Currans' farm life goes live

RTE's 'Big Week On The Farm: Harvest' comes live from Ivan and Frances Curran’s tillage farm in Stamullen this week. This year, 'Big Week On The Farm' returns to capture the busy lives of farmers and nature at harvest time. The landscape provides a visual symphony of colour, the autumn crops will be ready for harvesting and animals born in the spring will be ready to venture out alone.

Autumn is the busiest time of the year on many farms; crops to be harvested, sheep are sheared, ewes and rams mate to produce spring lambs, land must be prepared for the next season’s crops. With the whole year’s work often hanging on a few days, harvest time can make or break farmers and weather conditions are critical.
It’s where the risk of farming gets its reward. We’ll see massive machines roll up acres of crops – from barley to wheat to oats to potatoes to grass …. smaller machines pluck carrots from the ground and physical hands pick other crops like strawberries and lettuces. These “harvest films” will be shot all around the country.
Of course, it’s not just farmers who are getting in their crops. Wildlife too prepares for winter. Exquisite and visually beautiful wildlife films will document terns on Rockabil island, and hedgehogs stocking up food, before hibernating. The secret lives strand returns – where we see everyday animals like we’ve never seen them before – featuring the secret life of the ram to the secret life of the rat.
Presented by Aine Lawlor and Ella McSweeney, and running daily at 7pm until Thursday on RTE 1, this series will also consider if Ireland’s agriculture is having an effect on climate change and considers innovative ways in which it might be ameliorated, using cutting edge science and technology as well as nature itself.