Offaly woman’s Vietnamese farm experience to feature on RTÉ show

An Offaly woman will star in an RTÉ programme which airs on Wednesday, June 14.

Eveline Gill runs a small tillage farm near Kilcormac and she will be swapping her comfort zone for the rigors of a Vietnamese rice terrace on 'Faraway Fields - The Hardest Harvest.'

For Eveline, a farming consultant who operates at the cutting edge of modern agricultural science and is an advocate for all things organic, this is an awakening in a mountainous backwater where farming techniques have been unchanged for centuries.

'Faraway Fields - The Hardest Harvest' will be broadcast, as part of a series, on RTE1 at 9.35pm on June 14 and follows an Irish farmer, forester and fisherman as they experience life in some of the most challenging conditions.

Eveline will travel to Nam Tang, a tribal village located in the northern highlands which is inhabited by the La Chi minority. Eveline points out that the plains of the Irish midlands, where she plants and grows her oats, offered little preparation for this way of life, in a village clinging to the side of a mountain, where landslides are a daily hazard. She realises that increasing temperatures across South East Asia are making an already hostile environment even more difficult to work in.

Eveline and her fellow farmers struggle in the searing heat and high humidity. Millions of rice workers across this part of the world toil in this difficult heat on a daily basis. This is the second series of the programme, following the success of series one in 2018.

Eveline will also be teaching a four-day course in Organic Production Principles in Athlone next week.

The course will run in the Radisson Blu Hotel, Athlone across two Friday and Saturday weekend sessions, beginning on Friday, June 16 at 5pm.

The practical organic course is QQI Level 5 certified, and is accepted to gain access onto the Organic Farming Scheme. Places are limited.