Ear to the Ground visits Killua Castle Farm

RTÉ’s popular farming and rural affairs programme, Ear to the Ground, continues its groundbreaking 30th season on Thursday, November 10, at 7pm on RTÉ One.

In Episode 2 Darragh goes to Meath for the start of this year’s beet harvest. Helen visits Killua Castle Farm to see how the Irish moiled herd are taking to their spectacular surroundings and Ella visits two farming women in Limerick who are challenging the status quo.

Rare native breeds on Killua Castle Farm

In 2006 Allen and Lorena Krause began restoring the ruined Killua castle and its 340-acre demesne. With an interest in regenerative farming, they started a native rare breeds farm on the grounds five years ago.

Under the watchful eye of farm manager Anthony Gilsenen, they are producing Irish moiled beef, red deer venison, Jacob sheep and wild boar.

Helen Carroll visits the Killua Castle Farm to see how the Irish moiled herd are taking to their spectacular surroundings.

Beet harvest

Darragh McCullough travelled to Meath for the start of this year’s beet harvest. A crop that we used to grow for sugar, we now produce exclusively for feeding to animals. But since we need to reduce our reliance on imported feeds, is there potential to grow more of this crop, both for animal feed and also in the future for feeding anaerobic digesters?

Gender inequality in farming

On paper, farming in Ireland is a male dominated world. More than 70,000 women work on Irish family farms, yet fewer than 1300 farms cite women as official partners.

Ella McSweeney visits two farming women in Limerick who are challenging the status quo, Catherine Quinn and her grand-daughter Hannah-Quinn Mulligan.

Catherine grew up the eldest of nine children but was not considered to inherit the family farm. Journalist and farmer Hannah founded the Women in Agriculture Stakeholders Group to try to redress the gender imbalance.

Ear to the Ground

This season Ear to the Ground continues to explore the issues, challenges and opportunities facing Irish farmers and rural dwellers. Ear to the Ground is produced by indiepics for RTÉ and is broadcast from November 7 until March.

Programme 2 is on at 7pm this Thursday, November 10, on RTÉ One, and it is repeated on Sunday at 1.10pm.