Changing times have forced a rethink of the role of the 'farmer's wife'. Fionola Meredithmeets three women with farm-based businesses in Northern Ireland
Living in Belfast, it's easy to forget that Northern Ireland is essentially a rural community. The closest most of us city types get to the countryside is when we buy a bunch of dirty carrots at the farmers' market or accidentally catch the agriculture bulletin on the radio. Our bucolic fantasies tend to be of rolling drumlins, fresh air and sheep, all presided over by ruddy-cheeked farmers wearing frayed tweed caps.
Of course, the reality is far from this caricature. And one of the big differences these days is the part that women play in rural communities, even in the heartlands of the socially-conservative North.
Traditionally, women and the work they do have been almost invisible in farming and agriculture. Until 1992 the agricultural and horticultural census for Northern Ireland, which is carried out every June, used the age-old categories "farmer" and "wife". Yet even today only about 7 per cent of farmers in the North are female.
Sally Shortall, a Belfast-based sociologist working in rural research, points out that women's role in farming has historically been shaped by inheritance patterns. "Land is transferred intergenerationally within families, and is typically passed from father to son. Acquisition of land is based on sex, and we see the foundation of different positions for men and women on farms being formed. Men constitute the constant family line through which land is passed, and women float in and out."
But as the North's agriculture continues to decline, many farms are simply not viable without women mucking in, too, in a variety of ways. These can involve off-farm work, which often turns the farmer's wife into the main breadwinner, or it can mean staying put on the farm but taking a more hands-on role than previous generations did.
No longer restricted to feeding the hens and doing the accounts, farmers' wives in the North seem increasingly to be leaping up on tractors, bringing home the bacon and generally doing it for themselves, as these three busy women demonstrate.
JANIS BAILEY
Rare-breed specialist and farm-shop owner
Bailey, from Downpatrick in Co Down, can certainly identify with the relentless pace of life as a small-scale specialised farmer. Her involvement in farming started back in 1998, with a solitary Tamworth pig. Now, with her husband, Alan, she runs Pheasant's Hill farm, a porcine paradise where Tamworth, Berkshire, Saddleback and Gloucester Old Spot pigs spend idyllic days rooting in fields and woods - until it's time for the chop.
The couple also rear Southdown sheep and Eriskay ponies, as well as organically fed and free-range traditional-breed hens, such as Dorkings, Welsummers, Light Sussex and Alconas. Throw in the odd pheasant and partridge, and that's quite a menagerie.
But rare-breed meat is Bailey's passion: her eyes shine as she describes the difference in taste between bland, pappy supermarket produce and the dense, deeply-flavoured meat from Pheasant's Hill animals.
"It's so lovely compared to the ordinary stuff. With rare breeds you're talking about a gene pool of fantastically tasty meat that dates back centuries, to a time when animals were bred for flavour, not size.
"But rare-breed animals tend to be quite small; they grow and mature slowly. Farmers can't make money out of them. We keep our pork for 52 weeks; the pork you buy in the supermarket has lived and died in 16 weeks. In Victorian times Berkshire pigs would be the ones winning all the prizes at agricultural shows. But now these animals wouldn't be in with a chance, because Berkshire pork puts on a lot of fat. Today we have a supermarket-driven food industry that only wants lean meat."
All cooks know that, despite the current demand for the leanest cuts, fat means flavour. But it's not just the creamy ribboning on rare breeds' flesh that might deter shoppers brought up on supermarket meat. Those neat joints, chops and steaks, uniformly stacked on sealed polystyrene trays, are far removed from their animal origins. With rare-breed meat that's not always the case.
Opening a pack of home-cured Saddleback bacon, Bailey shows the fine seam of black hairs that runs along the edge of the meat. "Supermarkets won't stock it. The perception is that the housewife wouldn't want it." One bite, however, and most people can't resist the sweet, rich taste. That's why she sells her produce at farmers' markets.
