Allergies can be the bane of people’s lives. Is there anything worse than waking up to a fit of sneezing – and not needing a newsreader to tell you that the pollen count is high – your nose already knows it.
‘Till the Cows Come Home’ is Laois author Lorna Sixsmith’s fifth book and it looks at how to deal with allergies when farming. The book records three generations of farming experience in Lorna’s native Crettyard and is reminiscent of granny’s tried and tested formulas on dealing with every type of ailment.
Natural storyteller Lorna has had severe eczema throughout her childhood. She experienced various flare ups throughout adulthood, although she now knows most of the products that cause problems.
Lorna is allergic to a variety of things, many of which crop up on the farm on a daily basis: dust mites, straw, animal hair, hay, grass pollens, pine trees, even rain can affect her eczema. She’s also allergic to dairy products and has to moderate her intake of gluten.
How to manage allergies
Lorna wrote this enthralling fifth book to help people with different allergies survive and thrive on farms through tried and tested methods.
Lorna said: “There are loads of allergens on the farm and I can’t hide myself away in a glass cage. My last serious flareup of eczema was in 2005 when we moved to the farm. The farmhouse was surrounded on two sides by lots of tall pine trees.”
“Taking multiple anti-histamines daily and still suffering with eczema, we eventually discovered the pine trees were the problem and removing them became the priority,” she added.
Lorna discovered what she was allergic to with the help of a gentlemen from Tullow. “As a teenager, I was brought to an elderly gentleman in Tullow who used his gift to identify the allergies. I went back to him in 2005 and he identified the pine trees as the culprit. When I was 16, we had allergy testing done in London and I was ‘vaccinated’ against some with modest success,” she said.
It isn’t all a bed of roses even now. There are some jobs Sixsmith can’t do on the farm. She can’t bed the calves with straw although oaten straw has proved to present the least problems. They can’t have pets in the house. She can have cow’s milk if cooked e.g. in rice pudding or custard but in moderation and she uses goats milk on breakfast cereal.
“Perhaps not surprisingly, I seem to be able to tolerate dairy in chocolate,” she laughs. May is her worst month because of the grass pollens so she use eyedrops then too.
Sixsmith takes a strong anti-histamine daily. She still finds that unexpected things can happen that can cause a flare-up, for example if they change to a different ration for feeding cattle it would her eyes to become swollen after just a couple of days.
Lorna says she has come across other farmers who take anti-histamines daily so allergies don’t have to rule out a career in farming – as long as you delegate a few tasks, such as bedding the calves of course.
‘Till the Cows Come Home’ is in all bookshops now.
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