What’s Ireland Eating?

2nd November 2011 by Lorna
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Did you see the RTE programme ‘What’s Ireland Eating?’ last night, first shown here in May and back again. Borne from the book ‘Basketcase – What’s happened to Ireland’s Food’ by Philip Boucher-Hayes and Suz Campbell, Philip was the presenter on the programme, seen interviewing farmers, the general public, supermarkets, butchers, food processors and more to show how the supermarkets are enticing people into their shops with loss leaders, that the producer of that special offer is the one who [...]

Births & Deaths

1st November 2011 by Lorna
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Farming always has its ups and downs. ?Things are going along swimmingly and just as you think things are going to get a bit quieter for a few days so your husband can cut some trees up into logs for the fire or put up some wallpaper or plumb in the sink in the scullery that has been sitting there since January, something happens. We had 2 cows ‘abort’ in 24 hours, both giving similar symptoms of giving reduced milk [...]

Happy Hallow’een

31st October 2011 by Lorna
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Happy Hallow’een!

We did most of the dressing up on Saturday when the children had friends up to play and then I brought the 4 of them to a parish youth club disco. We’d to leave early as it was my turn to get the pizzas and drink etc and I thought giving myself 90 minutes to carve 3 pumpkins with them and paint four faces while they took it [...]

‘Stopping a Gap’

28th October 2011 by Lorna
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Reading Imen’s column this week in the Irish Country Living of how she feels she is now a proper cowgirl as she ‘stopped a gap’ reminded me of how we used to transport cattle to and from our outfarm years ago.

Our outfarm is about a mile and a half away from the home farm. Calves and cattle are grazed there during the summer. Nowadays, we transport them by cattle trailer as we’d have to cross two main roads [...]