The herb Plantago major (greater plantain) or weed to most people, is a familiar sight in gardens presently. The leaves may be quite large, and it is just ready to harvest. A versatile plant, it has been used as medicine and food since ancient times and has many benefits. It […]
Columnists
How time flies! We have already entered the second half of summer, having passed the longest day, which seems to have come round faster than ever this year. It may be the second half of summer but I’m still prowling around the courgettes plants waiting for them to spring into […]
On farm it’s been a busy month. Breeding is finished for the heifers and they will be scanned to see if they are in-calf in a month’s time or so. The bull that was with them is now with the main group of cows who have just completed three weeks […]
‘If you want a bikini body – put on a bikini’. That’s a sentiment we hear every summer and, while it’s true, it’s not easy for everybody to dress down even on the hot days. Thankfully it seems that more and more women just don’t care what society and media […]
There was a tiny little townland in County Clare called Ballykilty. In the middle of the 18th century when the landed aristocracy was in the ascendency, a man, who had never set foot in Ireland, bought extensive lands in the area. He duly renamed his lands in that townland as […]
The ‘Cailleach Bhéara’ (Hag of Beara) is a mythical old woman in Irish literature and folklore, associated with west Munster, but especially with the Beara Peninsula in West Cork. Originally her name was ‘Boí’, a variant of the word for a cow, ‘bó’, At the tip of the Beara Peninsula […]