CountryWide

If any of you have an apple tree in a park near you, on your farm or garden, you’ll notice how early the apples have appeared - very early. Con Traas's parents, Willem and Ali, came from Holland in 1967 looking for land to grow fruit. They found a farm with an old orchard in Tipperary, and the family has been growing apples there ever since. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, five secondary schools, from Donegal to Cork, were presented with an Aberdeen Angus calf to bring home and rear. It's all part of the Certified Irish Angus schools' competition, which asks students to do a research project on farming. 180 schools entered this year, and the finalists collected their calves at the Ploughing. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The All-Ireland Lamb Shearing Championships took place at the Ploughing this week when Ireland’s fastest and most skilled sheep shearers - ranging from juniors upwards - were put to the test. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At the National Ploughing Championships, young agri start-ups had a chance to pitch for Enterprise Ireland awards, and Suzanne Campbell met three of these companies as they tried to catch the judges' attention, each trying to win one of the overall prizes. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ireland sends its plan for restoring nature to Brussels, so how much public money will be allocated to it, and what will it ask? Minister for Nature, Heritage and Biodiversity Christopher O’Sullivan joined us to discuss. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A lot of this vision of a more "open access" Ireland might seem unachievable. But there is an example of farmers opening up access to the public and everybody getting along. The Sheepshead Way was created 30 years ago this year – securing agreement from 265 different landowners to open up all the old mass paths, holy well paths, to school through the fields paths and connect them all together into a six day hike. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This morning we took a a closer look at the kind of access to the countryside that the state is actually investing in; Greenways. 350 km of Greenway has been built in the last 5 years, and there are plans to build out a network of paved cycling paths that will be ten times that long. But, along the South Kerry Greenway, compulsory Purchase of land from farmers who say they were open to granting access to cross their farms without being forced to sell has generated conflict. Cleona O'Shea, chairperson of the National Greenway Action Association discusses. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tim Hannigan is a Cornish born Travel Writer so as somebody who grew up with a right to roam the countryside, the thing about living in Ireland that he can’t get his head around is the comparatively limited access to the countryside that we settle for here. So he set himself the challenge of walking through Ireland’s heartlands - from one side of the island to the other - without trespassing to see how much of the journey could be completed off road. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ahead of President Trump's arrival to Ireland, RTÉ News Correspondents Brian O'Connell, Colman O'Sullivan and Elizabeth Hearst brought us the latest updates live from this morning. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Amanda Galvin is running an organic sheep and tillage enterprise not too far from Tullamore. She hasn’t dipped in to any of her winter fodder, her fields are notably greener than her neighbours and her ewes actually need to lose a bit of the weight they’ve put on over the summer before she puts them to the ram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The creamery Tirlan surveyed 800 of its farmers last week – and over 80% of them said that they had already fed several week’s worth of what they should be feeding in December and January. And 90% said that there was barely any grass in their animal’s diet now. Head of Dairy Knowledge at the farming research agency Teagasc, Joe Patton joined the programme to share findings of a survey that gauged how deep the shortage of winter fodder is going to run this year. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Countrywide reporter Della Kilroy visited Hickeys farm to meet father and son Martin and Gerard Hickey and find out how this summer’s weather has affected their crops, and what it means for the future of Irish vegetable growing. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The number of farmers that have found themselves without water, or running low, or sitting on a sluggish well means that Harry and John Ellis – father and son team from Hacketstown Co Carlow are out the door with enquiries for drilling new wells. Dr Claire Bergin from the ICARUS Climate Centre in Maynooth University explained how the future of farming relies on how well farmers adapt to extremes of drought and floods. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Grangecon is in the west of Wicklow, under the hills. Hannah Page Fox lives on a sheep and Christmas tree farm in Grangecon. A year ago, with nothing much to warn her, Hannah was told she had lobular breast cancer, and that it had already spread. The year since for Hannah has been medical. Ella met with Hannah during the week to hear how the farm has helped her get through. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On 26th of July, 75 years of waiting ended in Croke Park, and Sam Maguire is in Mayo at last. Stephen Coen has been chasing that day since he was seventeen, but he was named to start last month's final, and before throw-in, injury took him out of the squad on the day, but no one was more central to Mayo’s successful run than Coen. When he's not playing, Stephen farms cattle and sheep with his father Liam and his brother David outside the village of Hollymount. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kate O'Sullivan is the new owner of café Pónaire in Newport, County Tipperary - a café at the front, and behind it a roastery that roasts every bean the business sells. Prices in Brazil for beans peaked early last year at nearly four and a half dollars a pound. It's eased since. But the warehouses are emptier than they've been in years, nobody in the trade will tell you where it goes next, and the cup you buy on the way to work has not got any cheaper. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Six of the country's biggest retailers - Aldi, Dunnes, Lidl, Marks and Spencer, SuperValu and Centra, and Tesco - have signed up to the principles of a new Horticulture Grower-Retail Charter. It arrives at a hard moment. Irish horticulture was worth €652 million at the farm gate last year. But the growers are disappearing. So how is the charter landing with the people who actually grow the food? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dr Mary Burke, geographer at Trinity College Dublin talked about her research SloWaters project that encourages farmers to slow the flow of water off their lands during heavy rains to reduce the risk of flooding downstream. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Journalist Hannah Quinn Mulligan met with potato farmer Donald Tracy in Kildare whose harvest has been reduced to half due to the hot and dry weather this year. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Under the EU Nature restoration plan, Ireland must draw up an inventory of artificial barriers on its rivers and decide which of them will come out to restore at least 25,000 kilometers of free flowing rivers by 2030. One of these barriers is Annacotty weir in Limerick on the river Mulkear. Head of Inland Fisheries Ireland Hazel King joined us to tell us more. And some locals told Ella McSweeney their concerns. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.