For the past year I’ve been pretty good at seeking, listening to, taking and indeed disregarding an enormous amount of advice.
I’m a black and white kind of person which doesn’t help much in wading through all the advice but what you realise at the end of it all is you have to go with your gut and trust your own instincts.
I farm alongside my mother in Mullagh, Co Cavan. Our farm is about 110ha in total, of which we farm 60ha at the moment. The remainder is rented out and there is an additional 25ha in forestry.
Primarily we have an Angus spring calving suckler herd and a small number of sheep. The farm has been certified organic for the past 20 years. I returned a year ago to work on the farm.
We need to increase our stocking rate and recently it’s been feeling a bit like one step forward, two steps back. Organics is always going to dictate a more extensive system but we’ve been falling behind the more productive organic farmers recently.
Destination: factory
Last week we sent off the final batch of cull cows for this year to Monaghan through GoodHerdsman, grading at R4s/5s, hitting average 460kg/deadweight. A good batch of replacement heifers was kept last summer and thankfully all bar one have nice calves on the ground. I have a few trips lined up this week to look at some shorthorn heifers- I’ll bring the boss and her cheque book!
I can rubberneck all I want at the bulging continentals down the road in Carnaross but I know as soon as they pass through our front gates they would start to melt. Organics works for our farm and now it’s about upping numbers and fine-tuning the system.
There will be many mistakes along the way- That one old, red cow who didn’t get loaded onto the trailer for Monaghan will probably be the first. But I don’t mind- she deserves another twist!