Bog Land in Western Ireland (Wednesday, July 24th, 2019)

After leaving the marble factory, we continued toward the Connemara National Park.  On our way, we drove through the rolling green hills of western Ireland sheep country.  

The land in this area is rocky, bog land, and is not good for farming, so instead, it is use mostly for raising sheep.  They also dig the peat from the bogs to sell and burn in their fireplaces.  



Back in the 1800's, the farmers would remove the rocks from their fields to make the land more desirable, and then used the rocks to build walls by carefully placing each rock to interlock with the last.  These types of walls can be seen all over Ireland even today, as the farmers continue to repair their beautiful rocks walls through time.

You can see the rock wall sections in this picture.

When you look closely at the bog land, it is very clumpy and uneven.

We passed by a couple of sheep on their daily commute.

In the summer the sheep are allowed to graze freely in the mountains, with several ranchers sheep intermingling.  Each farmer has his own unique marking for his sheep so that when the sheep are rounded up in the fall, each rancher knows which sheep are his.  They use different colors on different parts of the sheeps body to distinguish them.

All of the animals in Ireland are free range, including dairy cows.  It is so refreshing to see them grazing peacefully in the fields.

I have never seen anywhere so green!  Ireland is such a beautiful country!