I farm: “160ac of tillage and 60ac of forestry with my father John and brothers Denis and Kieran. We have 50ac of land rented which is also in tillage.”

Crops: “We sow winter barley and winter wheat. In recent years we started to grow rye, oats and oilseed rape.”

At the moment: “We are spreading a bit of manure at the minute. We’ll probably spread a small bit less this year given the price of it but we plan on spreading liquid nitrogen to offset less nitrogen going out in the bag. We’ve also being sowing a bit for our neighbours this spring. We have a combination drill which sows the seed and fertiliser together. We’d be the only ones around with that type of drill and the time to do it as we’ve our own crops sown since last October. Up to now there wasn’t much growth so that kept the weeds at bay.”

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Machinery: “We have a 4m Horsch drill - that’s the combination drill. We have a five-furrow and four-furrow Kverneland plough, a New Holland CX860, a Major flail mower and a Case Puma 175.”

Ploughing success: “We all have an All-Ireland medal for ploughing. I have one, both my brothers, my dad and my sister Maria has one too. It [ploughing] would have been the first thing we were allowed do on the farm when we were young. Dad competed every year so we all had a great interest because of that.”

Land: “Rented land is hard come by around here at the minute. We probably would have sown more crops if the ground became available given the Tillage Incentive Scheme. There are a lot of beef/suckler farmers around us gone into dairy so they’ve taken a lot of the land as a result.”