I farm: “20 sucklers and followers, 220 ewes and 300 turkeys on 150ac. The farm is fully organic including 25ac of organic oats for Flahavan’s and 14ac forestry. It’s a family-run enterprise with my wife Finola, daughters Aoife (17) and Dearbhla (16), son Philip (10) and father Seamus.”

Livestock: “The 20 spring-calving continental sucklers are run with a Charolais bull. We keep all our own weanlings and finish them at two years of age. The 220 March-lambing ewes are predominantly Bluefaced Leicester crosses and put to Hampshire Down, Texel and Blue Texel rams. We ran a Galway ram with the ewe lambs this year.”

Turkeys: “We rear 300 free-range organic turkeys every year for the Christmas market. The birds come in the first week of September as day-olds at €4.50 each and start out in a special unit under heat. As they get a little hardier, they’re moved to a tunnel. At six to eight weeks, the turkeys are introduced to an outdoor paddock. One of the biggest expenses is the organic poultry meal at €750/t. Our aim is to rear a free-range organic turkey as naturally as possible and they’ve done a tremendous thrive this year. Some of them are as big as a sheep.”

Market: “The birds will be killed this week and processed for Christmas customers. There can be a mixture on the weights, from about 6kg deadweight up to 14kg. I sell a lot of them farm to fork and others to local butchers.”

Bird flu: “You’d be worried about bird flu at the moment and if it came to our door, every one of our birds would be gone. It’s something you have to take very, very seriously.”

Organic: “I’m involved in the Irish Organic Association and I’m organics chair of the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association. We’re promoting organics and encouraging every farmer to really consider going into organics by 2023, especially with the €262m funding that’s there from Government. If you look at my stocking rate and consider that the price of fertiliser doesn’t matter to me, the evidence is there, that organic farming can be done.”

Quotable quote: “To be an organic farmer, you have to be a better farmer.”