I had been out walking that day and the weather was so warm I didn’t even need a cardigan. Amazing, considering we are facing 1 November

It was a very different story on Sunday when I took a bit of time out to walk the Gap of Dunloe in Killarney. What had started as a grand day at home turned into a right stinker as we struggled to put one foot ahead of the other in the face of gale-force winds and pelting rain. Mind you, my cheeks and face were lovely and warm afterwards and it felt like I’d had a really good facial.

I’m no great fan of walking, but it has to be done. Even 20 minutes a day, every day, helps keep you fit and it’s a habit you just have to acquire.

I was talking to someone recently who told me that once you turn 50, you can lose a pound of muscle a month. Imagine that after a year, you could be almost a stone lighter, but it would all be through muscle wastage. Even worse, you could remain the same weight, having replaced the muscle with fat.

I thought Karl Henry, one of the speakers at our Women & Agriculture Conference, made a lot of sense when he stressed the importance of daily exercise. He also recommended that we do three things and all of them are free. First, find our resting heartbeat. To do this, count your pulse for 15 seconds, multiply the figure by four and with a bit of luck it will be in the 60s or below. Anything higher needs to be attended to.

His second tip was to measure your waist, taking the belly button as a reference point. Anything over 40 inches wasn’t recommended. His third tip involved exercise and the talk test. Exercise is only any good if you are a bit out of breath when talking. He also advised us to change from white to brown food, ie bread and rice, eat more fat in the form of nuts, seeds and avocados and drink plenty of water.

We have lots of coverage of the conference on other pages and I would like to thank everyone who has sent me emails and texts or phoned with feedback. I would like to sincerely thank everyone who supported the conference and this is what drives us to design a new programme each year

The dinner and entertainment the evening before the conference certainly proved a huge hit with everyone and I reckon it will sell out fast again next year.

Everyone will have their favourite speaker and for me it was Margaret Farrelly of Clonarn Clover. Newly married, she knew that the income from the 33-acre Cavan dairy farm wouldn’t be enough. So she bought 150 laying hens and in 25 years turned them into a business with a turnover just short of €6m per year. An amazing story. And as Katherine O’Leary says in her column on page 18, next year we will do it all again and it will be utterly different.