Farming Episodes

The poet Seamus Heaney once said, "I think of the bog as a feminine goddess-ridden ground, rather like the territory of Ireland itself." And that territory is 14- to- 21 percent bog. So, on their fourth day “Off the Beaten Craic in the Hidden Heartlands,” Irish Stew cohosts John Lee and Martin Nutty head to Shinrone in Offaly near the Tipperary border to the farm of Donie Regan, a demonstration site for Peatlands for Prosperity, the brainchild of Douglas McMillan and his Green Restoration I...

How did Ireland become a food destination? Thanks go to chefs like John Coffey of Athlone’s Thyme Restaurant and Belfast’s Niall McKenna of the Waterman House, both past Irish Stew guests. But ask those chefs that question and they’ll thank their lucky stars for the local producers who supply the fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, seafood, and dairy that make their cooking soar. So Irish Stew went Off the Beaten Craic to Daingean, Co. Offaly, to talk with two farmers on the vanguard of Ireland’s org...