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1 week 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.
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2 weeks 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.
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3 weeks 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.
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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.
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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.
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1 month ago | 
farmersjournal.ie | Deirdre Verney
The seed of inspiration for The Irish Dresser Project can be traced back to the mid-1970s when Michael Fortune spent his childhood living with his grandmother Jane in her cottage in Ballygarrett, on the Wexford coast. At the centre of her home was a simple, practical kitchen dresser. In 2015, when his grandmother died aged 103, the Wexford-based artist and folklorist, who also runs folklore.ie, was spurred into action. The Irish Dresser Project was born.
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1 month ago | 
farmersjournal.ie | Deirdre Verney
From a plethora of whiskeys to Irish stew, boxty, or the humble bacon and cabbage, Irish food and drink is basking in the ‘green’ spotlight this month as St Patrick’s Day festivities approach. With household food and drink consumed in Ireland valued at €10 bn a year, according to figures from the Central Statistics Office (CS0), many shoppers want to support Irish. However, with so many foods and different labels giving consumers all kinds of information, it can be difficult.
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2 months ago | 
farmersjournal.ie | Deirdre Verney
‘Home is where you moor it,” the sign hanging in the boat window says, looking out on the still waters of the Royal Canal on a cool, spring day in Co Kildare. Inside though, it’s cosy, warm, and surprisingly spacious with a clever design and a keen eye for interiors, making this bright green houseboat look like a bijou flat in a trendy neighbourhood. While Niamh Owens Khalid and her husband Sammy admit living on the water is not for everyone, they are delighted with how it has worked out.
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2 months ago | 
farmersjournal.ie | Deirdre Verney
In 1899, the first known use of the word ‘automobile’ appeared in an editorial in The New York Times. It was also the year the 2nd Boer War began in South Africa. In Ireland, 1899 signalled the first-ever stage performance by the Irish Literary Theatre, founded by W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and others, the forerunner of the Abbey Theatre.
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2 months ago | 
farmersjournal.ie | Deirdre Verney
There are not many professional actors from Tipperary; even fewer still combine treading the boards with playing in goals or centre forward in hurling. Cathal Ryan, who hails from The Ragg, near Thurles, has managed to marry his two great passions into a unique one-man show currently in the midst of a 12-date All-Ireland tour until mid-March. Just like the game that inspired it, PUCKED is a fast-paced and often hilarious production where Cathal plays 27 different characters over 90 minutes.
