Thousands of farm families in Co Cork have adopted a siege mentality, hoping against hope that foot-and-mouth disease will not visit their holdings. In farms all over Cork, neighbours haven't shared a drink together or visited one another's homes for weeks. Except for school, even their children are not mixing.
The gathering points of rural social life are marts, GAA games, IFA meetings and the farms themselves. However, since foot-and-mouth was first confirmed in Britain over a month ago, all of these activities have come to a halt and farms have become lonely places, off limits to anyone who hasn't a legitimate reason for calling. It is new territory for the usually gregarious farming community.
Tim O'Leary is an extensive dairy farmer near Blarney in Co Cork. He has four children but since the outbreak of foot-and-mouth in Britain, they have not been allowed have friends over to their farm nor do they mix with friends from neighbouring farms.
"They get up in the morning, put on their school uniforms and go to school without ever setting a foot on the farm. At the moment, school is the only chance they have of meeting their friends, and when they come home again, care is taken to stay away from the farm.
"We're trying to keep contact with the animals and the land to a minimum; it's getting hard for everyone. The social side of rural life has simply shut down. I've hardly spoken to my neighbours in a month and all the meeting points, like the marts and the IFA meetings, the races or sporting fixtures, have been called off.
"Farmers are starting to go stir crazy. The only point of contact now is the telephone or a funeral Mass. People felt we were on the way out of the crisis until the news broke about Co Louth. Now it looks as if we're back to ground zero," explained Mr O'Leary, who is also county chairman of the IFA.
A dairy farmer in east Cork, who preferred to remain anonymous, said one of the main issues now was that dairy farmers were "filling up with calves" but had no place to put them.
"Calves are normally moved on very quickly from dairy farms. Where are they going to go in this climate? There's no one to take them because of the ban on animal movement. Suddenly, dairy farmers who have nothing to do with rearing calves find themselves caring for them and providing feed and shelter.
"They are not equipped for it and it's causing a major headache. A lot of pressure is building up and the longer it goes on, the more strain there will be. The normal routine of rural life has been disrupted and tension within families is mounting . . .
"Social contact has ground to a halt, farmers can't go out, friends can't meet for a chat and no one is allowed on to the farms. Cabin fever is beginning to catch on."
He has not sold an animal since Christmas. "At the same time, I suppose we have to have hope. There's been incredible good will from the public, that's very heartening, and in the end, this will pass, but unfortunately, not before a lot of damage has been done, not alone in farming, but in other sectors too, like tourism.
"There's no movement of stock, and inter-farm trading, which is a huge part of rural life, is over for the foreseeable future. Spring is in the air, the birds are whistling, but there's no feeling on the farm of `let's go for it', like you would expect at this time of year," he said.
Mr Neilie O'Leary, vice-chairman of the West Cork Lamb Producers' Group, which has 170 members from mid-Cork to the Beara Peninsula, said sheep farmers were nearing breaking point. His group had tried unsuccessfully, he added, to persuade the Department of Agriculture that sheep should be collected from the farms and brought to a central inspection point at Macroom before being moved on to Co Wexford for slaughter.
"We deal with the factory in Camolin in Wexford but the Department wouldn't hear of it. The ruling is that there must be no farm-to-farm collections. Instead, each farmer must bring his own sheep to Wexford for slaughter. In many cases, when only a few sheep are ready for the factory, this wouldn't make economic sense at all, you couldn't justify the run. There's a lot of depression and fear within the sheep farming community at the moment, a glut is building up and there is terrible uncertainty."
Social outlets for farmers are closed and everyone is feeling the effects of restrictions. "Despite all that, people are trying to keep the chin up. The feeling is that if we can keep it to the isolation area in Louth, then the rest of the country will be able to continue trading. I think farmers are absolutely delighted, too, with the way the way the nation has stood behind them in the crisis," Mr O'Leary said.