One step forward, any number of steps back, would be a good description of the farming year to date. Bad weather has been the main driver of the difficulties created at farm level as we experienced rainfall in excess of the Long-Term Average (LTA) annual rainfall for the region in […]
From a farming perspective, I’m not sorry to see the back of 2023. It was a washout and a favourable spring is sorely needed on many farms. It might seem like I’m overdoing the weather thing but the rain did feel relentless. That didn’t help farmer mood, as commodity prices, […]
West Cork hosted an international conference on agroforestry in Bantry in mid-November. The Irish Agroforestry Forum hosted the event titled ‘Farmer-led Climate Adaptation and Mitigation. Why and how trees on farms can help’ and attendees heard that farmers have committed to planting over 400,000 trees under the ACRES tree planting […]
The clocks may have gone back an hour but in a lot of West Cork farmyards it feels like they’ve jumped forward by a month. Not just locally, but across the country, livestock have been housed earlier than usual because of the weather – the ground is saturated. For most […]
If you’re travelling along the Wild Atlantic Way, in the vicinity of the Galley Head lighthouse and Long Strand at Castlefreke, you may have noticed the appearance of a small herd of pigs in recent years. Shane Kenneally and his family started breeding pigs on the small holding they have […]
It’s been a disheartening backend! I thought we might get a run of settled dry weather in September given how wet things were in July and August but it wasn’t to be with Storm Agnes adding yet more wind and rain to deal with. Dock leaves in the field closest […]