With 2024 in the rearview mirror, Tommy Moyles looks back at how the year was from a farming perspective. When it came to weather, up until August; 2024 was one of the most challenging years I can recall. There have been washout years, droughts and blizzards in the past, but […]
Farming with Tommy Moyles
It almost took until the final quarter of the year for the weather to come good and that was welcomed by farmers across the country. It took serious pressure off and allowed field work to be complete for tillage farmers and allowed livestock farmers graze later than usual to make […]
The week of sunshine around the ploughing has drifted into distant memory and you’d swear we have just skipped October and gone straight into November. Southeasterly wind storms tend to be the worst here and the one on the last weekend of September left every east-facing window with a spattering […]
I hate wishing time away but after 14 months of hoping next week’s weather will be better, it seems that’s just what I’ve done. I’ve written this year off as a grazing season and I’ll just manage it out for the rest of the year. When it comes to stymied grass […]
I can’t recall as challenging a 12 months in farming as the past year, even looking back to the extremes in 2012 with a washout summer and accompanying fodder crisis into May 2013. Fast forward five years and it got more extreme. Beginning with hurricane Ophelia in October 2017, through […]
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 […]