As rural as rural gets

I am now and then so inclined - as was Hamlet and perhaps Ophelia - to talk of country matters.

What man, young of heart and mind, does not consider the lush growth bursting forth from the verdant valleys of nature's pleasure?Who would overlook the moist organic fecundity that pushes sweet life upward from root to bud?Farmers wouldn't.

They are spilling over with country matters, the wicked old devils.

And there is a television station - newly moved to channel 81 on Sky and renamed Country TV - that spills over with them.

You do have to pay a little extra to be hooked up, but canny farmers will get that money back through their tax return.

And Country TV offers so much.

It offers, for instance: agri-business; world-class equestrian competitions; current affairs; lifestyle programmes, and the sort of comprehensive long-range, rural-specific weather bulletins that would arouse anyone rurally and meteorologically inclined.

It also offers the wonderful Farmers - A Year on the Land (Sundays at 6pm and lots of other times).

Country TV describes itself as ''authentic'', and there is nothing considered more authentic in rural circles than a bunch of Irish farmers standing in lush green fields with cows.

It is as rural as rural gets.

In Ireland, just over one million dairy cows produce more than five billion litres of milk.

Five billion! In Ireland, cows spend the winter indoors.

This is not fully explained on Farmers - A Year on the Land.

But take it as read the scene is rustic and amusing, with cattle sitting around the fire, playing cards, smoking pipes, drinking whiskey and wearing funny hats.

Once winter is over, they trot happily out among the frozen yellow gorse flowers and glowing daffodils, along the atmospheric country lanes of Eire.

''The days are long, the sun is shining, and the cows are all out - absolutely love it,'' a gentle Irish farmers tells us in his gentle Irish accent.

Joy! It is April, the udders are full of milk, and production is peaking.

Tom Browne, of Greenhills Farm, has been farming since he was 15 years old.

He remembers the days when a little milk that had gone off could be poured in with the rest to be picked up at the farm gate, and no-one would notice.

But no more.

Tom and all his Irish farming chums know milk is big business.

Watch, learn and enjoy as we find out all about them, and modern milk production in Ireland.

Watch, learn and enjoy as we delve deep into country matters on Country TV.

Or, as Hamlet would have said: ''This above all: to thine own farm be true.''

- by Charles Loughrey

 

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