The wind turbine had tripped and Bill (my brother-in-law) was going up the hill at the back of the yard to check it out. We were visiting Mrs P’s father in Co Tyrone and as it was a bright day, I volunteered to go with Bill for the walk as the farm overlooks the Finn Valley and it’s a picturesque place. The river was in flood below us, as it has been, like everywhere, very wet of late.

The 30-metre turbine was quickly sorted and the blades groaned into a lazy rotation in the dying breeze. Bill was busy – dairy farmers are always busy – and went off to feed silage and I was left free to have a poke around.

I love to have a poke around someone else’s farm, and all the more so when you’re given free rein. I’d even brought the wellies in anticipation…

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First stop was the workshop – you can tell a lot about a fellow by his workshop. Lately I visited a tillage farmer in Co Wicklow and he had a super, well-equipped and tidy large workshop, with proper shelving for spare parts and such like.

A classic John Deere lay in a state of undress and was clearly a hobby tractor being restored maybe in these wet short days.

Now I don’t wish to be rude about my brother-in-law, but Bill’s workshop was at the other end of the spectrum and, in the interests of marital harmony, I’ll say no more.

But a dairy farmer in what passes for his workshop is like me in the lingerie section in Marks and Spencer – we’re both quickly passing through and very uncomfortable about the whole experience.

Most dairy farmers have just a monkey wrench and a hammer which are lost under teat liners, empty mineral buckets and 20l drums of vacuum pump oil (which goes into everything – engines and transmissions, even the feeder wagon gearbox).

Moving swiftly on and to the two Lely Astronaut robotic milkers, which always amaze me. The whole robotic milking thing revolves around the fact that cows love meal.

It’s also such a hygienic process and I’d wager that the cell count in such milk is lower than parlour milk. Robots have to be the future for milking but, as I see it, with anymore than three robots, the legs are walked off the cows and better to keep them in and zero-graze.

The grain roller had started up reassuringly rolling a ration for the weanlings in the frosty early evening air and is very much a sound of my own childhood when a Fordson Major was belted up to a grinder. Bill and his dad used to roll all their rations with barley sourced cheaply from me, but now, due to reduced labour, most is bought in.

I could also hear the gas-fired generator running in the background which feeds into the national grid (as does the wind turbine) but uses biomethane gas from an off-site AD plant.

The massive eight cylinder-in-line Perkins engine looked like it was out of a Challenger tank but now was peacefully running like a clock 24/7 pumping out 270KW at 1500RPM.

Bill was well on with the feeding at this stage and coming back into yard, threw open the Manitou door to extol the virtues of his Prodig shear grab with Hardox tines and film catcher.

With the failing light and a promising red sky forming out west, I wandered thoughtfully back to my father-in-law’s house.

I was left with the impression of a busy and sustainable farm with a well managed alternative income stream from renewable power generation. This is, to my mind, far smarter than pushing cow numbers ever upwards.