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The CountryWide team feature the events, people and happenings that bring colour and life to communities, towns and villages across Ireland. Listen live Saturdays at 8am on RTÉ Radio 1.
2019 Episodes
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At Carbury bog in Kildare, a local community group has cracked the problem of simultaneously protecting nature while allowing people who can’t afford not to – to keep cutting turf to heat their homes. Philip meets Ciara Duggan, Chair of Carbury Bogs.
Janet Heeran in Cork on the many days of rain this year. Featuring the track ‘Light Rain Blues’ by Sam Amidon. (For copyright reasons the full track used in the background of this piece cannot be made available in the podcast)
Professor John Feehan, Geologist and Botanist, argues that the rewetting of bogs may prove to be a major missed opportunity for nature, and that we need to adjust our timeframes to think like mountains.
Della Kilroy meets artist Annie Holland on Abbeyleix Bog to hear about her work which is inspired by the landscape there. Annie is one of 19 artists identified by The Community Wetlands Forum as someone whose work encourages people to look afresh at their local bogs.
Lemanaghan Bog in Offaly, or Manchán’s bog, has been earmarked by Bord Na Mona and SSE Renewables as a site for turbines. Locals like Ciara Egan would prefer if it hadn’t. She tells Philip about the relationship the local people have with the land there.
26 years ago, a team of archaeologists followed in the wake of Bord Na Mona’s peat harvesting machinery to rescue artefacts revealed by the milling. It raises the possibility of bog bodies having being burned in our peat fired power stations.
Farming in peaty soils is challenging. But not so for horticulture. In Connemara Aongus O’Coistealbha has embraced the Lazy Beds growing system developed by our ancestors, which is anything but lazy as Lorna Siggins reports.
Countrywide Full Episode 07/03/2026
An opinion poll of farmers shows they are prepared to go much further than farm leaders or politicians in trying to eradicate bovine tuberculosis. Liam Guinan, Farmer, Birr Co Offaly. Dr Deirdre Robertson, Senior Researcher, ESRI. Eamonn Carroll, VP ICMSA.
Creative Ireland has fostered collaborations between artists and farmers to better explain farming to the public. Della Kilroy visited farmer Barry Connolly and Artists Helen Sharp in Fermanagh.
One of the surest signs of spring is the moment when the soil gets above 5 degrees in temperature and grass starts growing. Suzanne Campbell visited Tom Burgess on his Coolattin Cheese farm in Wicklow to see how fresh grass and silage affected the taste of the milk and his global award-winning cheddar cheese.
Three experts in their field on the signs that spring has or hasn’t sprung. Aine O’Donoghue, Irish Peatland Conservation Council on frogs and frogspawn. Prof Jane Stout on the first pollinators to emerge from hibernation. Declan Murphy Naturalist and Author on the birds beginning nesting
Countrywide Full Episode 28/02/2026
Countrywide Full Episode 21/02/2026
Tangle Net Fishing for Crayfish is sweeping up other critically endangered species as “by-catch”. How do we save Angel Sharks from extinction while preserving fishermen incomes and coastal communities? Marine Biologist, Dr Patrick Collins, QUB. Crayfish fisherman, Eddie Moore, NIFA. Angel Shark project leader, Louise Overy, MTU.
Families who have traditionally harvested seaweed from the foreshore fear that a new requirement to register before collecting will favour a multinational exporter over them. Lorna Siggins reports.
When a song about seaweed is actually about so much more.
What do farmers outside the mainstream make of the IFA / Bord Bia stand off, and how would they like to reinvent our food systems for the 21st century. Fergal Anderson, Co-Founder, Talamh Beo.
Lee Hunter has developed a way to tell the difference between live and dead oysters using sound.
A drop in the price of milk in the international markets threatens to cut average dairy farm incomes by €70,000 this year. Dairy Farmers Aoife Ladd, Liam Walshe and Dan Hanley. Paul Smyth from the ICMSA.
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