It’s easy to spot a farmer out and about when in their working clothes. Items like boots or wellies, mud splattered clothes, sitting in a tractor or jeep, the working dog alongside, bulging pockets (not with money but with nuts, bolts, baler twine, keys, receipts and a battered cheque book) and perhaps even the whiff of slurry or silage all tend to give it away without having to look too closely. But what about when they are dressed up and [...]
We have sixty calves now and they are divided into a very neat thirty heifers (females) and thirty bulls. Last year we had 40 females and 20 males when we hit 60 but it ended up fairly 50:50 when calving was finished. As a dairy herd, we prefer heifers – partly because we are continually working on improving the breeding of our dairy herd and dairy calves will either go into our herd or will be sold to other dairy [...]
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 [...]
Elaine at New Farmerette wrote a post some time ago outlining her two favourite rituals of the day and at the time, I thought it was a lovely idea and that I must do something similar. The problem was I couldn’t think of just two!!
Favourite Rituals 1 & 2
I love coming [...]
