We went on a ‘farm and forest’ walk on Sunday, up through the farm we call ‘Kerrs’ after the man we purchased it from in 2006. When I was a child, it was known as Bolgers and before then it was owned by a Wilson family, they had 8 children and when the father died, leaving a young widow with her 8 children, she emigrated to Canada with 7 of them, the eldest staying behind as far as I know.
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One thing that strikes me about many of the American farming blogs is that they often state how many generations of that family have farmed, eg. third generation, fifth generation etc, with a hope that it will be continued to the next generation. ?That sense of pride is admirable especially as farming must be one of the toughest businesses out there.
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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