We have reached the end of another year and although we had plenty of challenges off-farm and a tough spring on-farm, we had an exceptional back end to the year and the increasing price of milk throughout will help us to look back on 2021 as a glass half full type of year.

Next year might be more of a challenge however, with all inputs rising significantly in cost and quickly overtaking what looks like a strong milk price for the start of the year at least.

Hopefully, our new co-op structure in Glanbia will help to balance the books a bit more on the milk price side of the scale.

We have seen a huge rise in the challenges that we face off-farm over the last few years

If we can minimise the amount of feed and fertiliser needed for the first half of the year, costs might start to come back to normal somewhat for the second half. The weather will obviously have a big part to play in this.

We have seen a huge rise in the challenges that we face off-farm over the last few years and this will unfortunately continue right through 2022.

We are being challenged more all the time, in terms of delivering on-farm production and profitability while also improving water quality, biodiversity and carbon emissions.

Research and technology are moving forward all the time, but it’s a big ask to keep pace with all these new environmental targets.

On the home front, the last of the cows were dried off before Christmas, but we’ll be up and running very quickly again in the new year.

Calving starts on 10 January and we should have over 80% of the herd calved by the end of February. Hopefully, milk will flow quickly from the start of the year and the cows that we dried off without antibiotics will calve in healthy and hit the ground running in 2022.

We are not the first to try this, but it is the first time for us to try selective dry cow therapy with a significant portion of the herd, so we will naturally be a little bit more cautious as we watch the herd calving down this year.

Before we get too busy with calving, we have a few extra jobs to get finished up

They seem to be healthy through the first half of the dry period, so hopefully they will calve in OK and give us a bit of confidence to do a certain amount of it again next season.

Before we get too busy with calving, we have a few extra jobs to get finished up.

We will plant a few bundles of trees from the Glanbia biodiversity programme and replace some of the deteriorating ash trees that line a lot of the roadsides and field margins in this part of the country.

We also have some older ash trees to turn into firewood at the other end of the life-cycle.

Our Christmas was unfortunately impacted by a couple of COVID-19 cases in the house in the second half of December.

We never thought COVID-19 would hang around into a third year when it arrived back in 2020

Luckily, everyone got over it in one piece and we should be out of restrictions by the time this goes to print. We’re not the only house affected in the country and with a farm for the kids to roam around and plenty to entertain them, we are not doing too bad.

We never thought COVID-19 would hang around into a third year when it arrived back in 2020. With these new strains developing, it could be around for a while yet.

The restrictions are very hard at this time of year and on young people in particular, but hopefully with boosters rolling out quickly we can have a bit more freedom through the spring and summer.

Finally, best wishes for a prosperous, happy, healthy and safe year in 2022 to all the Irish Farmers Journal readers.