Let me take you inside the archive room of the Irish Farmers Journal. It is small and dusty, mostly dark and always locked. Elaine Hogan and Mags O’Connor hold the keys to our little part of history and they keep a close eye on the comings and goings of those dark green, hardback-bound past editions. The further you go back in time, the more fragile the pages - and the more protective Elaine and Mags get about its contents.

Indeed, their job has become all the more challenging in recent weeks as we as a team prepared for this special edition celebrating 75 years of the Irish Farmers Journal. Back issues were pulled off the shelf... and we can’t promise we put them back in the right place. That’s because we often spent more time than intended getting lost in the articles of days gone by.

Farm Home is where the roots of Irish Country Living first began. Back in the 1950s and 60s, it was a small section of the paper, usually two or three pages, which focused on rural affairs. It is where Myrtle Allen first found her national voice and on page 8, Darina Allen and food historian Regina Sexton reflect on how she took a fresh approach to cookery and food. She wasn’t the only famous voice in the paper at the time. Patrick Kavanagh and John B Keane were both favoured columnists during that era and entertained readers on their rural reflections.

With writers like that, it was no wonder that Farm Home grew in popularity - even if it was often seen as the ‘woman’s part of the paper’. In 1986, it became its own supplement, called Country Living (although the name changed several times before reverting back to the title it is today). What’s fascinating is that in that very first issue, it set out the direction for this new supplement. Gardening, cookery, consumer matters, health and, of course, rural affairs were all to be covered, and those editorial pillars are as solid today as they were 37 years ago.

Looking back

So in this issue, we look back at how those topics evolved. Gerry Daly has been writing in the Irish Farmers Journal since 1984 and he charts how attitudes to gardening have grown since then, and in line with it, innovative garden centres which helped transform the appearance of farm gardens and gates. Margaret Hawkins discusses the importance of the health pages for men. Farmers pick up the paper and for all the rest of the family assumes, he is reading the property pages as opposed to a piece on prostate cancer. These pages literally put health right in front of the eyes of men.

Speaking of property, Andy Doyle has a fascinating piece about the evolution of the Land Report, our annual and extremely thorough documentation of the price of agricultural land. This resource is now valued by buyers, sellers and auctioneers and has even been used as evidence in legal disputes.

At the core of it is all, though, is you, our reader. Your support through the years is what has kept these pages alive. Through the voices of our writers Katherine O’Leary and Tommy Moyles, and the words of some farming families who have been reading the Journal for many years, it is here that the real significance of this paper is truly felt.

We know many households have editions of the Irish Farmers Journal going back years and we truly hope this commemorative issue is one you add to your collection. Enjoy our step back in time.