A bright start to the weekend with Damien O'Reilly and the CountryWide team, featuring events, people and happenings from across the country.
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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.
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.
In 1988 the Guild of Agricultural Journalists put together a time capsule in a milk churn. Inside, they placed articles of the day from the main Irish newspapers and the farming press, plus brochures for machinery, and that piece of radio archive. This week the padlocked churn was opened in the RDS at a gathering of agricultural journalists.
Countrywide speaks to Michael Healy-Rae, Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine with special responsibility for Forestry, Farm Safety and Horticulture.
The fungus that causes Ash trees to die arrived here in 2012, with devastating consequences for 90% of the population. But now scientists have been investigating what was going on with the 10% of trees that will remain healthy, and they think that might hold the answer to how to restore the Ash in Ireland.
The demise of small abattoirs around the country has been decades in the making, but farmers producing small quantities of meat for local consumption in independent shops can't exist without them. And yet they continue to close.
Throughout the country, although the vacant property grant has breathed new life into old, empty homes, plenty still sit untouched. In the town land of Knockbrack in Sligo, a small farm has stood silent for half a century, when teenager Michael O'Hara set off for a new life in Brooklyn, New York in the mid 1970s. But it was never forgotten.
Ella McSweeney speaks to entrepreneur, investor and food king, Roscommon's John Stapleton. Go to johnstapleton.eu for more information.
Countrywide decided to hop on board a traditional barge which travels along the Grand Canal from Sallins in Kildare, joining other passengers to explore the nature in and along the waterway and guided by Chris McKenna. For more, go to bargetrip.ie
If you're a child in rural Ireland, will it ever be an option for you to cycle safely to school? The Rural Cycling Collective, which is part of the Irish Cycling Campaign, want rural roads to become safe again for cyclists. More on cyclist.ie
All around the country you might have seen combine harvesters and tractors on the roads and in the fields cutting the crops and bringing them in. Overall, Harvest 2025 is shaping up to be a positive one. The weather has stayed dry and the yields have been good. But as always, it's a less rosy picture when it comes to the prices…
On Sunday, the Irish Native Rare Breed Society will have a celebration of all their animals at Bunratty Castle in Clare. On 24th August they'll be at the Longford Westmeath mart for another event. It's all part of National Heritage Week which starts tomorrow with thousands of events to celebrate our built, natural and cultural heritage.
The economy of many coastal communities has changed in recent decades from fishing towards other marine-based industries. Lorna Siggins went to West Cork where seaweed is being grown in baths inside a temperature-controlled building right beside the sea.
Earlier this week, reports emerged of a fish kill on the river Blackwater, initially believed to affect an eight-kilometer stretch between Mallow and Roskeen Bridge.
Preparations are in full swing in Fuddlestown, Co Wexford, for an on-farm local music festival taking place on the last weekend in August. Fuddlefest.ie for more details.
Countrywide Full Episode 09/08/2025, live from the Dublin Horse Show in the RDS.
The Cat Candy is a tan and white pony, owned by David Kelly, and ridden by 11 year old Freya Kavanagh. This year, it is competing in Class 93 - The Working Hunter Pony (Starter Stakes). What kind of preparation does it take to be selected to enter this ring?
The centre piece of the Dublin Horse Show is the Nations Cup for the Aga Khan Trophy. The man behind the Irish team is Michael Blake from Tuamgraney.
Mary McCann is something of a legend in Sport Horse circles, having bred some of the most successful showjumpers in the history of the sport. She brought horses to the Dublin Horse Show every year since 1956.
For quite a few years, the Sport Horse industry has been trying to help the Racehorse industry with one of its knottiest problems. What becomes of retired racehorses?
Janet Heeran writes about life as it unfolds on her husband's farm and in the classroom where she teaches. Here she remembers the 1954 Dublin Horse Show.
Throughout the programme, we keep an eye on Class 93 - The Working Hunter Pony (Starter Stakes).
While there are more walking routes and trails around the country than ever before, access to the Irish countryside depends on the goodwill and cooperation of farmers, landowners and the State. Helen Lawless is Access and Environment Manager with Mountaineering Ireland.
Back in 2008, the Walks Scheme was set up to help open up more walking routes across the country on private land. Last weekend, about 7,000 people made the climb up Croagh Patrick. But beyond the Reek, there's a lot more Mayo offers, including the Clogher–Newtown Forest Trail. https://www.sportireland.ie/outdoors/find-your-trails
For the corncrake today, Ireland is a hostile place. In response to the threat of their extinction here, just under €6 million in public funding was allocated a few years ago in a project aimed at helping the corncrake survive. One of the places involved was Inishbofin, off the coast of Galway.
Over 4.2 billion euro of goods and services cross the Atlantic every day between the EU and the US, and including Irish butter, cheese and whiskey. For more on what this means for Irish agricultural exports, we hear from Lorcan Roche Kelly of the Irish Farmers Journal.
Donkeys are not native to Ireland, but were brought here from the Middle East and North Africa in the 17th century. A century ago there were 250,000 of them on farms across the country. Today that has dwindled to about 10,000. A few weeks ago, two foals were born on club member Donal Staunton's farm in Clifden, Galway.
Sophie Bell is 26 years old and she farms 59 acres just outside Virginia in Cavan. Having studied agriculture in Harper Adams University in the UK, she returned home and two years ago went into partnership with her father.
Bartosz Brzezinski, Brussels reporter with the global news organisation Politico, brings us up to date with the EU farm subsidies proposals.
Denis Drennan, President of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association; Karen Mannion, CEO of Forum Connemara; Ruth Hegarty, Director of Food Policy Ireland and a board member of Talamh Beo.
Poet, playwright, and broadcaster, Vincent Woods grew up on a small farm in County Leitrim in the 1960s and caught a glimpse of the summer rituals.
John Graham is a vegetable farmer near Raphoe and over the last few years he's run an honesty box, a farm shop and sold his vegetables in Letterkenny's farmers market. He also hosts long-table dinners on his farm.
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