‘It’s a new year, and it’s good to be alive – embrace it'

It’s a new year and it’s good to be alive. To have your life stretching out before you is wonderful. Embrace it. Change the things that need changing. It is critical to be able to assess what the year ahead might be like for the farm. There are always choices. Make time for assessing those choices. Put it in the diary.

If you don’t use a farm diary, then think about starting to use one – it has great benefits. Tim has kept a farm diary since he started to farm. He firstly enters the weather of the day along with the rainfall amount measured in the rain gauge in the garden. It’s followed with where the cows are grazing and the cover of grass that was on the field.

Any changes in the cows’ diet are also recorded, silage in or out, meal in or out and amounts fed, sales and purchases of animals and machines and any other important farm events. It’s a wonderful discipline. Most of the pages have a few lines and then you’d find a page full of facts and figures if Tim was researching something for the farm.

The farm plan

The only personal stuff that makes its way into the diary are the births of children and grandchildren and the deaths of loved ones. Tim’s late father, Denis also kept a farm diary. It’s a nice account of what farming life was like through 63 years. It’s never too late to start that diary.

The farm has to have a plan. It is easy to drift along without one. If you don’t have one, then make one. Most successful farmers have at least a five-year plan and, hopefully, a 10-year plan. It doesn’t have to be a daunting thing.

It can comprise three or four important goals for the farm. If it’s a more detailed plan, it will include how the farm is going to achieve those goals. Always let the children know what the plan is and be positive about it.

Most successful farmers have at least a five-year plan and, hopefully, a 10-year plan. It doesn’t have to be a daunting thing

That will be groundwork done for the succession plan for the farm. Having the farm business and the running of the farm house separated from each other is a prudent move. Have a house account that money goes into every month. It preserves everyone’s sanity when times are tough on the farm.

It leaves no room for blame or acrimonious thoughts that lead to unnecessary arguments.

Other challenges

If you have health challenges as I have, then it is important not to dwell on them. Live each day with a positive attitude. Stay in the moment. Ask yourself, what can I do today to help out on the farm and take my mind off myself?

Maybe go meet someone for a chat and a cuppa. Time is most precious so use it wisely. Yes, it will be challenging to manage budgets, meet bank commitments and keep cashflow right with a falling milk price. We’ve been there before.

Cutting costs and farming with frugality will be important for 2026.

Hopefully, I will be in London for surgery to remove the tumour under my arm when you are reading this. Think of me. I am terrified. The aim of the objective is to delay the cancer spread and give me more time.

After the presidential election, I heard one of the political pundits assess the Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s chances of leading Fianna Fáil into the next election.

He said that all Micheál needed was to buy time – because when you buy time – you create opportunity.

That’s it in a nutshell for me. I am buying time, with the help of wonderful medical care, to continue to live my beautiful life.

I owe it to myself to make worthwhile use of that time.