Last weekend the Ulster Folk Museum at Cultra, Holywood, held their annual Country Skills Day.
In this video, shot by Farming Life's Darryl Armitage, we get to watch tractor ploughing at the Coshkib Hill Farm.
We also get a chat with the museum’s farm manager Robert Berry.
Other skills on show at the museum that day included harness cleaning and horseshoe throwing at Cruckaclady Farmhouse.
Meanwhile there was rope making at the Meenagarragh Cottier's House and horse/donkey grooming at Drumnahunshin Farm (stable area).
And there was traditional stick making and harness cleaning in the Orange Hall.
In this video, shot by Farming Life's Darryl Armitage, we get to watch tractor ploughing at the Coshkib Hill Farm.
We also get a chat with the museum’s farm manager Robert Berry.
Other skills on show at the museum that day included harness cleaning and horseshoe throwing at Cruckaclady Farmhouse.
Meanwhile there was rope making at the Meenagarragh Cottier's House and horse/donkey grooming at Drumnahunshin Farm (stable area).
And there was traditional stick making and harness cleaning in the Orange Hall.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 First off you are Robert, tell me a wee bit about yourself Robert. My name is
00:05 Robert Barry and I'm the farm manager here at the Ulster Folk Museum. I've been
00:11 working here for almost 41 years on the farm. Small rural farms here
00:21 around the museum. We try to show people the way of life, the way it was back
00:27 around early 1910, that sort of period. We keep a few cattle, of course it's all
00:35 Irish breeds we keep. We keep Irish moors, we keep pigs, we keep mooring
00:43 blackface sheep and Galway sheep, a few donkeys and horses and the usual
00:49 run-of-the-mill, the chickens and the geese and a couple of goats. How important is
00:53 our days like this with the country skills here at Coltrá for keeping alive
00:59 the old traditions that some might see dying out in the countryside? Just how
01:05 important is it to keep them alive and keep that identity and that connection
01:09 with the countryside? It's extremely important. As I say I've been here for a
01:15 long time and I can see these skills dwindling. The amount of support we had
01:22 years ago with partners coming in and ploughing the horses and different
01:28 traditional skills and they're all dying away. So it's very important to keep
01:34 these skills alive because the next generation isn't going to know anything
01:38 about them, especially the horse ploughing. It's dwindling away. As I say
01:44 there's only a few people in the north of Ireland now ploughing with horses. So I
01:50 like to encourage them by bringing them here to the museum and putting a bit of a
01:55 display on for people to see. And have you got a country skill that would be
02:00 your favourite or you've got a soft spot for? Or is there anything that
02:05 would really speak to you? Yeah, it would be the horse ploughing. I used to plough all
02:12 these wheat fields here with the horses myself years ago but we've only got one
02:16 horse at the minute so the horse ploughing would be the big thing for me and
02:22 supporting it and driving it for the younger generation to get interested in it.
02:27 And obviously here at Kiltra there's obviously redevelopment going on.
02:32 There's a massive future for the folk park and for the museum as a
02:37 whole. It must be something that you're really looking forward to seeing to
02:41 fruition? Yeah, what I'm personally looking forward to is a lot more
02:47 visitors coming and experience what we do here in the Rural Museum and see these
02:53 traditional breeds that we keep and see the traditional skills that we have on
02:57 display here on a daily basis. Numbers, they've always been very
03:04 consistent here. For me who lived down in Bangor, we were
03:09 always up here now and again to the museum. But you know it's always been
03:13 very, very popular not only for people here in Northern Ireland but for much
03:17 further afield from America, Australia. Yeah, it's important. Years ago
03:22 visitor numbers weren't the thing for me at all. I was more interested in the
03:27 quality of the experience the visitor had got. Whether it be a hundred people
03:32 who were watching you or whether it be two or three, it was the quality of the
03:36 experience they had and the traditional skill that we're seeing. But it's sweating more now
03:41 to people through the gate as a big thing to keep these museums going. It
03:46 takes a lot of money. Yeah, and going ahead this summer, you know, obviously we're
03:51 just coming into summer now. There must be a lot more events that are
03:55 being planned by the folk park and by yourself? Yeah, we have a few more
04:01 events around the farm here. We'll have a good day coming up the end of June which
04:05 is a Ferguson tractor day. It's a working day. It's probably one of the
04:10 biggest working demonstrations of Ferguson tractors here in Ireland. A
04:15 really good day. Anybody interested in new Ferguson tractors and all the Ferguson
04:20 implements you can think of will be here in this field, probably next door,
04:25 planning and demonstrating.