Irish Farmerette goes to the Tullamore Show

We were thinking of going to the Tullamore Show last Sunday and when we won tickets from Agriland, that decided it. We tend to go to it every 2 or 3 years, it is one of the biggest agricultural shows in the country and this year was no exception as it drew in over 60,000 people.

The weather was fine, the cancelled event of 2009 was a distant memory as people milled there wearing ordinary runners and shoes with [...]

Feeding Silage Contractors: Tips from an Irish Farmerette

I always seem to be busy when the silage contractors come and they always need to be fed – dinner, tea and often supper too.? I usually make 3 chicken or beef casseroles and a big saucepan of mashed potatoes followed by either a rhubarb crumble, a rice pudding or if time is short, the fruit strudels from Aldi. Tea is usually a fry up with grilled bacon and sausage, baked beans, white pudding and fried eggs followed by scones [...]

Silage and Scones

The weather has been incredibly hot here in Ireland – no rain for 16 days is almost unheard of. Farmers on dry land (who have been the envy of the rest of us for many years) are finding that what grass they had is just burning off and most are feeding the first cut of silage (which shouldn’t have been touched until next winter) and meal to cows and perhaps silage or hay to the rest of the stock. ?The [...]

Childhood Farm Memories – Straw Tales

I wish I had photographs of us as kids working and playing amongst the straw and hay bales in the fields as they were put one at a time onto the trailers to be brought back to the farmyard. Many of my childhood memories revolve around the straw and hay – between bringing picnics to the field, stopping for icecreams on the way home if it was a long draw, the blisters on the hands, the sense of a long [...]