Rural Ireland, epitomised by Carradoogan and the surrounding area has changed so much within my memory (I was born in 1943).

     I was less than one year old when I first visited Carradoogan, where, to escape Hitler's bombs, I spent the first 3 years of my life. 

     There was no running water-except in the river! Drinking water had to be carried from the well, 10 minutes walk away, candles and oil lamps lit the houses. Horses, donkeys, and jennet's were common place as the beast of burden,  for field work and transportation, I remember driving to Sunday Mass in a trap pulled by, if I remember a beautiful Black Mare. There were very few cars and no tractors.

     Eggs were taken "warm" from under the hen; butter was freshly churned in the home once or twice per week; fresh bread was baked over the turf fire daily; potatoes and other vegetables required to feed both family and livestock were dug or cut every day; cows were hand milked twice per day. To preserve the battery the radio was only used twice per day to listen to the weather forecast and the news headlines.

     Only turf was burned on an open fire, with, it seemed, a permanently boiling, jet black iron cauldron containing potatoes suspended over it hanging from "irons"  A "Side" of Bacon hung from the ceiling that was "fat" enough to instantly increase one's cholesterol  to dangerous levels and preserved with enough salt to give instantaneous hypertension

     The purpose of this page is to encourage my Carradoogan contemporaries, "plastic" or not, to submit an article on, say, hay making, a day in the bog, cutting oats, shearing sheep. I'll start it off with HAY MAKING. Please submit any Article in "Word" format with, if possible, Photographs to the web master and keep alive the memories of "Not So Long Ago"