My name is Stephen John O’Shea and I’m a hill sheep farmer at Lauragh in the parish of Tuosist, Co Kerry.

We came into hill farming in Tuosist by a somewhat circuitous route. I was born and raised in a housing estate in Tallaght, Dublin, until I was 13 years old. In 1989 my parents, Stephen and Breda, made the incredibly brave decision to move the family of six to the hill farm my dad inherited.

To say it was from one extreme to the other is no understatement.

From living with hundreds of houses and people all around us, to being over half a mile away from the nearest house was only one of the major changes we had to get used to.

But it was the best thing that ever happened to us and we all embraced country life totally, even if it was easier for some of us than others.

Present farm life

I farm on the Caha mountain range, which forms the Kerry/Cork border on the Beara peninsula. Our parish of Tuosist is the last parish in Kerry, in the southwest of the county. It starts just after you leave Kenmare heading for Castletownbere and is nearly a 20-mile strip between the mountains and Kenmare Bay.

Admitting you are a hill sheep farmer is a bit like making an admission at an addiction meeting. But even though it’s not right to make jokes about addiction, in reality that is what hill sheep farming is. It’s just a way of life.

It’s not profitable, involves a lot of hard work in extreme conditions (like most types of farming) and you can be regularly on your own in dangerous situations on the mountain, miles from anyone or anywhere. However, on a fine day when I’m checking or gathering sheep on the mountain there is no better place in the world to be.

That’s why I compare it to an addiction, because that one fine day is like the high that makes you forget the bad days, even though they are never far away.

Winter

That was never more apparent than after the winter we’ve just had. In our part of southwest Kerry we get some of the highest rainfall in the country every year, but since last July it seems to have rained practically every day until the last few weeks.

I know that might sound like an exaggeration, but even the older farmers in the parish say it was the wettest and longest winter in memory.

It seems I have been rambling along without saying much about the actual sheep farming, but as it’s such a different way of life on the mountains, I wanted to try and paint a picture first and I’ll go into more detail the next time.

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From Tallaght to Tuosist: a different route to hill farming