I farm: “In partnership with my brother and my father at the bottom of the Hill of Tara in Co Meath. We’re veg producers. We’re not the biggest and we’re not the smallest.”

Veg: “We grow cabbage and Brussels sprouts. There’s about 200 acres of cabbage and 45 acres of sprouts. I think we’re about the third-biggest sprouts grower in the country – there is only about four of us, mind you.”

Retailers: “We’re in with nearly them all. We supply veg to most of the supermarkets.”

Below-cost selling: “That’s a war between supermarkets to get the consumer in the door. The year of the 5c veg, we still got paid the same. As long as growers get paid the right amount of money, we let the supermarkets fight it out among themselves.”

Sprouts: “It’s been a good year for the sprouts. Good sprouts are like hens’ teeth at the minute. The growers in the UK have been hit badly by the Diamondback moth and there has been serious drought in The Netherlands. We had buyers from The Netherlands recently and they said our sprouts were as good as any over there.”

Not just Christmas: “People think we have sprouts just for Christmas but we’ll be putting them on shelves right up to March.”

Harvesting: “We’ll be harvesting the sprouts for the Christmas table on Christmas week. There’ll be 20 of us working to get the orders in.”

This week: “It’s all about just getting prepared and getting ahead of ourselves for the big rush at Christmas week.”

Family: “There’s three of us farming here. My brother Rory and my father Joe – he’s the boss. My mother is Carmel – she’s the real boss. She tells me what I can spend and what I can’t! My two children are Conor and Helen and Rory’s two are Dáire and Karl.”

Quotable quote: “Like a lot of other farming, you have to love this game to be involved in it.”