The summer has come and gone, and I am now back at school – it’s as if I never left.

I had an enjoyable summer, and the first month was bliss, as I had an extra month off while my siblings were still in primary school.

In July I went on a 10-day visit to Germany, where I stayed with a lovely family with six children, near Cologne.

As we flew across the west of Germany and down into Cologne airport, all I could see were trees. They were everywhere.

The family I stayed with actually lived in a 110ha forest, which had a mix of different types of trees. It was a continuous-cover forest and some of the trees were 70 years old.

There were wild boar and roe deer in the forest, which they would hunt from time to time to eat. I was lucky to see some deer, and we enjoyed many hours of hide and seek in this huge wood.

The weather was pretty hot when I arrived, but soon the rains came and it felt very much like home.

Back home

Back home, much of the summer seemed to be spent tidying around the house and garden, with plenty of lawn mowing (I am an expert now), weeding, vegetable harvesting, weeding, fruit picking and some more weeding.

All that weeding pays off in the end, but it seems to go on forever.

The big event around here in August was the Tullamore Show. They were super lucky with the weather – it was sunny, warm and dry.

The weather the very next day was completely different and it spilled rain all day. My dad was working on the Organic Trust stand, as he is a farm inspector for them, so it was quite funny to see him there, talking the talk.

There was plenty to see at the show, and we must have walked miles, as we were all fairly exhausted by the time we went home.

Ram auction

At the end of August, daddy brought all the kids to a big multi-breed ram auction in Tullamore. He was looking for a Vendeen ram.

We had never had one before. He had read a lot about them and wanted to try something new. When I saw all the different breeds of sheep all together like that, I really noticed how different they all were, and their unique features.

The big, black-faced Suffolk were quite a different shape from the red-faced Rouge.

My little brother, George, liked the Texels the best, and tried to sway daddy, but he had his heart set on a Vendeen, and we got a lovely five-star one called Ballivor Remi, so we will call him just Remi for short.

Charlie Hackett is a 14-year-old boy from Geashill in Co Offaly, where he lives with his two younger sisters, Poppy and Heidi, and his younger brother, George. His parents, Mark and Pippa, both work on the farm, producing organic beef and sheep, along with a few horses, chickens, dogs and cats, making it a busy family farm. Charlie is a second-year student at Kilkenny College and boards there during the week.