Celebrating Ancient Traditions in the Burren

By Aoife Ford, B&T Drystock Adviser, Teagasc Galway/Clare

As the winter weather has taken hold and the evenings begin to draw in, many farmers have started to think about housing cattle for the winter. Silage pits and bales are being opened as livestock begin to move indoors.

For farmers in the Burren Region, the practice of housing cattle, particularly suckler cows, is unfamiliar to them. For thousands of years the tradition of out-wintering has been practiced in the Burren. The term ‘transhumance’ is used to describe the seasonal movement of livestock and people between summer and winter pastures. In most cases where it is practiced, such as in the Alps, it refers to the moving of livestock up to summer pastures but in the Burren the reverse is the case.

From mid-October onwards, farmers herd their cattle up onto the rocky Burren pastures known as winterages.  Winterages are uphill areas of land in which grass grows amongst the exposed limestone and are ideal areas for out-wintering cattle. This is due to the fact that in the summertime limestone rock absorbs the heat from the sun.  It then slowly releases this heat in winter time giving cattle a dry warm place to lie. In the winter time the winterages’ natural springs are plentiful giving cattle a water source which is not available in the summertime. The winterages provide an abundance of forage as the high-nature-value lands provide the cattle with a wide range of species- rich grass to graze on for the winter months.

Farming plays a vital role in maintaining the Burren today and without farmers the Burren as we know it would cease to exist. Grazing cattle on the winterages ensures that the species-rich grass is grazed down to give the unique range of flora the opportunity to bloom each year. Another threat to the Burren is the hazel bush. Where areas are left ungrazed, hazel spreads rapidly.  When cattle graze they help control the spread of the hazel scrub.

It was due to the dominance of the hazel scrub that issues began to rise in the 1990s. As a consequence of legislation issued from Europe the Burren became under-grazed. Research carried out recognised that if the Burren continued to be under-grazed, it would have detrimental effects on the landscape.  Dr Brendan Dunford, along with a number of farmers, set about pioneering a farmer-led scheme which encouraged farmers in the Burren to graze their land resulting in a payment based on their results. This Scheme was initially called Burren Life and then subsequently the Burren Programme. The Scheme paid farmers to improve their farms by subsidising the cost of new farm gates, farm roadways, hazel-scrub removal and wall building. The Programme was the very first of its kind in the world using a “bottom-up approach” which made the Burren farmer’s key in the decision-making process. The programme has acted as a blueprint for other locally-led schemes across Ireland and across Europe.

To date over 400 farmers have participated in the Burren Programme. The new agri-environment scheme ACRES will include a co-operative approach. This will see the addition of an extra 1,200 or more farmers within the Burren region who will be using results-based scorecards on their farms to calculate payments under the scheme.

The Burren landscape is constantly evolving. Farmers play a vital role in protecting and maintaining the landscape. In 2019 the tradition of Winterage in the Burren was added to an inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage celebrating living cultural heritage practices in Ireland. This recognises the importance of the tradition of Winterage in the Burren. 

The Burren Winterage weekend is a celebration of the Burren’s farming tradition of Winterage. This year’s festival takes place over the October Bank Holiday weekend with a huge range of events on offer. The weekend concludes on Sunday with the famous cattle drive which gives the public the opportunity to become Burren farmers for the day by helping a local farmer herd their cattle up onto the Winterages. Check out https://www.burrenwinterage.com/ for more details.

“Herding cows up to the Winterage as part of the Burren Winterage Weekend Cattle Drive”.