Friday Fields: High and Low Shores

30th October 2020 by Lorna
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Some fields are named after their draining abilities (e.g The Bog), or their size (e.g. The Long Meadow). Two of our fields, High Shores and Low Shores, are named after a previous owner. My great uncle Herbert Sixsmith bought about 80 acres at Garrendenny, and purchased these two fields sixteen years later (around 1925). They were owned by a farmer, John Shore, who also worked as a carman delivering coal by horse and cart. He lived nearby and he had right [...]

Women Farmers Can’t Rest on their Laurels!

23rd June 2020 by Lorna
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Me with the smallest calf of the year (he was 2 weeks old at this stage and I could still carry him under one arm)

There I was, wearing a shapeless milking gown with (I discovered later) a splash of cow muck across my face, not exactly looking my most sophisticated or glamourous when Brian called me to get my thoughts on a decision regarding our ESB connection being converted to 3 Phase. The ESB guy said to me “there’s not many women doing what you do”. I looked at him, totally confused. “Doing what?” He flung his arm back to indicate the milking parlour. [...]

Claudia the Cow

7th April 2020 by Lorna
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Claudia, small in size and big in attitude

It has been a busy spring between calving, the building of a new milking parlour complete with rebuilt collecting yard and other ancillary expensive essentials, and now of course, we have coronavirus to think about. But this post is going to be about another C – a cow called Claudia.

Farm Memoirs of 2018 and 2019: Recommended Reads

27th November 2019 by Lorna
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Farm_Books__My_Recommendations

I have always enjoyed reading farm and rural memoirs. My copies of James Herriot’s books are dog-eared and have been reread many times since I was a teenager. The success of recently published farm memoirs proved that the rural memoir is as popular as ever, perhaps even enjoying a renaissance as various sectors of society (indeed, 47% of people in Britain) show an interest in leaving their city lives and dream of living on a smallholding or perhaps [...]

Event: Recognising Women’s Involvement in Farming

6th August 2018 by Lorna
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Sally Shortall, researching women's involvement on farms

It’s not just in the farming industry where women are making their presence felt with perhaps more determination than ever before, although when I think back to the ‘Votes for Women’ campaign, I don’t think we’ll ever reach their heights. In very recent years though, there has been a tangible change. Between sport (the Irish hockey team were silver medallists in the World Cup today), the MeToo movement, women now playing villain characters in films, it seems women aren’t content [...]