Farming with Tommy Moyles - West Cork People

Managing the uncontrollable

Tommy Moyles August, 2024

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 […]

Farming with Tommy Moyles

Getting out while the sun shines

Tommy Moyles April, 2024

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 […]

Looking back on 2023

Tommy Moyles January, 2024

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, […]

Farmers making positive change

Tommy Moyles December, 2023

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 […]

Wet weather proves challenging for farmers

Tommy Moyles November, 2023

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 […]

Uncertain times for dairy farmers

Tommy Moyles October, 2023

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 […]

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