Without wanting to sound too morose and, dare I say it, a ‘stereotypically grumpy farmer’, it has been a tough year for farmers this year. Between the late, very wet, very cold spring which meant winter extended into May, and then a drought during the summer, it’s been a year that involved a lot of extra work as we were still doing winter work for weeks during the heatwave. Without even thinking about the bank balance, a lot of farmers [...]
Ireland often has four seasons in one day. This year, it feels like we’ve had an extremely long winter, two weeks of spring, and now we’re into a tropical summer with this heatwave (over 30c yesterday and today)and drought. Farmers on dry land are running out of grass and feeding bales of silage to their livestock, we’re feeding a couple of bales a day to stretch our grass. During the cold weather, Sam wasn’t too keen on working. He’d come [...]
The sun came out last week and the clouds disappeared for a few days. The temperature even got to 20 degrees Celsius. After a long winter and near despair with heavy rain the previous Monday, the drying wind and the sunshine were welcomed by all. Unfortunately, we’ve had showery days too.
Lou has been accompanying me on my morning [...]
I’m tired. It’s not often that I’m really tired. It has been a busy couple of months: new calf shed being built, 130 calves born, and lots of finishing touches to Till the Cows Come Home which is being published in May. But it’s the relentlessly bad weather and all the extra work that goes with it that has made me tired. We knew the weather wouldn’t be great over Easter but the fact that it is continuing on for [...]
My blogging has been a bit erratic of late. I think of plenty of topics to write about, I have a list of titles and subjects, I’ve been meaning to tell you all about the “milk powder plot” for months. I’ve had good intentions to send out a newsletter for weeks. You know – you tell people you won’t bombard them with newsletters, no more than one a month on average but I reckon it could be six months since [...]
