I farm: “A 50ac pedigree Limousin cattle and sheep farm with my husband Patrick, and my sons who are home at the weekends.”

Pedigree: “We usually have 15 cows but that can go up or down when you’re selling. They’re purebred Limousin cattle. We used to have just ordinary sucklers and we weren’t making any money off them; the Limousins are going much better.”

Sales: “We sold a bull in Roscrea at the last Limousin sale and got €6,500 for him at about 18 months old. Funnily enough, we only had one bull to sell this year but we did sell a couple of them out of the shed in the springtime and we did do well with them as well.”

Sheep: “We have about 50 sheep. They would be a mixture of Charollais, Suffolk crosses and Cheviot sheep. We chose to have variety; if one is up the other is down. The Charollais are grand but you need them lambing late for the weather we have in this part of the country, and the land. Part of the land is very heavy so they’re nearly not suitable; they’re cold creatures. We’re very happy with the sheep price as well but if you want to buy a few, you’re going to have to dig deep.”

This week: “There’s cows calving, we have one in that’s due this week. There’re also a few sheep early lambing and they’ll have to go in as well. There’s a wee shed and we’ll put them into that, there’s cows in the calving pen at the minute. It’s a small holding, we just keep it simple really.”

Outlook: “We might do a bit of draining and try to improve our land. There’s plenty of rushes around us and we’re trying to get rid of them. I hope that this year will be better but sure, you never know what will happen from one year to the next, especially with farming.”