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Chapter 1: What challenges do women farmers face in North Mayo?
About two months ago, we did a programme on the Year of the Women Farmer and we started a discussion then about how making farms more workable for women actually made them better workplaces for everybody, for male, female, young or old. And at the time, you said, tell us more, please. So, here we go.
Making Farms Work for Women is a pilot project that's looking at the reality of farming for women and at the challenges that they face. Over the three-year life of the project, they will be working with 60 women farmers in North Mayo. Bridget Clark is one of the eight farmers, advisors, educators and community members that have come together to form this pilot project.
And Thrasa Vranach visited her farm in Turlock, outside Castle Bar.
Chapter 2: How does organic farming impact women's farming experiences?
I started farming by myself in 2020. So I registered as a sheep farmer. I decided later on that I was going to go into organic farming. After going through a couple of years of serious cases of worms, foot rot, fluke, liver fluke is an issue in Ireland. So I looked into organic farming and that's currently where I'm at now. So I'm in the first year of being converted into fully organic farming.
My name is Clare and I'm an agriculture advisor from Balna and I'm a farmer and I'm the project manager for Making Farms Work for Women.
Chapter 3: What tools and resources are available to support women farmers?
There's snowing in the loss and the grey's a black and white, the foliage linoise. Making farms work for women has been up and running for eight months now. They organise farm visits, run workshops and help women farmers to build on their skills on the farm as well as co-designing ergonomic tools in conjunction with ATU. But what kind of challenges does Bridget face on her farm on a daily basis?
So a bag of feed or crunch for sheep will come in a 25kg bag similar to the bag of fertiliser and in this situation you as a solo person have to lift something out of your boot that you've got at the co-op or the local store and you have to carry this across to the trough to feed the sheep in the winter time or to the shed depending on how near you can get with the car.
The challenge behind this is that your back isn't designed to carry heavy loads for a long period of time. It feels like a tonne weight, to be honest.
We're both organic farmers, but for conventional farmers, 50kg is the minimum fertiliser bag. And it's a flat pack that's tightly wrapped, full of granules. And that is even, that's 50kg, but it feels like a lot heavier because of the way it's stacked and poured. So that's a regular issue that we hear from the farmers. It's really, we want to...
provide tools and we want to bring enjoyment, reduce risk of injury and as well when women are maybe getting into farming or having more time to do farming they're maybe in their 40s, 50s, 60s when their oestrogen is dropping so what they were able to carry in their 30s suddenly might become a little bit harder. This was an original house, wasn't it Bridget?
This was an original cottage.
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Chapter 4: What ergonomic issues do women encounter while farming?
Going way back.
Isn't that gorgeous? It really is. You took on this arm, this house, all since COVID. You're bootstrapping it.
Yeah, and I suppose it's the love of the past and our heritage that really... I don't like to see things that have been here for hundreds of years destroyed. You know, that's something very important. That's your farm labour, isn't it? That's my main farm labour, the wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow.
Chapter 5: How can technology improve farming for women?
Yeah, without a wheelbarrow with puncture-proof wheels, you couldn't get an awful lot done on the farm by yourself. It's just that the wheelbarrow is not necessarily designed... to be able to keep it afloat as you're carrying a very heavy weight. So the one wheel can let you down sometimes if it wobbles or you hit, you know, a patch of wet ground or a small kink in the ground even.
So the wheelbarrow design itself needs to be looked at.
There is a two-wheeled one.
There is a two-wheeled one, yes. And that's something I'd like to investigate. Would it work for me here or would I need one with two wheels and a stabiliser on it too? Because sometimes it can roll off down the hill.
Chapter 6: What historical aspects of farming are discussed?
I'm in a very hilly spot. That's the beauty of this scheme, isn't it?
That you hopefully, by the end of the three years, will have a chance to try out different tools, different technologies, different wheelbarrows and just see whether it works for you on the farm. Yeah, exactly. I see lots of applications. We were thinking about as well, there is some technology where it can follow you, like trolleys could follow you around using sensors.
And I think it'll be interesting to trial here for Bridges as well, because all of our farmers are worried about the uneven surfaces. Like if we did have, you know, the robots that are now in restaurants, we could have something farm ready one for that. But again, how will it manoeuvre on the land? But that's the innovation is all part of this pilot.
Chapter 7: What is the future of funding for women-focused farming projects?
Any farm needs to be maintained, and that includes the built heritage on the farm.
Some of these walls are here since the time of the English, and we're talking going back 800 years, if not a bit longer. And as a result, over time and erosion, and of course animals jumping on them, the walls have taken a real hit. And some of those were 14 foot high, and now what you're looking at is approximately... Seven foot high to ten foot high.
Some are still standing now where there have been trees and bushes blocking any animals. And of course wind too has played a huge role in this.
And I suppose the more severe winds that we've seen for the last few years will make a big difference. So you want to future proof your farm as well in all sorts of ways. Absolutely.
Future proofing the farm means putting things in place now to make life easier as you get older. So in this case, if you want to maintain a stone wall or indeed fix a gap in it like in this situation, weight-wise, I cannot compete with this rock. No.
I cannot move it.
I don't know anybody who could actually compete with that. No. No, that's huge. I will have to manoeuvre the stones beneath it. and lever them forward. So the crowbar is the only tool right now that's of any use to me. I cannot see anything mechanical that's on the market to help somebody with a stone wall.
The crowbar is for a six-foot male. So even when it comes to physics of the woman, where you're using your legs and your quads and everything, the physics is kind of against you. And that hasn't been redesigned since God knows when.
Isn't that interesting? Tras of Rannoch with Bridget Clark. Making farms work for women is the name of that EIP funded project, which, as we were saying in the programme that we did on the future of the common agricultural policy and the budget changes that were coming there, that EIPs...
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