Deirdre Verney

Ireland

Deputy Editor at Westmeath Independent

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Articles

Online family business has all the Whyte stuff in Co Westmeath

1 week ago | farmersjournal.ie | Deirdre Verney

Every evening the contents of their inbox is the main topic of conversation for the Whyte family in Co Westmeath. How many orders have landed into whyteagri.ie, and from where? This is the first thing transition year student Jack Whyte checks when he gets in from Moate Community School. The agri-website, up and running since November of 2023, is a quintessential family business with everyone playing a part in its success.
How to make a complaint and get the right results

1 week ago | farmersjournal.ie | Deirdre Verney

Question: I recently undertook a full refurbishment of my kitchen, including buying all new integrated electrical appliances. While I got a good deal from my retailer after buying all of the goods in the one store, my oven stopped working over a month later. Since then, I feel like I’m being passed from pillar to post by the shop with no satisfactory outcome. What can I do? Answer: Sometimes problems arise after you buy or are gifted electrical items, goods or services.
Uisneach celebration: forging a future from Ireland’s mythical past

1 week ago | farmersjournal.ie | Deirdre Verney

Hot smoke billows in the air and a lantern is lighting around an old hayshed in the tranquil Meath countryside that once housed round bales on a beef farm. Nowadays, it is the entrance to the forge of An Gobha, aka Tom King, the blacksmith of the Boyne Valley. He sets Irish Country Living to work at the anvil, hammering a sun pendant, just like the ones he will bring to the Bealtaine Fire Festival at the sacred Hill of Uisneach, in nearby Westmeath, on 10 May.
Editorial: dancing around the May Bush to welcome summer

1 week ago | farmersjournal.ie | Deirdre Verney

In the shadow of the sun-kissed Slieve Bloom Mountains, a traditional custom that stretches back thousands of years was kept alive on Sunday by a merry band dancing around the May bush to the sound of a traditional tune. And this year I was privileged to be among them. Cadamstown village in Co Offaly was en fête as members of the Slieve Bloom Association gathered to mark the ancient festival of Bealtaine with a May bush to welcome summer and a community gathering.
Sara Leach: 'thatching is a viable career but we just need more support'

3 weeks ago | farmersjournal.ie | Deirdre Verney

From Illinois to Alaska to perching on a roof in an overcast sky, close to the seaside town of Tramore in Co Waterford, it''s been quite an eventful life journey for Sara Leach, one of only two female thatchers in Ireland. On the day she meets Irish Country Living, she is in the middle of repairing a ridge on a roof of a relatively new thatched home at Mountain View Farm.
Dromore National School: hats off to this Easter tradition

1 month ago | farmersjournal.ie | Deirdre Verney

"In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it, you’ll be the grandest lady in the Easter parade,” Judy Garland famously sang with Fred Astaire in the 1940s musical, Easter Parade. While the children of Dromore NS in Co Donegal probably have never heard of the Hollywood greats, that same spirit of Easter joie de vivre for the season ahead was certainly alive and well before the school finished up for the Easter break.
Art lifts my soul everyday - Laois suckler farmer

1 month ago | farmersjournal.ie | Deirdre Verney

‘When I went back to study art, it was like I became a new person.” These are the words of farmer and visual artist Mary Slevin on rediscovering her creative spark at the age of 50. “For the years I was working, rearing kids and looking after the farm, I kind of lost myself. It brought me back to my youth. I felt young again,” she says from her studio, a converted shed on the family farm at Mount Henry, Portarlington in Co Laois. “There’s a great lift to it. Art lifts your soul.
The Book Corner: A new voice for our times

1 month ago | farmersjournal.ie | Deirdre Verney

Book of the monthI Want To Go Home But I’m Already There, by Róisín Lanigan. Published by Fig Tree, €16.99Here is a first novel by Róisín Lanigan that deals with one of the biggest issues facing people in today’s world, a blot on society most will say, but it does so not with any judgement of the problem but rather by looking at it from a different perspective. This is renting, and it can be a nightmare.
Alpaca-zing knitwear collection by Cayo

1 month ago | farmersjournal.ie | Deirdre Verney

Smiling faces with an alpaca wearing a pair of sunglasses and a garland in South America proved to be more than just a holiday snap for Orla Daly. You could say it was the genesis of a luxury knitwear business for the Limerick native. When hiking Rainbow Mountain high up in the Andes in Peru in 2019, Orla met alpaca farmers and was captivated by the “super soft” wool of this traditional South American mammal.
Diarmuid Gavin: Diarmuid’s going native and wild in the garden

1 month ago | farmersjournal.ie | Deirdre Verney

Award-winning garden designer and TV presenter Diarmuid Gavin sums up spring in succinct terms for gardeners: “It’s just exhilarating. “I’m looking out at my front garden, and the Narcissi are coming up, and everything is starting to grow. We’ve had a very stormy but relatively mild winter, so things are really ready to shoot,” he says, with clear exuberance in his voice from his home in Kilmacanogue, Co Wicklow. “It’s hugely exciting.