There’s a section in my book Would You Marry A Farmer? where I advise farm wives on the necessities they require when helping out on a livestock farm. They include a belt on your trousers, wellies and a sports bra. But what happens when you don’t have time to put them on?
7am and I was flitting in and out of sleep, the radio alarm had gone off but I didn’t really hear it. Brian was up a while [...]
Brian and I spent ten years married before we returned to Ireland to farm. We went from working in 9-5 jobs and being child-free to being self-employed, farming and with a tiny baby (Will was three weeks old when we returned to Ireland). They say moving house is stressful, they say having a baby is life-changing and I presume they say changing career must have some effect too so we decided to do all three in one fell swoop and [...]
In honour of World Milk Day today, here’s ten random facts about cows:
1. Cows socialise for at least two hours every day. Chatting while chewing the cud, ruminating over where’s the best bit of grass, conversing about the weather, who’s pregnant, who had the best calves last year, whose calf has the highest EBI, what field they are going to next …….
2. Cows [...]
‘Are you out doing a bit?’ he asked with a smile.
8:48am and I needed to be walking the kids to the school bus at 8:50 before I had a quick shower and dashed off to do a mentoring session, I had 9 more calves to feed. I’d been out for an hour and been delayed with a stubborn newborn. I was feeding a total of 120 calves. I felt the state of my waterproofs probably showed that I did more [...]
It was quite an uneventful week in many ways yet how can such an uneventful week still be so busy? The sun has started shining again and apparently it will be nice for the next week. As I collected Brian from the outfarm and brought my dad an icecream as he was rolling, memories from years ago in that field came back to me. The Chapel Field was re-seeded last year and the plan was to check there weren’t [...]
