My Farming Week: Linda Hanbidge, Kiltegan, Co Wicklow

Despite being a trained make-up artist, Wicklow woman Linda Hanbidge has no regrets about her unusual career change to dairy farming.

“I am passionate about make-up and I have three brothers, so I never thought I would be the one farming.

“Now I am an out-and-out farmer, I couldn’t imagine myself doing something else.”

For two years, Linda trained as a make-up artist for film and theatre at IADT Dun Laoghaire.

After that she worked as an outreach co-ordinator for a youth organisation focused on teaching young people to make films.

She returned to her family farm in Kiltegan, Co Wicklow, in February 2011 to help out in the run-up to her brother Niall’s wedding.

In August of that year when her parents travelled to Australia for a month, it was Linda who took care of the farm in their absence.

“I did not have to start learning from scratch. I milked for the first time on my own at 17-years-old when my parents went away for a week.

“All the other stuff, the calving, lambing and tractor work, I had to learn.”

Now Linda farms alongside her father, Alan. Her youngest brother, Gordon, currently works for Kevin Nolan in Tullow and her other brother, Warren, drives artic lorries for Norman Hall Haulage. They milk 60 cows and have 99 sheep plus five Zwartbles sheep, which her mother Rosemary loves for their wool blankets.

“We keep our heifer calves as replacement heifers and sell our bull calves straight from the yard before they are six-weeks-old.”

Their farm is unusual as they milk a French breed known as Montbeliarde, a red and white cow.

“There are very few full herds of them in Ireland. My dad started milking them in 1993 because he was looking for bigger cows, and these fatten quite well so they serve a dual purpose.”

She adjusted to work as a farmer quite naturally, though one hurdle was getting use to a significantly different social scene.

“After the first year I realised I missed people sometimes, as meeting people around the country was what my work was about. Because I went to boarding school it is only now that I am getting to know the locals.”

Linda now lives in her grandparents’ old house with her fiancé, George, who spends every spare minute helping with the farm. They are to marry next April. CL