How’s your milk quota?

I always get a bit giddy around the time the milk cheque is due. If it’s been a long winter and the bills are mounting up, you might need to see a nice juicy cheque come in. You don’t, however, want to put himself under pressure by asking him directly his thoughts on how healthy he thinks the same milk cheque will be. You might try to drop it into conversation, subtle like.

Will you have more potatoes, how’s your fat content?

Oh was that the ration truck? Drink up your tea. What way’s the deferred account?

Could you change the baby’s nappy? How are the cows milking? See what I mean? Subtle.

There was a time when I didn’t have a notion of what any of this farm talk was and would have run a mile to avoid it. Being a city girl, I used the milk quota by way of talking to or about a country boy in college. You could see the country boy a mile off and to in order to avoid ending up living in Bally-go-not-Cork-city, you’d scare him off sharpish by mentioning his milk quota (whatever that meant).

Oh, I hear you have a fine milk quota and you knew that he knew that you didn’t know what you were talking about. In doing so you were telling him that

a). Not only did you not know what you were talking about but you didn’t want to know and

b). He should move along quickly and talk to some poor creatur’ who would actually be impressed by said milk quota. One that you could bring home to the mother.

We knew nothing of road frontage or in calf heifers, us city girls, but we knew we were rattling a farmer’s son’s cage when we mentioned his quota.

By the time I met my farmer, I thought I had scared off the last of the farmers of Ireland, but I hadn’t. He hadn’t even mentioned the cows by the time the bolt of lighting had struck and by that stage I was too enamored to realize that karma had just come and kicked me into touch. Think you’ll mock our farmers, karma says, off with you to a dairy farm in North Kerry. You city minx, may you spend your time trying to budget a milk cheque ‘til the cows come home, twice a day every day without a day off.

So here I am, rearing three farmer’s sons, balancing the books of a dairy farmer. Ironic you might say. There’s all this talk of milk quota no more, super levies and expansion. New vocabulary that seems to be peppering all conversation agricultural. And I can’t help wondering what this will mean for the rest of us mere mortal farmers. This isn’t just a business, it’s a home, a way of life, one that despite my earlier reservations, I wouldn’t swap. The farm outgoings are significant, the farm profits precarious enough but truth be told, we’re in this for more, it’s our way of life. Let’s face it there are easier ways to make a living in fairness and you don’t need some city girl to tell you that.

Farming, we’re a part of something grand, a farming family, and a community. We’re not just the sum of our bottom line; we are a part of a way of life that is necessary, important to the overall fabric of our lovely country. We’ll keep going, farming, making it all work, and hopefully rearing our lovely farmer’s sons to be strong enough to stand up to a city girl some day. And if they’re lucky, like their Daddy, to maybe even bring one home.

How’s your milk quota? No more.