While we mightn’t win any awards, I like to think our two farmyards – simplistically, one for cattle, one for grain – are reasonably tidy. There isn’t any junk like scrapped Volkswagen Jettas abandoned in the hedges with the boot open. Neither are there any pallets with damaged Net Nitrate fertiliser bags or black plastic flittering around the yard and stuck in the trees. And if you come on a wet day, most of the machinery will be parked up in a shed.

And speaking of sheds, we do some shed painting most years but it can be difficult to find a shed painter. If I find one, then great, work away. But experience tells me I supply the paint.

There’s a scrap iron pile that’s collected by a Cavan man who pays Cavan rates and all plastics – be they bags or wrap – and spray containers are brought annually to an IFFPG bring centre. This costs around €400 a year, which is fine. It’s a good service.

However, I don’t want to give you the impression that it’s all perfectly spick and span because it’s not. It’s difficult to keep a yard tidy with cattle, silage and straw around the place.

Car tyres

But the pièce de résistance is a large pile of scrap car tyres which we used for pit covering, that I’d love to be rid of.

We use to make a lot of pit silage, so we have a mega pile of tyres which are no longer used. Any silage we make now is baled and wrapped. Besides, covering a silage pit with rat-infested wet tyres with rusty protruding wire has to be one of the most unpleasant (and unsafe) farm tasks. Weil’s disease or tetanus could whip you.

Most fellows would rather pull their own teeth with a vise grip than cover pits with tyres. The pit-covering rubber mats of today make absolute sense.

In 2018, the Department of the Environment under Minister Denis Naughten ran a pilot scheme for farm waste tyre disposal with four collection points, one in each province. The first three tonnes were €15/t and the rest were at €160/t. There are approximately 110 car tyres in a tonne and we probably have 5,000 tyres. I’ll do the maths for you – that’s €7,000. Much as I’d like to be rid of them, I can think of better ways of spending seven grand.

But hang on a minute. Without the Department scheme, I’m faced with a bill of €10,000 today to dispose of these tyres. It’s crazy money. I can’t be doing that. That’d put up a decent conservatory for Mrs P.

Good scheme

While the 2018 scheme would be inadequate for our needs, it was a good initiative and was well supported. The IFFPG, which ran the scheme, was amazed at the level of interest. Farmers travelled from miles away to the collection points. But the scheme hasn’t been repeated and I’m told there are loads of farmers interested in disposing of farm waste tyres.

But cometh the hour, cometh the man. We now have a Green Minister for the Environment, Eamon Ryan, and I think he should put his green credentials to good use and implement a new subsidised scheme for farm waste car tyre collection. But we have a problem. He uses a bike to get around, not a car. He could get around this by including scrap bicycle tyres as well.

But whatever you do, and as much as you might like to, don’t burn them or give them to an unapproved collector. Check to see if he’s registered with RepakELT.ie first.