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Tyrone Woman’s Vegetable-Patch ‘Cider Trap’ Catches Husband But No Snails
After receiving advice on how to deal with the decimation of her tomatoes this summer, a Cookstown woman has stumbled upon the unlikely source of her problem by setting up cider traps at night.
Convinced that slugs and snails were devouring her legendary vegetables, a local gardening expert advised Mary McNally to trap the shelled gastropods by using small doses of cider inside bottle tops. It was only when she heard a rustling outside one night that she caught the culprit:
“It was the husband all along. He’d put the gardener up to saying to me about the cider so he could go out and get sloshed in the garden whilst I slept. I looked out one night and there he was, off his head drinking the cider from the bottle tops, singing rebel songs, and, to top it all off, eating the snails himself as well as the tomatoes.”
John McNally admitted to the cider/snail/tomato consumption when caught red-handed and has since added SatNav to his phone so that his wife knows where he is at any given time of the night.
NcNally also denies any wrongdoing in the poor carrot crop this year in his garden despite his wife, suspiciously now, again being told by the same expert gardener to leave beer and dirty magazines beside the carrots to ward off bats and badgers.
Tyrone Firm Ventures Into The Cider Market With ‘Stymers Cider’ Made Out Of Pig Blood
A nice refreshing glass
By Shengas McGlumphie
A Tyrone drinks manufacturer is hoping to capitalise on the good start to the summer by launching a new type of cider drink, with pig’s blood as the prime ingredient. The brains behind the idea, local businessman and border-line fruitcake Eugene Kerr, explained the deranged thinking that has brought the drink from initial concept to supermarket shelf.
“You’ve got your Magner’s made with apples and of course Bulmer’s is already made out of bulls. One step on and you’ve got Stymer’s made out of pig blood with quare wee floaty bacon bits. Stand aside Strongbow, there’s a new kid in town! Those boys in Armagh can’t be having it all their own way with their fancy apple orchards. What’s Tyrone got plenty of to make cider with? Pigs. Oh, and bog, but I tried that one. I’ve learned from my mistakes”.
If the Stymer’s brand is successful, Kerr plans to expand the range by creating a partnership with Moy Park Chickens. “Once people get used to ‘Pig Stymer’s’, wait until they get a taste of our ‘Chicken Thigh-der’. We’ve more chickens in Tyrone than you can shake a stick at. It’s going to be big. Maybe even as big as Irn Bru”, predicted an excited Kerr.
The marketing launch to the food and drink press took place at the Greenvale Hotel in Craigavon last Thursday night. Launched with the slogan, ‘For Days When It’s Hot. Bacon Hot’, Kerr was evasive about the feedback from the assembled journalists.
“Well, I couldn’t quite hear the comments for all the retching and the like that was going on, but sure people just need to open their mind a bit. I remember folk in Greencastle started riots when they heard some people were adding water to the Bushmills. Same goes for Stymer’s. A few months and people won’t be able to get enough of the taste of fizzy alcoholic pig blood”.
Promotional activity which took place in Dungannon main street on Saturday under a big banner saying ‘Can You Take The Stymer’s Test?!’ was hurriedly abandoned after an outbreak of mass vomiting amongst participants
Tyrone Tribulations 