We farm: “250 acres. A total of 120 acres are vegetables consisting of 45 acres leek, 15 acres scallions, 30 acres rhubarb and 30 acres cauliflower. The 130 acres of grain is wheat and barley crops.”

Family: “I work alongside my family, parents Christy and Mary, and sister Sandra. Sandra does the books; we all kind of have our own jobs.”

This week: “We are planting leeks and scallions today, while also harvesting cauliflowers and rhubarb. It takes one person an hour to plant 700 to 800 leeks; now, consider that there are roughly 70,000 plants in one acre. The workload is year-round since we have such a mix of crops and it’s nearly all manual labour as most are planted and picked by hand. We currently have 13 people employed on the farm.”

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Veg market: “It’s getting harder each year. All costs are rising, but we’re not getting anything more. The only thing we can do is try to cut cost and buy in bulk. We can’t compete with imported vegetables being sold for less than what we can produce them for. A few extra cents per item would do.”

GPS system: “One thing we did to cut costs of production was purchase an Amazone sprayer. This works off GPS maps and is able to turn itself on and off to make sure that no product is wasted. It gives a printout every time, so it’s easier to keep track of what fields got what. We’re already seeing the benefits.”

Future: “No idea what we’ll be growing. Every day, people are looking for something different; it depends where the supermarkets are going.”

Rare breed: “We were recently on the UTV series Rare Breed. It was hugely popular with the farming community and further afield. It had 217,000 viewers and when you consider Coronation Street has 300,000, it’s a fair achievement”

Quotable quote: “There’s no point being a busy fool working for nothing.”