Welcome to a week in the country

With Dr Catherine Keena, Teagasc Countryside Management Specialist

Look out for bright red berries still remaining on holly, welcome food in this frosty weather for birds and a favourite of thrushes. If gathering berries to sow, wear tough gloves and pick when berries are fully ripe. It is difficult to remove the flesh from the berries. This can be helped with stratification, a process where the berries are placed in damp sand in a cool place to be sown in spring 2025. Growing from seed or planting holly hedges or individual trees is a slow process, but a really good new year’s resolution. A sign of green life to come in 2024, holly is part of our native Irish biodiversity.

The Late Late Rocky Foal

Poor little foal Rocky

He was always an outsider

Even to his own mother

And his only donkey brother

He arrived in May

And had his day

Brown from head to toe

But his piebald brother saw a foe

When it came to apple time

He was always last in the line

Slow to come to the hand

I felt he had been banned

Everyday the count was the same

1 to 7, and where is 8?

There he is, poor little foal Rocky

Alone by the paddock gate

The winter came and hay put out

But Rocky didn’t get in his shout

Like Mary at the Inn door

No room for Rocky anymore

Weatherman said there would be ice

In the middle of the night

Poor Rocky banished from the stable door

In the morning, he was no more.

Written by Dr Jonathan

Roth in honour of a donkey

foal they lost on their farm

in Westport recently.

New-found friends: Teddy the Newfoundland dog enjoying feeding time with the calves in Co Roscommon. \ Submitted by Ann Macken

Maria Moynihan speaks with jewellery designer Sarah Herbert, who owns and operates Pale Raven Jewellery, in the latest Meet the Maker.

An Post have reported a zero gender pay gap for their third consecutive year, since mandatory gender pay gap reporting came into effect in Ireland.

They have become the first major employer in Ireland to report a zero gender pay gap for the third year in a row. An Post also reported a 7% increase in new female employees in 2023 as well as a 30% growth in female representation within their senior management group since 2019.

36% of the young people between the ages of 13-16 who were surveyed said they vaped and had never smoked previously.

Worryingly, Irish studies have shown that adolescents who vape are up to five times more likely to start smoking cigarettes.

"That’s a trap that parents sometimes fall into: ‘I need to give more in order to get back that experience of gratitude,’” Claire says, “when actually the reality is, in order to create a culture of gratitude, we need to do the reverse" Dr Claire Crowe.

Maria Moynihan speaks with jewellery designer Sarah Herbert, who owns and operates Pale Raven Jewellery, in the latest Meet the Maker.