Farmer writes: 4,000ac of silage in the Wye Valley

My farm, Beeches Farm, adjoins the border between England and Wales, on the Offas Dyke path, an ancient bank that separates the two countries.

I was born in England and I live in England but I shout for Wales in the rugby – I just like their ‘‘get up and do it’’ attitude.

I’m a farmer, born and bred; my father was a builder with a farm.

After completing a national diploma in agriculture, I spent a year milking in New Zealand before coming home to manage the farm.

It was a small farm so I also did relief milking and drove tractors for a small, local contractor before getting a job with another bigger contractor, John Cracknell, who I went on to marry.

We were married for five years when John died of cancer in 2004. I continued his contracting business after he passed away.

The contracting season gets busy from mid-April, when we start planting around 600 acres of maize and we do a good bit of grass silage for customers in England and Wales.

We’ve got a self-propelled forager, two forage wagons and two square balers. Each year, we do around 2,500ac with the forager and 1,500ac with the wagons.

We also do around 18,000 square bales.

The forager costs £24/acre (€26.40/acre) and baling costs from £6.50 (€7.15) to £8.70 (€9.35/bale) wrapped, depending on the bale size and number of wraps.

Our customers used to be mainly dairy farmers but a lot of them have stopped milking in the last 10 years due to low milk prices and now it’s 50:50 dairy and beef/sheep farmers.

I’ve got four full-time employees and four or five part-time employees.

Finding good drivers can be a struggle, so you have to try to hang on to the best ones but it can be difficult because the margins are not in the job.

The full-time lads do silage in the summer and gritting in the winter. I’m sub-contracted into a large company, which is hired by private companies to salt their car parks.

We use ex-highway gritting trucks and work through the night from 7pm.

The farm itself is 100 acres and I have a 7ac campsite.

We’re located in the Wye Valley, which is known as “God’s own land” and we have the ancient Forest of Dean surrounding us. The campsite is open to tents and caravans and is fully booked from Easter to October. My partner Alison helps out with that end of the business.

I used to keep sheep and Angus cows on the farm but we had TB two years ago and I sold everything. At the moment, my brother is renting ground from me for his sheep, a mixture of Suffolk and mules.

My daughter Grace has little interest in the machinery side of farming but she loves helping my brother at lambing time and wants to be a midwife.

This weekend, I’m travelling to Ireland to take part in the Grass Gals silage event at Mount Melleray in aid of the Alzheimer Society on Saturday 19 August. I’ll be driving the loader.

My mum died of early onset dementia and I like to take part in community and charity work when I can. I’ve helped raise money for cancer research in the past too.

I’m looking forward to joining up with a crew of women. I love driving, I love Ireland and it’s my birthday weekend so I have plenty of reasons to go.