Peat Alternatives

Irish Wild Honeybees

Swarming season is in full swing across the country. Queen bees are leaving their nests, allowing developing queens to inherit their thrones. There has been a long running campaign and draft legislation to ensure special protection for the wild Irish honeybee. Lorna Siggins reports.

Making Farms Work for Women

'Making Farms Work for Women' is a pilot project that's looking at the reality of farming for women and at the challenges they face. Over the three year life of the project they'll be working with 60 women farmers in North Mayo. Treasa Breathnach reports.

Peat Alternatives

Looking at the bogs a bit more closely, where are we at in developing completely peat free alternative composts so that we can stop cutting up bogs to grow food? Teagasc, the agricultural research agency is in the middle of a lot of work in this area. Philip met with Dr Michael Gaffney to discuss further.

Peat Extraction

The European Commission is not happy about what we haven’t done to protect our bogs. They say we have failed to stop large scale commercial peat extraction. So Ireland is getting sued, again. While we have done a bad job protecting our raised bog networks, taking take peat away in the morning would mean we end a large part of Irish horticulture.

Booleying

Grass growth has been rampant in the last few weeks, with quite a few farms pushing into surplus. It’s a time of year where that kind of growth means booleying can come into its own. A livestock management tradition where the cattle and the farmer’s children headed for the hills away from parental supervision. Della Kilroy reports.