It’s a week of new beginnings for everyone involved in the dairy sector. It’s the first time in 31 years that the shackles are off and doing what we are good at – producing milk – can go full speed ahead. We only had a few years of development in the 1970s after joining the EU. Then quotas came in and, for most dairy farmers, that was the end of expansion.

My parents put in a four-unit milking parlour in 1968. It had a loft over it and the ground barley was fed into bins. You only had to pull a lever and each cow got her allotted share. It was a huge step-up from the long shed with its bucket plant.

We supplied Dublin Dairies and always operated under a quota system. But the quota was a positive one in that the more milk you produced in the winter, the more you had to produce the following winter.

I remember it as a very positive time, with us children being brought along to lots of farm walks, the milk recorder coming every month and the Teagasc man always on hand with sound advice. Indeed, when my father died suddenly, leaving my mother with the farm and six of us under the age of 12, Teagasc became absolutely essential to our family.

An adviser by the name of Dominic Cronin, who I think came from Cullen in Co Cork, used to call every week and set out the work that had to be done. My mother kept it all in a red notebook and followed his guidance to the letter. She relied on those notebooks for years.

In the last 30 years, the numbers involved in dairying have fallen from over 60,000 suppliers to 17,000 today. Milk yield has doubled and the markets and product mix we supply are more varied to what they were back then.

The target now is to grow the sector by 50% by 2020. That will take investment, most of it by farmers, in the expectation that it will produce dividends. I can only wish everyone involved the very best.

I’ve been out and about a lot this week – in Carlow and Thurles for the Teagasc-organised Get Farm Financially Fit seminars and in Belfast for the annual general meeting of the Federation of Women’s Institutes.

I enjoyed the trip to Belfast and was delighted to meet Liz Wall, president of the ICA, who is about to complete her term of office. She’s been a great ambassador for the ICA and I’d like to wish her well.

There was plenty of information and good stands at the Teagasc seminars and I’d have thought they’d be packed to the doors. I know with calving and lambing these are busy times, but on so many farms it’s the paperwork that produces most of the income. Maybe Teagasc would consider distilling the main points and distributing them to a wider farming audience.

If you are anywhere around north Munster and want something nice to do over the Easter bank holiday, can I suggest a walk in Doneraile Park. I was there last Sunday and with the different looped walks I must have covered 15km in the lovely parkland setting. And it has tea rooms where you can replenish the calories you just used up walking.

Finally, do you know we have reintroduced our famous Getting in Touch column? It is getting a great response. Just send us your details by email, phone or post. We will direct any replies to you by post. It's €30 to place the ad and it will be entirely confidential. So if you are interested in meeting someone with shared interests, call us on 01-4199555 or email gettingintouch@farmersjournal.ie for more information.