If you are accustomed to farmers or if you have read some of my posts before, you’ll know that farmers love driving along looking into fields whether it is their neighbours’ fields or if they are driving along unknown roads, they like to see the condition of the grass, the crops and the livestock. If you are driving the car, you’ll receive a running commentary and if he is driving, you’ll be in constant danger of hitting [...]
It’s been a wet week here in the sunny south east. The fire has been lit again, cattle have been brought back indoors, calves have been kept in, the cows are messing up fields and coming in to the parlour in most disgruntled moods only slightly mollified by the promise of yummy nuts in the parlour. 5 ‘stragglers’ have calved in the last ten days, all giving birth to bulls which is bound to even up our bull : heifer [...]
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 [...]
Well, the milk quota is well and truly over now – we are 12 days past it and every possible future scenario has been flagged by farmers, journalists and advisors. Irish dairy farmers will be paying superlevy fines of up to ?75million spread over the next three years. It sounds mad doesn’t it? I do wonder why so much expansion had to happen before the quota actually ended. The end of the milk quota has been [...]
Irish Water has been in the news quite a lot lately but it’s not that long since water was a very popular topic in rural areas. We don’t have piped water in a couple of the calf sheds and as I’ve been carrying buckets of water to them, I started thinking about how it’s not all that long since farm women had to carry buckets of water to the house every day of the year – water for making tea, [...]
