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"Rural Life"
It used to be for the photographs. Flicking through every week in the hope of coming across a familiar face smiling out at you. Maybe lining out with a hurling team, posing with classmates or all dressed up for a debs: Big hair, bigger shoulder pads and small little awkward smiles.
Back then the [...]
It was a first for me. Standing up on at an altar and addressing the congregation. I was invited to speak at a celebratory mass in a beautiful little church in the village of Castlewarren – high up in the hills of county Kilkenny.
The evening mass was held to mark the coming together [...]
To fiddle with that famous line from Oscar Wilde – “To lose one queen may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two seems like carelessness.”
And that’s exactly what it was – complete, unmitigated carelessness. A new baby came into the house on the first day of spring this year. In [...]
It wasn’t as bad as we expected. It might be just a reprieve – a temporary stay of execution - but a lot of our small, rural primary schools have escaped the chop and are hanging on to all of their teachers.
There were fears that the cull would be widespread. That changes to [...]
If you’re stuck for something to do over the next few days. In need of a little pastime that might raise your bloodpressure a notch or two. Give you something to talk/complain about when you’re meeting friends for a cup of tea. Then I can highly recommend getting into your car and taking a [...]
At 8.45 last Saturday morning, as I made my way around the quiet roads of Kilkenny, there they were – beaming down at me. No sooner had I left the small country byways and hit the roundabout on the outskirts of the city, than I met my first poster of this Presidential Election Campaign.
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You can tell by the slight smile on their faces. A kind of a half smirk that gives nothing away, but the fact that life isn’t bad. Another sign is the lack of moaning; a group of people that can be quite vocal when times are tough, they’re keeping very quiet at the moment.
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There’s a birthday coming up in this house very soon. And obviously the two things being looked forward to most are (a) the party and (b) the presents. I fear there may be some disappointment on both fronts. Firstly, when a child reaches the age of 10 the time for a proper, bouncy castle [...]
There are two big benefits that came with the two beehives sitting in the middle of the meadow. The first is all the work my bees did earlier in the year; pollinating the many fruit trees in the 3 acres.
For the first time since we planted them, every single one has borne fruit. More [...]
They’re quite angry at the moment. Either that or they’re sick of the sight of me. Either way my bees seem to be in the habit of inflicting damage whenever I pay them a visit. Nobody wins in this scenario; it’s uncomfortable and unsightly for me (depending on where they sting me) and fatal [...]
About Me
About 10 years ago, I did something I never thought I would and returned home to live in my native county Kilkenny. Myself and my family set up home just one mile outside a beautiful little village called Johnswell. And we’ve never looked back.For a living – I work as a freelance broadcast and print journalist. I’m a presenter on Ear to the Ground, RTE Television’s farming and rural affairs programme, write a weekly column for the Kilkenny People newspaper and recently co-devised a new Irish reality TV programme – ICA Bootcamp.
And for fun - I keep bees, grow all my own fruit and vegetables and putter around my polytunnel.
Helen Carroll
Kilkenny, June 2011
The 3 Acres Bees
The 3 Acres
