‘In like a lion, out like a lamb’ – the proverb usually associated with March, has been reversed this year. The dry spell that dominated the second month of the year hung on for the early days of March before the wind and rain swirled back into our lives and […]
Farming with Tommy Moyles
Calving season is well under way on dairy farms in West Cork and due to the good weather there is a good share of cattle out by day at least. The Russian invasion of Ukraine triggered a sharp rise in input prices in particular for fertiliser and fuel and to […]
For a while there it felt like the mist just wouldn’t go away and that the rain was never going to stop. I went digging for information on how wet it had been and discovered that from September up until January 26, Sherkin island has recorded 799mm of rainfall. The […]
Dealing with two CAPs Nothing to do with head gear but farmers find themselves trying to come to terms with two new CAPs this year. The latest version of the Common Agricultural Policy or La PAC as the French would call it, which came into being on January 1, will […]
Introduced with much fanfare earlier in the summer, Agri-Climate Rural Environmental Scheme (ACRES) has taken up a lot of head space of late. Having spent a lot of time since its introduction reading about it it’s only in the last few weeks that I’ve been trying to work out how, […]
After such a dry summer it was inevitable that we’d get enough rain at some point to balance out the annual rainfall. From the middle of October heavy downpours signalled the onset of housing stock and the wind down to the grazing season for the year began. I housed a […]
