We farm: “A 250ac dairy farm, 100ac beef and sheep, and about 8ac poultry. Everything is organic.”

Family: “Our son-in-law Bill does the dairy, our son Eddie does the beef and sheep, my brother-in-law Pat does the poultry and my husband Jimmy helps our son with the meat business. My youngest daughter Lucille and I run a B&B on the farm.”

Organic: “In 2001, Jimmy got a little disillusioned with mainstream intensive farming that he had been doing for 30 years. We did some courses, switched to organic and never looked back.”

Clover: “We use white and red clover to fix the nitrogen in the soil. The red clover would be reseeded every four to five years on silage ground.”

Dairy: “The herd is mainly British Friesian with a stocking rate of about 1.7cow/ha. Two-thirds are spring calving and one-third is autumn calving. We supply milk all year round to the Little Milk Company, the Village Dairy and it is sold through farmers’ markets. You get about 60c/l in the winter and about 50c/l in the summer.”

Beef: “The calves we rear are usually Aberdeen Angus or Hereford crosses and come from our dairy herd. We use a local abattoir and bring back the carcases to make them into products ourselves.”

Poultry: “There’s a huge consumption of organic chicken. We sell about 200 organic chickens every week at farmers’ market and online.”

Farmers’ markets: “We cover five farmers’ markets in Dublin every weekend, one in Carlow and one in Kilkenny. We started doing them in 2004. The challenge then was to get a premium market for our meat because the factories didn’t want to pay for it.”

This week: “Weather-dependent, we’ll be hoping to get the cows out of the shed.”

Quotable quote: “People ask if it’s hard to work and farm as a family business but everyone works hard and has their own autonomy over their own section of the business.”