When I was a young fella, a lot of farming was done at the crossroads. It was there of an evening, or after mass on Sunday that many older farmers checked in with each other on the work of the day and shared news of what the "other lads" were up to.

The "other lads" would be younger and more likely found at Macra meetings than at the crossroads. The crossroads men had seen at least one world war/emergency and a couple of depressions as well. These were men who took pride in the details: a good plough, turning a straight drill and finishing work at a fixed hour.

That meant supper at the Angelus bell and down to the crossroads for horseshoes or skittles by half six. A "good place" was a farm where all was in order but no one ever had to work after the supper. There was a great deal of balance, good and wisdom in those old farming ways.

I was one of those "other lads”; reading books, going to Winter a Farm School, watching Justin Keating on Telefis Feirme, going to Macra meetings and inviting the "adviser" down. The Common Market was on the horizon! A new day was dawning and young farmers were on the move. The future would be the three S's- Specialise, Simplify and Silage. Auld lads make way!

Slowly, the auld lads, and their ways, did make way. Though not without a deal of head shaking as they watched the silage circuses buzzing away till dark all the summer evenings as the crossroads gatherings disappeared altogether.

These thoughts have come to me as I watch farming approach another crossroads. I do share the excitement of the new farming "young bloods" who I meet around the place. They are finally let out into fields with no quota and kicking up the place like calves let out to grass.

I love all the ambitions and "can do" attitudes that I see. The sons of 50 cow men heading for a hundred, the sons of 100 cow men heading for two, and the sons of beef and sheep men wanting to milk cows. I love the buzz, I love the youth and I love the energy- but - like the old lads at the crossroads in my own youth, I worry for them a bit.

I have now been around long enough to have seen a share of boom and busts myself. Whether the current collapse in milk price is caused by the end of quotas or not can be an interesting debating point.

However, what is certain is that quotas protected a generation of farmers from the up and down swings of the market. I do worry that the new post-quota generation may be building castles on very shaky sands. The vision of a sustained build-up of dairy farming to supply the perceived opportunity in China has many political, environmental and economic pit traps and may be a disastrous mirage.

I feel like advising them to go with caution and be sceptical of those selling certainty. Instead I urge at least some to return to the crossroads, to develop farm products or services and customer bases closer to home. To maximise resilience, and satisfaction, by developing new eggs and new baskets. With Quotas gone, the era of safely putting all eggs in a single basket may be gone as well.

Back when I started, the auld lads at the crossroads had cattle, sheep, corn, beet, turnips, potatoes, pigs, chickens, and turkeys- all done by six. I thought they were a hundred percent wrong. I now look back with respect, and hopefully some of their wisdom, and see that they were at least 50% right.

But hey! There's a great stretch in the evenings, the summer’s coming! Let's get the skittles out! See ye at the crossroads! And there may even be customers there too.