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.
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