Menu: Cider tour weekend, Ballydehob Jazz, and delicious honey from native Irish black bees

Plus - congratulations to national food legend Frank Hederman, of Belvelly Smoke House, near Cobh, who has become the first Irish winner of the prestigious Walter Scheel Medal

A Cider Tour Weekend at Longueville House in North Cork makes for a splendid weekend offering of food, hospitality and premium alcoholic apple beverages from the North Cork country home

Diversification in rural Ireland

The Menu is meeting and hearing of more and more conventional farmers who are looking very seriously at moving into an alternative forms of agriculture, of mixing traditional farming practices from not too long ago, perhaps 50 or 60 years, when all farming was, in essence, ‘organic’, and wedding that to modern technology and innovation. Not only does this increasingly become an environmental imperative but it also makes economic sense as the cost of conventional inputs, especially chemical additions, continue to skyrocket.