An important part of Sowing the Seed Project, that we’ve yet only briefly touched on, is hearing our own Leitrim people speak about their memories and experiences with growing crops, harvesting, using oats in food, milling, recipes, crafts from straw, uses for straw in sustainability such as thatching, folklore customs in the straw tradition such as strawboys or mummers and rituals and celebrations around sowing and harvest time.

How often does it happen that we hear an elderly person share a great memory with us and someone can be heard saying “Someone should interview him before he’s gone.” Our older generation are holding a lot of valuable information within those memories and unless we sit down and ask them about it we’ll never hear these stories. We are inviting the public to take part in gathering these stories from a person in your family or community and sharing them with us through Sowing the Seed project. Or maybe, you, reading this text right now, have some information you’d like to share with us yourself, please get in touch, as something as simple as advice on sowing oats that might seem very unworthy of sharing to you might be very valuable to future generations. When all the stories, advice and memories are gathered, we then hope to create an archive for Leitrim County Library.

If you’d like to be involved in the Leitrim Folklore Collections contact Edwina on 086 1649989 or email sowingtheseedireland@gmail.com

This Friday 9th Sept at 7.30pm Sowing the Seed project hosts an online workshop with lecturer in Folklore at UCC, Dr. Aoife Granville will kick start this next step of the project by sharing advice on the best ways to gather folklore in a community. All welcome! Contact the above email address to receive the link to meeting.

Learn to make a Mummers’ straw at for Heritage Week on Mount Allen Eco Farm on the shores of Lough Allen Co. Leitrim. Starting at 11am this workshop is suitable for children aged 10 plus and adults. The workshop is free but must be booked in advance by emailing sowingtheseedireland@gmail.com

Learn to twist the súgán rope and the technique used to make the seat of the súgán chair. If you have an old chair that needs reseating, bring it along. All welcome!

A gathering of the community to sow oat seed on a plot of land prepared by Tommy Earley on the shores of Lough Allen. Edwina Guckian will also be handing out free organic oat seed for anyone that wants to grow it at home too. Everyone will be given an area of the soil to sow. In Autumn we will then gather to harvest the oats by hand and use the straw to make mummers’ costumes. All welcome!