Question: I’m hoping you can help me with a problem that seems impossible to fix. I’ve been trying to get my father to sign over the farm to myself and my husband for the past few years, as his health is failing and I’m worried he will work his way into an early grave.

I’m an only child, and am married to a farmer for the past 10 years. We have our own dairy farm and three young children, but live near enough to my father who is widowed the past three years. Dad has always been a workaholic, but I think that with mam now gone he’s thrown himself into the farm even more.

He has heart trouble, which he’s on medication for, but his doctor has advised him to ease up on the physical activity. Of course he thinks this is nonsense and is refusing to take any heed. My husband thinks I should back off, because he doesn’t want my father to think we’re circling his land like vultures. But I want my dad to have many more years with us and can’t cope with the thought of him dropping dead in a field, just because he’s too proud to step away.

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Any time I try to have a chat with him about succession or planning for the future he refuses to discuss it. He tells me it will all be mine soon enough, but I can’t get him to listen that it’s not my inheritance that concerns me. It’s having my father alive and well for as long as is possible.

A concerned daughter,

Co Galway

Dear reader,

So many letters reach me describing the many trials and tribulations surrounding farm succession in this country, and very few recount positive or progressive experiences.

Unfortunately for many senior farmers out there, the idea or retiring or handing over land to the next generation is not something they are able to cope with. Farming is in their blood and, for many, it’s a case of keeping going until they are no longer able to keep going.

In your father’s case, an underlying heart condition does make the situation more urgent. But as he is a grown man, who is under the care of a medical team that has made him aware of the risks associated with his continued farming, he has to make decisions that are right for him.

I would suggest you prioritise your own mental health right now. Grief is a lengthy process and it could be a case that your concerns and worries stem from losing your mother in the recent past

That is very hard to accept when it places his health at risk, particularly so when you have already lost your mother and he is the last remaining member of your immediate family.

I would suggest you prioritise your own mental health right now. Grief is a lengthy process and it could be a case that your concerns and worries stem from losing your mother in the recent past. If your father has always been a workaholic, then his refusal to retire shouldn’t come as too much of a shock, even if it is hard to accept the danger he is putting himself in.

My advice would be to park the conversation for a little while. Until you feel stronger. The chances are that if you give your father some breathing space, he may be more amenable to having the chat at a later date.

If this isn’t likely to happen you should focus on spending as much quality time with him as you can, and don’t allow the issue of succession to come between you both.

Do you have a problem you would like to share? If so, write in confidence to: Dear Miriam, Agony Aunt, Irish Country Living, Irish Farmers Journal, Irish Farm Centre, Bluebell, Dublin 12, or email miriam@farmersjournal.ie