articles. Take November-December 1997: page 8 covered grapefruit-seed extract as an alternative to dosing, while page 9' 'Country Diary' was about isolation, tourism, and the difficulty involved in getting a car fixed in the Kerry mountains, where "there's only yourself and a few hardy Scotch ewes and that ridiculous sign they have for the tourists that says 'Leprechauns crossing'".
The Country Diary in particular brought Organic Matters in the mid to late 1990s to an exceptional standard: wicked wit and incisive insightfulness was its mainstay.
New look
Photo covers and a certain glossiness came with the turn of the millennium, as did internet pages (Jim O Connor's 'Hungry Hill' column), and features on ethical banking, organic wine, windmills, GM and biomass. By now, however, the wine wasn't homemade and renewable energy was pumping into the national grid.
The current editor, Cáit Curran, who took over in the mid 1990s, was now joined by David Storey as co-editor. Along with editing and article-writing, his multi-choice quizzes were great craic. Take his health check quiz of May-June 2004: A's did things like exercise, take supplements, eat no meat, and complain about smokers, C's had coffee and king-sized Rothmans for breakfast, although their teeth had recently fallen out so they were now smoking long tipped cigarettes, whereas B's were somewhere in between.
'Mostly A's' emerged as boring health freaks who should lighten up by "buying a veggie burger, soya chips a packet of primrose cigarettes and let your organically shampooed hair down once in a while"; 'mostly B's' were trying their best "but didn't have their heart in it: anyway, did you ever see a healthy looking person in a health shop?" 'Mostly C's' had a body "nearly as polluted as the planet…with insides "like the floor of a country pub on a Saturday night".
Broad span
Today, one thing I personally like is the move back towards a less glossy finish on the inner pages. Organic Matters balances a lot of different impulses: Important technical articles for farmers by the likes of Mary Lynch, IOFGA member specific information, and lifestyle, environment and sustainability articles for the rest of us. The span today includes global, local, politics, policy, cooking, reviews, GM, enviro-news, producer profiles, cheeky chappie articles by smallholders like Chas Griffin and the irrepressible Judith Hoad, a contributor since at least a 1980 edition of the North West Newsletter days.
Here's to another one hundred issues.
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