I am a part-time farmer. I farm at weekends, in the evenings and early mornings.

Most of my holiday time from work is taken to go farming at the busiest times of the year. This makes me typical of almost half of Ireland’s farmers.

According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), there were 54,993 part-time farmers in 2020, compared with 75,223 full-time farmers. That’s more than two in five who are running farms and working off them.

Farming part-time is a juggling act at the best of times. You have to be pretty organised and you can’t afford much downtime.

If you’re feeding animals at seven in the morning before heading for work or feeding them at seven in the evening having returned from work, there isn’t much margin for error. The tractor has to start, the loader better not burst a seal or a pipe.

Variables

There are so many variables in farming, including fluctuating input and commodity prices, and ever-changing regulations and schemes.

However, in practical terms, the biggest two variables are weather and the fact that you are dealing with a large number of animals.

Animals that get sick or lame, that break fences, that give birth. Sheep can get stuck on their backs and die in a couple of hours on a hot day.

So farmers need to maintain constant vigilance. This is hard to do when you have another job, another employer, other priorities.

For that reason, I decided to focus on tillage farming soon after I joined the Irish Farmers Journal. The fact that the sheep flock was diagnosed with scrapie made that decision much easier.

My son suggested that the months have been put on shuffle this year

I was lucky to have the option - most of our land is suitable for tillage. However, the other big vagary - the weather - remains, in fact it becomes, even more important. And the weather this year has been very unco-operative.

My son suggested that the months have been put on shuffle this year. It certainly feels like it.

An exceptionally dry and mild February was of little use, although most farmers planted a little as we moved into early March. Then the weather broke around 8 March and it stayed broken for two months. We battled like all tillage farmers, scrambling here and there, grabbing any weather window that was granted. Even so, it was well into May before planting had been completed.

The fact that my two main lieutenants - my older sons - were both doing final exams meant I was caught for help as the spring progressed. Fortunately, I have very obliging neighbours who are happy to hop in and help out when they can.

Drought and then rain

And then the rain stopped, just as we no longer needed it dry. And when it stopped raining, it stopped for seven weeks.

In that time, the crops emerged and grew with little rain or, in the case of the last sown field of barley, no rain at all, until late June. And the hottest Irish June in recorded history was followed by the wettest July.

There is little doubt that climate change has played a significant role in the changing weather. Irish weather used to be a little of everything - and all things in moderation is a recipe for success in farming as in life.

But now we seem to have long stretches of one weather type or another, which is not good for growing crops or for grazing animals.

Wet summers

I know that we always had wet summers, just like we always had the odd scorching summer. And there is a pattern of one following the other; the memorable hot summers of 1976 and 1984 were followed by awful wet years.

And last year was a dream for tillage farmers, with excellent yields, quality, price (the holy trinity as one friend remarked) joined by windows of good weather, allowing work to proceed at an even pace under excellent conditions, reducing stress on man and machine.

This year is the direct opposite. Crops have been flattened by heavy rainbursts. Many farmers, myself included, were fearful of applying growth regulators to drought-stressed crops, which left them vulnerable.

When crops are down, they are harder to harvest, with combines gingerly running as close to the ground as possible to catch all the heads.

Lodged crops are also prone to sprouting and fungal infections such as fusarium. This means crops won’t pass the stringent quality tests for malt barley and other value-added crops.

I made the decision to sell the combine a couple of years ago

Narrow weather windows are narrowed further for part-time farmers by their divided loyalties. That’s why I made the decision to sell the combine a couple of years ago.

Keeping an old combine on the go requires patience, skill and time. I don’t have large quantities of any of those attributes. Instead, I’m lucky to have my neighbours - the Whelans - to cut the corn. We can only hope that the August weather beats the long-range Met Eireann forecast, giving beleaguered crops and their owners a chance to bring a difficult year to a decent conclusion.

Extreme weather events

Meanwhile, a handful of farmers nearby are still counting the cost of the latest example of extreme weather.

Following the floods of Christmas 2021 across the polders of south Wexford and the mini-tornado that ripped through Clongeen last November, there was an intense burst of hail just outside Enniscorthy in June.

All we heard eight miles away was a constant rumble of thunder for a solid half an hour, but hailstones the size of gobstoppers flailed crops of oilseed rape, barley, potatoes and cabbage.

The damage was significant and for a high-cost crop such as potatoes, the financial loss is serious.

The Irish Farmers' Association is looking for compensation for these farmers, but the true loss involved won’t be known until the crops are harvested - salvaged might be a better word.

Crop insurance conversation

It’s time to start the conversation around crop insurance. It’s part of the standard model of farm support in the United States, where extreme weather is a constant threat.

We need to acknowledge that unpredictable weather patterns and more frequent extreme weather events make farming riskier. That risk is multiplied for people growing high-value, high-cost crops.

We’re not talking about minor losses - they are part of the normal fluctuation of farming. The cost of insurance of that type would be prohibitive, because claims would be a constant.

No, what’s needed is cover that is not too costly and which only is triggered by severe loss.

Meanwhile, thousands of farmers are preparing for one of the highlights of their calendar, the local show, or perhaps a national one.

Huge numbers of part-time farmers keep small numbers of animals, but show them with pride alongside their full-time fellow farmers.

The average pedigree herd is small. Let’s wish them luck and hope the skies stay clear for the few hours across the bank holiday weekend for the more than dozen shows to proceed.