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A time to stay dry as EU seeks to rewet farmlands

Country Living with Francis Farragher

For most of us who grew up on family farms back through the decades, it could seem to be a very mixed bag. There were always ‘jobs’ to be done like looking at the cattle located a few miles away on a fine summer’s evening when a game of football would seem a lot more attractive.

There were the tougher jobs like thinnowing beet or turnips; footing turf for a day; or that task I hated with a vengeance – picking stones from the meadow fields. I could never quite figure out as a young lad why stones had to be picked almost every year – it was as if they grew out of the soil!

For all that, the quality of life was quite good for most of us out the country, even during the more straitened times of the 1960s, when in fairness, there was always healthy food on the table but very little by way of the clang of silver in your pocket.

In general, it was a time when farms were less intensive but in the ‘pre-dole days’, it still remains something of a mystery to me how families managed to rear and educate quite large ‘clutches’ of children.

There was of a course a whole culture of self-sufficiency on most farms with the hens supplying the eggs that provided food for the table and the ‘gugs’ also went a long way to paying for the groceries when the ‘travelling shop’ called once a week. We used to call him the ‘eggler’ – in my childhood days, a man called Christy Mannion from Barnaderg whose Wednesday visit to our house was almost akin to a Santa Claus arrival every week.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune:

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app

The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

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