RTÉ - CountryWide Podcast

October is the start of storm season. So how should we prepare for extreme weather?

Marie Hannah Curran and her husband moved to a windy spot in East Galway, and quickly realised they'd have to adapt their home if they were going to cope with severe weather. Our reporter Della Kilroy went to meet her to find out what they've done to storm-proof their lives.

On Saturday 8th January 2005, a powerful storm swept past the northwest of Ireland before gaining ferocious strength as it reached southern Sweden.

The backbone of communities is neighbours helping each other, but also the teams of volunteers who are trained in dealing with emergencies.

London-based vet Sean McCormack tells us why flea treatments for cats and dogs are threatening river life.

Countrywide Full Episode 25/10/25

Philip visits Balla Mart to see who is selling and the prices cattle are making.

Maria Moynihan reflects on how she found comfort in nature, while grieving the loss of her firstborn.

Celebrating publication of the Irish Farm Book in colour, we visit Kinvara to see a unique collection of photos from the 1950s.

Barry Fox, Deputy CEO of Inland Fisheries; Tom Ryan, a Director of the EPA with responsibility for environmental enforcement; Rick Officer CEO of the Marine Institute; Timmy Dooley, Minister of State with responsibility for fisheries and the marine.

Haraldur Eiriksson runs a salmon fishing business 45km outside Reykjavik. The technology he uses gives him live readings of what is going on in the river.

During the week, Countrywide went to the lower reaches of the river catchment and talked to a few people who describe the Blackwater as part of their lives.

A special programme on new books about farms, rural life and nature.

Seventy Years in the Wild West is the story of Dhulough Farm, published by Mayo Books. It is a chronicle of the human disaster behind creating the biggest farm in Irish history.

Poet Jane Clarke reading Walls of Arainn, one of her poems from a new book called The Hare's Corner.

Walking during lockdown Deirdre O'Neill noticed how visible the fingerprints of history are on our landscape. This inspired her to chronicle as many of these ancient artefacts in fields around the country as she could find. The result is Remnants of Our Past, published by Gill Books.

James Rebanks is a farmer turned author in England's Lake District. In his farming memoirs The Shepherd's Life and English Pastoral, he tells his story of rightsizing an unprofitable, environmentally unsustainable farm.

Conor W O'Brien's book The Living and The Dead, tales of Loss and Rebirth from Irish Nature is published by Merrion Press.

The Hare's Corner: Making Space for Nature by poet Jane Clarke and journalist Catherine Cleary, is a celebration of the quiet, hopeful revolution taking place across Ireland, where people are making space for nature to thrive once again.

On the Burren in County Clare, farmers are preparing to move their livestock up onto the limestone pavement winterage in the hills. This traditional way of managing cows over winter is recorded in Jane Clarke's poem, Come October.

The report on the River Blackwater fish kill published this week was inconclusive, with no enough evidence to say what was to blame for the largest fish kill in Irish history. We discuss the impact of the flow of rivers and river pollution, with Professors Fiona Regan and Mary Bourke.

Rye is in the same family as wheat and historically was used in distilling and thatching. Nowadays most farmers are planting rye for animal feed. With the rise in craft bakeries, rye is also going into baked goods. We visit a farmer and food seller benefitting from this very old but increasingly trendy grain.

Féile na bPuiteachaí is a celebration of the blackberry on Inis Meán ar nOileann Arainn.

Hundreds of farms across the country have taken advantage of support from the ACRES scheme to plant native apple trees on their farms, including varieties like Rose Hogan, the Beauty of Ballintaylor or the Dick Davies.

Countrywide Full Episode 27/09/2025

Minister Martin Heydon addresses the concerns of Farmers expressed during the RTÉ Townhall during ploughing

A brand new language school which creates an on line community of Irish language learners who audio-read a book together. Lorna Siggins took a look into the new way of learning Irish and some of its converts.

There is a real concern that the local vet in rural Ireland, on call all hours of the day or night, to tend to farm animals on hillsides or in farmyards, may be a thing of the past. This week at the Ploughing, the Atlantic Technological University and the South East Technological University were showcasing their new courses.

There is a scheme generating a lot of inquiries, the National Parks and Wildlife Service's Farm Plan scheme. Tailored plans and financial support to make the switch to High Nature Value Farming. Philips visits one of these farms.

Back in the 90s, the introduction of Special Areas of Conservation created mistrust among some farmers, and now there is fear that history is about to repeat itself with the Nature Restoration Law. We take a closer look at those concerns with Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin, chair of the independent advisory committee on the Nature Restoration Plan.

Maura, from Co Derry, married a farmer from Leinster and now lives on the farm in Kildare. This morning she tells us about the changing seasons of her life as her eldest child begins school.

For the first time in the 26 year history of the Macra Na Feirme Young Farmer of the Year competition, the overall winner is a woman, Aileen Sheehan.

Music Network has been bringing live music performances to venues in towns and villages across the country for decades, fostering interesting collaborations. Such as this collaboration between traditional pianist Ryan Molloy and sean nos singers Séamus & Caoimhe Uí Fhlatharta. (For copyright reasons full musical tracks are not available here)

Countrywide Full Episode 13/09/2025. (For copyright reasons the full musical tracks are not available in the podcast)

Uisce Éireann is running a pilot project to reduce the amount of pesticides going in to lakes and rivers. They think it will be easier in the long run for them to stop pesticides getting in to our drinking water than it is for them to have to take them out.

Dr Dara Stanley, Associate Professor in Applied Entomology in the School of Agriculture and Food Science, and Earth Institute, at UCD.

Fin Walsh is a dairy farmer from Patrickswell, Co Limerick who has amassed over 150,000 TikTok followers, with posts about daily life on the farm.

ACORNS (Accelerating the Creation Of Rural Nascent Start-ups) is a free initiative for early-stage female entrepreneurs based in rural Ireland. Central to its popularity is the idea that early-stage entrepreneurs learn best from their peers.

The temperatures of waters off the west coast of Ireland have been heating up, resulting in a lot of changes to marine life. Six months ago, we heard from ten year-old Jonathan Padden from North Mayo, who found a tiny loggerhead turtle on An Fál Mór beach in Blacksod Bay.

Countrywide Full Episode 06/09/2025.

The people at Farming For Nature have asked 21 of their farming ambassadors all around the country to open the gates to the public tomorrow for guided farm walks. Countrywide did just that during the week, and visited a farm outside Maynooth in Co Kildare.

If you go down to the woods today, particularly the woodland created by John Normanly in County Sligo, you are sure to see all manner of wild life. Together with his wife Maria, John has worked for more than twenty years to transform his fourteen hectare farm into a mixed forest with mostly oak trees, some larch and spruce and some beech trees.