This week’s Ear to the Ground will feature a harvest team in the US who travel 2,000 miles during the season harvesting crops.
Ear to the Ground will also meet a farmer who is concerned about climate change in Co. Donegal and a Co. Tipperary farmer who is enjoying a bumper harvest this year in his apple orchard.
Tonight’s episode will see Darragh McCullough meet up with a harvest team who are travelling from Texas to the Canadian border following the ripening crops.
Darragh met up with the team in North Dakota to help bring in the harvest and to find out what it is like to drive such large machinery.
The US harvest is all about efficiency as efforts are made to keep the machines running for as long as possible, according to one worker.
“Out here it’s all about efficiency, if a combine breaks down the service truck is right there, on it straight away. You can’t just breakdown and say we’ll fix it in an hour,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ella McSweeney will travel to Co. Donegal to meet farmer Peter Lynch who is trying to figure out whether climate change is to blame for fields transforming into lakes and for cattle not thriving the way they should.
Lynch has seen numerous changes on his farm over the years and is trying to figure out the best approach to combat these changes.
We will not bury our heads in the sand and hope the problem goes away.
“If there is something we need to do differently or something that we are doing now that can’t work in 10 years time we will have to address that problem,” he said.
Ella will meet with a climate scientist to investigate what the future holds for Lynch and his farm.
Also on tonight’s episode of Ear to the Ground, Helen Carroll will meet up with James O’Donoghue, a Co. Tipperary farmer, who has perfected the art of chardonnay cider.
O’Donoghue’s 25ac apple orchard in the Suir valley is enjoying a bumper harvest this year, which he then turns into apple juice and cider.
Founder of Longways Cider, O’Donoghue brought Helen around the orchard explaining the differences between dessert, cooking and bitter sweet apples.
Ear to the Ground will be aired on RTE 1 at 8.30pm tonight and will also being repeated on Sunday.