Food and Farming Long Ago

19/10/ This Educational Resource has been developed by Libraries Development, Local Government Management Agency within the Europeana Food and Drink Project, demonstrating the value and potential of food and drink-related content sourced through Europeana. The project is funded by the European Commission under the ICT Policy Support Programme, part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme. Europeana Food and Drink consortium partner This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International LicenseCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Role of this document The document is the appendix for the Lesson Plan “Food and Farming in Ireland through the Ages", available online at It contains images which are the property of the Local Government Management Agency. All images are available for access on the Europeana portal at 3

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Food and farming are two very important aspects of the world we live in. As humans we need food to live. The earliest humans hunted and gathered their food. Then humans discovered how to farm the land. 5 Food and Farming

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7 Farming long ago had many advantages. People did not have to move around in search of food. They could stay in the one place and build houses and settlements like in this picture. Another advantage of farming was that people did not run out of food as often as before. It was a better way of life. The earliest farmers during the stone age times grew crops like oats, barley and wheat. They also reared animals such as pigs, sheep and cattle. These people were very organised. They lived and worked together in large groups.

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The first farmers brought the first farms animals to Ireland. They brought animals such as cattle and sheep over seas on wooden crafts and canoes cut out of tree trunks. Farm animals were used to help farm the land. They were also eaten as food. 9

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At this time people made tools such as harpoons and spears from wood and stones. These tools helped them to fish and hunt. However very often they were not able to find food to hunt or gather. What do you think would happen if the hunter-gatherers could not find any food? 12

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The food eaten by the early Irish people changed very little from the time when farming began until the arrival of the potato from America in the 1600s. The main parts of the early Irish diet were milk and cereals. Butter, buttermilk and cheeses also were very popular. People also ate fish and meat. Until the Normans arrived in Ireland around 1169 cows were too expensive to be killed for meat. People preferred to eat the meat from pigs. 14 Early Irish Diet

When the farmer sold all his produce at the fair he would have money to buy more livestock. The family would also use the money to do some food shopping in the town. In the town's grocery shop the family would buy things that they could not produce on the farm. Their shopping list included things like tea, sugar, dried fruit and sometimes sweets and fresh fruit. 15 Food Shopping

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In the past, many farmers kept cows for milking. This is called dairy farming. In the old days all cows were milked by hand. Today a large machine can milk lots of cows at the same time. Which do you think is easier? 17 Dairy Farming

Food and Farming Today 18 There have been a lot of changes in Irish farming compared with long ago. Today machinery does a lot of the work. This means that less people are needed to run farms. This picture shows how ploughing and planting seeds has changed. Today large machines do most of the work. In this way the tradition of the Meitheal is no longer needed in Irish country life.

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