Read the text about life in the Irish countryside. Then complete the task “Ireland by Numbers” by matching each number to the idea it supports in the text.
At first sight, Ballymore looks exactly like the kind of Irish village tourists expect to find. A narrow road curves between stone walls, sheep move slowly across the higher pasture, and a line of white cottages faces a valley so green that it almost seems unreal. Behind the old farmhouse, a brook runs under a wooden bridge before joining a wider stream at the bottom of the hill. On clear mornings, when mist lifts from the meadow and the first light touches the orchard, the place feels calm, natural, and almost idyllic.
But Ballymore is not a postcard. It is a working countryside community, and the beauty visitors admire is closely connected to hard work, uncertainty, and change.
The O’Donnell family has farmed the same land for six generations. Their farmhouse is more than one hundred and forty years old, and the family still keeps cattle in the same stone cowshed that Patrick O’Donnell’s great-grandfather repaired after a winter storm. Patrick runs a small dairy farm, but he says the work has changed more in the last fifteen years than in the previous half-century. “People imagine farming as quiet and traditional,” he says, “but most days are about weather, costs, machines, and forms.”
This year, rain fell for twenty-eight days in one spring month, leaving the ground too soft for heavy machinery. The family’s harvester had to wait in the shed while the crop stood in the field longer than planned. When the grass was finally cut for hay, the weather changed again, and part of it could not be dried properly. Patrick still uses manure from the livestock to improve the soil, but he also needs fertiliser, and its price has almost doubled since twenty twenty-one. For visitors, a lush green landscape may look effortless; for farmers, it can mean risk.
Life in Ballymore is not only difficult because of farming. The nearest secondary school is eighteen kilometres away, and there are only two buses a day. For teenagers, this makes ordinary things complicated. Staying after school for sport, music, or extra study often means asking a parent to drive. Niamh, who is sixteen, says she loves the space, the scenery, and the fact that everyone knows her family, but she also feels that the village has become smaller as she has grown older. “When you are little, the fields feel endless,” she explains. “When you are my age, the road out of the village feels more important.”
The local primary school once had seventy-four pupils. Now it has twenty-three. The building is still open, but people worry about its future. Several young families have moved closer to larger towns, where work, childcare, and public transport are easier to organise. At the same time, nine cottages in and around Ballymore have become holiday homes. They look charming in summer, with painted doors and baskets of flowers, but most are dark and empty in winter. The village shop, which has stood beside the crossroads for sixty-three years, now depends as much on visitors as on local families.
Tourism brings money, but it also changes the rhythm of the place. On busy summer weekends, around two hundred and fifty visitors may pass through Ballymore, especially when walking groups come to see the waterfall beyond the old clearing. Most are respectful, but not all understand that the countryside is also someone’s workplace. Some climb over gates, leave litter near the stream, or cross private pasture to take photographs of cattle and haystacks. One farmer put up a sign after finding four walkers inside a field where young calves were being kept.
Still, Ballymore is not presented as a place in decline. Its strength lies in the close-knit habits that rarely appear in tourist photographs. When a storm damaged part of the cowshed roof last winter, eleven neighbours arrived before midday with ladders, tools, timber, and hot tea. Nobody sent a formal message; people simply heard what had happened and came. The same thing happens during harvest, when three farms share one large machine because none of them could afford to buy it alone.
There are also small signs of renewal. A group of residents has started a weekly market with twelve stalls selling eggs, bread, vegetables from kitchen gardens, handmade wool products, and apple juice from a nearby orchard. The aim is not to turn Ballymore into a tourist attraction, but to keep money and energy inside the community. Niamh sometimes helps at her aunt’s stall, although she still plans to leave for university. “Leaving doesn’t mean I don’t belong here,” she says. “It just means I need more than the village can give me right now.”
By the end of the day, Ballymore is quiet again. Smoke rises from a few chimneys, cattle gather near the lower pasture, and the stream darkens under the trees. The village still looks peaceful, even perfect, from a distance. Yet the real story of the Irish countryside is not only in its rustic cottages, green fields, and relaxing scenery. It is in the tension between beauty and effort, tradition and change, belonging and leaving. Ballymore reminds us that a countryside can be both a place people dream of visiting and a place where others must solve practical problems every day.
