These last few days, life is different on our farm. Colm is on holidays in Vietnam and Tim and I are mostly on our own. Philip is busy with work and the house is very quiet. He attends to the young calves and heifers on the leased ground in the evenings. It’s like old times, when it was just Tim and me on the farm.

I realise just how bedded in Colm and Tim have become in their relationship and management of the farm. All the systems are in place. Before, Tim and I would be talking and strategising about the farm direction. That part of our lives is now over to a degree. It’s at times like this that I realise how the dynamic is constantly changing. My input is not as needed or as valuable to the business anymore.

Is life easier for me? It probably is, but the effort on my part has to be made to stay involved. During the spring I’m full on rearing the calves, but at this time of year I try to tidy up around the place and attend to house maintenance. I get great satisfaction out of doing my own painting and so on. Some jobs are beyond me.

The big window in the living room has had a damaged vacuum in one pane for some time, meaning that it was cloudy and dirty looking.

Some weeks ago I contacted a man to replace it. He rang yesterday saying that he was on his way. I was delighted. He removed the old one and laid it on the lawn. His work probably took an hour before he lifted it again. Of course, the sun continued to beat down on the pane of glass, scorching the grass below.

So my view has been restored, but not without an ugly black patch on the lawn.

GRASS WALK

We seem to have a micro climate here in this corner of the world, where the rain has stopped falling and we have to be content with an occasional drizzle. Cork airport has a 40mm moisture deficit, while the norm is 28mm for this time of year.

Every night I put out the washing and bring it in at my ease the following day. I’m getting through all the washing of cushions and blankets that are only washed occasionally. This lack of moisture has been impacting on grass growth for the last three weeks. The fact that I’m enjoying getting the washing dried so easily is of no consolation on the farming side.

Grass growth has slowed considerably and the allocation to the cows has gone down to 10kg DM. They are now eating the silage bales that were made earlier in the season. But that was part of the plan. The aim is to feed the cows 100% grass, but there will always be pinches in the system. We are in a drought situation.

Farmers in other parts of the country will probably find this hard to believe. This has happened in a few weeks. Yesterday, Tim, Diarmuid and I had a date for a grass walk. It takes about an hour. Colm rang from Vietnam and that delayed us about an hour so with milking still to be done, Tim said we’d do it in the jeep to save time and he’d change the fence for the cows as well.

This farm is high and free draining, and runs around the side of the hill. The plots near home were the last grazed, so they were skinned. On down we went to last week’s grazings. There was no point in throwing down the quadrant, there was nothing to cut.

We were silent as we climbed into the jeep and drove further down to the new grass seed plots. The grass was lush and ready for grazing. It measured at 1,600kg dry matter. Tim reckoned it was even more because of the higher than normal dry matter. He was working on 15%, but thought it could be more like 17%. In any case, it would keep the cows happy for the next few days. This shows the value of reseeding. The new grass is certainly outperforming the rest. We motored on.

Diarmuid and I were taking turns opening and closing the fences. The next few were poor enough. We came to the inches. These are two heavy fields at the bottom of the farm.

Tim jumped out uttering expletives. “At least we’ve found some grass.” Only a farmer would know that the man had not gone mad. He was on his knees with enthusiasm and cutting. Diarmuid had the bag and scales. Grass in carefully and bag up. Result: 1,200kg. The inches need minding in wet weather, but are a bonus in drought conditions. They will be valuable feeding next week.

Now we were back talking and strategising. The trick is to slow down the rotation enough to allow the grass to build up.

The grass wedge was generated from the computer. It didn’t look too bad, but had a plateau for seven days at the end. Tim has seen this before. The wedge does not accurately demonstrate the reality of the deficit in grass growth on the farm.

The computer is just not able to deal with drought. So the cows will remain on 10kg of grass and 7kg of silage until the rain comes. Then we will measure every four to five days because we could get into surplus very quickly.

The plots reading the same are all primed and grazed to probably 3cm with fertiliser on the ground. They will grow green from the base together. That will have to be managed. More bales will be made for sure. CL