Valentine’s Day is coming up and as happens on most dairy and sheep farms, it happens smack in the middle of the busy calving and lambing season. The second and third week of February are usually our busiest week with our record being 12 calves in one 24 hour period – by the time the calf is delivered, ensured that it has received colostrum, been trained to drink from an artificial teat or bucket and that’s been done twelve times, [...]
It is a while since we last had pet sheep. When the children were small, we got a couple of pet lambs and while Henry went to the freezer, Matilda paid a visit to a ram occasionally and had three sets of lambs with us. We then sold her and two of her lambs to a farmer where she went on to have two or three more sets of triplets until she was found lying on her back on day. [...]
Women in Irish farming, women in politics, women in positions of seniority – it was very much in the public spotlight on days such as Little Christmas / Nollaig na mBan. Some don’t agree with gender quotas or the existence of the glass ceiling – others argue that women are definitely still treated as secondary citizens in many areas.
It’s widely known and recognised (both in academic research circles and [...]
When chatting to Ryan Tubridy about the book the other day, he seemed incredulous that I was able to think of twenty Irish terms for rain in a single evening – where on earth had I heard of them all? ?The fact is that Irish rain is described in these terms, it is rarely just described as rain. ?I’m not sure if the Inuit have the 40 terms for snow or not but the Irish surely have more than 20 [...]
The book is out! There were 1000 books in my hall on Friday. There are still almost 1000 books in my hallway but about 150 of them have been packaged up with about the same number to do tomorrow. Yes, I’ve had pre-orders of about 300 books, 225 in the crowdfunding and orders for about 70 in the last week.
As it is a self [...]