But Ballymore is not a postcard. It is a working countryside community, and the beauty visitors admire is closely connected to hard work, uncertainty, and change.
The O’Donnell family has farmed the same land for six generations. Their farmhouse is more than one hundred and forty years old, and the family still keeps cattle in the same stone cowshed that Patrick O’Donnell’s great-grandfather repaired after a winter storm. Patrick runs a small dairy farm, but he says the work has changed more in the last fifteen years than in the previous half-century. “People imagine farming as quiet and traditional,” he says, “but most days are about weather, costs, machines, and forms.”
This year, rain fell for twenty-eight days in one spring month, leaving the ground too soft for heavy machinery. The family’s harvester had to wait in the shed while the crop stood in the field longer than planned. When the grass was finally cut for hay, the weather changed again, and part of it could not be dried properly. Patrick still uses manure from the livestock to improve the soil, but he also needs fertiliser, and its price has almost doubled since twenty twenty-one. For visitors, a lush green landscape may look effortless; for farmers, it can mean risk.
Life in Ballymore is not only difficult because of farming. The nearest secondary school is eighteen kilometres away, and there are only two buses a day. For teenagers, this makes ordinary things complicated. Staying after school for sport, music, or extra study often means asking a parent to drive. Niamh, who is sixteen, says she loves the space, the scenery, and the fact that everyone knows her family, but she also feels that the village has become smaller as she has grown older. “When you are little, the fields feel endless,” she explains. “When you are my age, the road out of the village feels more important.”
The local primary school once had seventy-four pupils. Now it has twenty-three. The building is still open, but people worry about its future. Several young families have moved closer to larger towns, where work, childcare, and public transport are easier to organise. At the same time, nine cottages in and around Ballymore have become holiday homes. They look charming in summer, with painted doors and baskets of flowers, but most are dark and empty in winter. The village shop, which has stood beside the crossroads for sixty-three years, now depends as much on visitors as on local families.
Tourism brings money, but it also changes the rhythm of the place. On busy summer weekends, around two hundred and fifty visitors may pass through Ballymore, especially when walking groups come to see the waterfall beyond the old clearing. Most are respectful, but not all understand that the countryside is also someone’s workplace. Some climb over gates, leave litter near the stream, or cross private pasture to take photographs of cattle and haystacks. One farmer put up a sign after finding four walkers inside a field where young calves were being kept.
Still, Ballymore is not presented as a place in decline. Its strength lies in the close-knit habits that rarely appear in tourist photographs. When a storm damaged part of the cowshed roof last winter, eleven neighbours arrived before midday with ladders, tools, timber, and hot tea. Nobody sent a formal message; people simply heard what had happened and came. The same thing happens during harvest, when three farms share one large machine because none of them could afford to buy it alone.
There are also small signs of renewal. A group of residents has started a weekly market with twelve stalls selling eggs, bread, vegetables from kitchen gardens, handmade wool products, and apple juice from a nearby orchard. The aim is not to turn Ballymore into a tourist attraction, but to keep money and energy inside the community. Niamh sometimes helps at her aunt’s stall, although she still plans to leave for university. “Leaving doesn’t mean I don’t belong here,” she says. “It just means I need more than the village can give me right now.”
By the end of the day, Ballymore is quiet again. Smoke rises from a few chimneys, cattle gather near the lower pasture, and the stream darkens under the trees. The village still looks peaceful, even perfect, from a distance. Yet the real story of the Irish countryside is not only in its rustic cottages, green fields, and relaxing scenery. It is in the tension between beauty and effort, tradition and change, belonging and leaving. Ballymore reminds us that a countryside can be both a place people dream of visiting and a place where others must solve practical problems every day.
1. The number that shows the farmhouse is old and deeply connected to the past —
2. The number that reveals why the future of an important local institution is uncertain —
3. The number that shows how deeply rooted one small business is in the village’s social history —
Atbilžu varianti:
63
23
130
4
140
32
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