Once hooked, customers are known to go miles out of their way to get their fix of rare-breed meat, either at the farm itself or at the farm shop, in nearby Comber.
But Bailey believes she is still swimming against the tide. "In this country many people don't spend much of their income on food," she says. "It goes on conspicuous things, such as cars and holidays. Some people are obsessed with food being cheap; they think anything more expensive is a rip-off."
So what keeps her going? "I keep doing it because I believe in it. I believe that this is the way real food should be produced."
[ www.pheasantshill.comOpens in new window ]
ANNE STONE
Organic farmer
Anyone who has witnessed Anne Stone in action at her busy Saturday-morning fruit-and-vegetable stall at St George's Market in Belfast will know that this is a woman who doesn't naturally take a back seat in life. With her hair tied neatly back with a headscarf, Anne is a bundle of energy, and she brings her zeal to organic farming, too.
After taking a degree in tropical agriculture, Stone's first farming experience was in east Africa, working with women's groups to improve the soil in a hilly area. But marriage and the first of four children changed her plans. "That kind of work takes a lot of commitment," she says, "and it can be hard to maintain with a family." So, five years ago, Stone and her husband, David, bought Millview Farm in Co Down, on the shores of Strangford Lough. Straight away they set about converting the farm to organic produce, as well as enhancing it ecologically by planting bands of trees.
Today more and more people are negotiating Stone's bumpy lane to seek out their squeaky-fresh fruit and vegetables and organic free-range eggs. If you're feeling lazy you can stop off at the farm's back door and buy ready-picked produce from Stone's kitchen, where herbs and salad leaves are often piled high on a big farmhouse table. But on a balmy summer afternoon it's far more pleasurable to stroll through the broad-bean field, taking in the views of the lough and picking a bagful as you go. Grab a few raspberries on the way back and you have the beginnings of a princely dinner.
Despite the warnings from an organic adviser, who told Stone that there simply wouldn't be a market for organic fruit and vegetables in the North, there's always a lengthy queue at the Millview market stall. She says that "people here have always had the sense to value local produce; they have always liked buying directly from the farm". It's not an easy job, though. "You can't depend too much on any one thing. That's why we're trying to build up the farm shop, offering soup, jam and, perhaps, curry sauces. There's so much I want to get done, and I'm constantly struggling to keep on top of it all."
Millview Farm, Comber, Co Down, 048-91872337
DENISE ADAMS
Spa owner and reiki practitioner
Some farmers' wives use their talents in new and often surprising ways - all without leaving the farm. Although a pig farm in Sion Mills, Co Tyrone, isn't the first place you'd expect to find a health-and-beauty spa, that's exactly what Denise Adams has created. Five years ago she took over an empty cottage on land owned by her husband, Marty, and began offering beauty treatments. Now she's the owner of the Wellbeing spa, a flourishing business that employs 14 staff.
Once they are inside, her customers soon forget any lingering whiff of pig manure, as they wallow in the Cleopatra bath, relax among the exotic sounds and smells of north Africa in the Moroccan room or splodge themselves with cleansing mud in a "rasul chamber" with a star-spangled ceiling, mosaic flooring and decorative minaret.
Doesn't being out in the sticks mean fewer customers? "We benefit from being on the Border, so people come in from Donegal as well as from Omagh and Enniskillen. In the summer we have clients who come over from Australia, the US and Canada. Plus we're only two hours from Belfast, and it's amazing how many people come down. It's word of mouth."
Spas are springing up everywhere these days, but Adams is sceptical about the training (or lack of it) that some newly-fledged practitioners have received. Turning part of a farm into a holistic treatment centre is far from a quick-fix project. "You can't learn reiki [ a form of spiritual healing, similar to the laying on of hands] in three months. I've been practising reiki since I was 10 years of age. My father was taught it in Egypt, and then he passed it on to me. People think they see a gap in the market, but it takes a lot more to keep the whole thing going".
Wellbeing Spa, Sion Mills, Co Tyrone, www.wellbeingspa.co.uk