I farm: “A mixed enterprise with cattle, tillage, potatoes and contracting. My father Enda is retired but still very hands-on and my mother Mary does the paperwork. My brother Padraig is an electrician and he cuts the grain for me, and my other brother Gregory works with New Holland in Belgium. He comes back to do the baling on his holidays.”

Cattle: “We keep about 140 animals. We buy in about 50 Friesian and Angus calves every year, we finish some and sell some in the mart, depending on trade. The rest are made up of the yearlings, sucklers and replacement heifers. We are running the sucklers with a Salers bull this year. We also had a Charolais and we put a Parthenaise with the replacement heifers.”

Tillage: “We have about 50% spring crops and 50% winter. We’re working with winter barley, winter wheat, rye, oilseed rape, spring barley and spring oats, with about 220ac of cereals in total. The winter crops are looking good, the oilseed rape is in full flower and all the T1 sprays and nitrogen have been applied to the winter barley and wheat – so we’re on target. The winter barley will be heading out in about a fortnight, so it’ll get its final spray by then.”

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Sowing: “We have been sowing a week so far and it will probably take us almost another fortnight to finish up, with 40ac to go. Sowing has been late for spring crops this year coming into the May bank holiday but that’s just the hand we’ve been dealt. Half of our farm is flat ground and the other half is upland, so it’s just tricky in places, but we’re getting there and we’re happy enough.”

Potatoes: “We sow about 20ac of spuds, Roosters. It’s more about keeping the soil and rotation right for us. Last year was tricky, spuds weren’t great, it’s a bit of a gamble man’s crop.”

Grain prices: “Grain prices would be an issue at the minute, I see oilseed rape creeping up a bit but the barley prices wouldn’t be great working with world markets. You’d be sort of going into the unknown for the next year or two with the war and whatnot, and imports seem to get priority over native grain.”

Contracting: “I do a bit of contracting, round and square baling straw. We bale 70% of our own straw in big squares. I also do a bit of sowing and digger work, a mixture of everything.”