As part of a new project in conjunction with the Save Leitrim group, we had a biodiversity walk recently, across the whole farm, in order to pinpoint what we’re doing right and where we could improve on aspects with nature.

While I would consider myself fairly nature-orientated, it was certainly an eye-opener, having someone with much more experience in the sector discuss the different habitats that have evolved over time in our pasture and hedgerows.

We’ve always known that our land is fairly diverse in its composition – old heathland, peat and gley make up a large part of our farm soils, and this in particular means we have quite a good environment for a broad range of birds, animals and insects.

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In particular, we have quite a few old-fashioned fields that haven’t been reseeded in my lifetime, making it a perfect environment for ground nesting birds, like the meadow pipit.

This in turn explains why we are inundated with cuckoos each year, as they have a preference for laying in these nests.

While it was only supposed to be an hour or less to wander and walk around, we both got so engrossed in everything we were finding, that it was almost three hours before we finished up for the day.

Overall we’re doing fairly well regarding biodiversity, but as always, there is room for improvement.

Walking around the farm in the sun was much more enjoyable than doing the paperwork for joining the Bord Bia quality assurance scheme, as I finally got around to putting our application in for the new suckler scheme.

I know I won’t be alone in the farming community when I say I hate the thought of paperwork, never mind actually filling it out.

Stuck inside in good weather, it’s almost like sitting the Leaving Cert all over again; except there’s no supervision this time round, making it even more agonising, as I have to persuade myself to complete it.

Of course, I could have waited for the weather to break and fill out the forms while the apocalypse appeared to have started outside, with thunder and lightning occurring almost simultaneously at one time.

We didn’t get any torrential rain, but it certainly hit localised areas badly, with many places getting washed out with flash flooding.

However, we did get quite a shock walking down to the cows on Saturday morning: the lightning had struck a wall beside our shed overnight and literally split it in two.

At least it was only a wall that was hit, which can be repaired easily enough. With the cattle grazing in those fields, and powerlines and trees in abundance, along with the creep-feeder, it could have been a much grimmer discovery.

While we don’t have all the calves eating in the feeder just yet, they’re slowly learning; we’ve had a couple of heifers trying their luck entering it. One succeeded and managed to scalp her back while limbo-dancing under the bar, though with a quick alteration to its height, she hasn’t been tempted to try a second time.