LATEST ARTICLES
Viewpoints
Home Farm: dry weather drives progress
Matt Dempsey
The beans are in a full six weeks earlier than last year and there is now nothing left to sow.
19 March 2025 Viewpoints
Home Farm: Spring work underway
As I write, we are sowing the beans. I was interested to see that our delivery came from Denmark.
12 March 2025 Viewpoints
Home Farm: Lime levels being counted
We don’t use that much lime, but it’s noticeable that even on just one farm that pH levels vary from one field with a pH of over 7.5 while a small grass paddock was analysed at 5.5.
Home Farm: all systems go
The first priority was to get the Roundup on the beans ground – it badly needs cleaning up before sowing.
5 March 2025 Viewpoints
Home Farm: Spring plans delayed
The beans are going into fields that had a terrible crop of winter barley, a bad crop of winter wheat and a reasonable crop of late sown spring barley.
26 February 2025 Viewpoints
Home Farm: value in genotyping animals accurately
I was acutely aware there were huge gaps in performance and profitability between the best performing, average and the worst animals as they left after roughly a year on the place.
19 February 2025 Viewpoints
Home Farm: know your potassium (K) level
In our recent soil test, I was horrified to find that the soil was index 1 for K (potassium).
12 February 2025 Viewpoints
Home Farm: Storm damage - wires and trees
Within an hour chainsaws and a heavy duty loader were on the scene and the road was cleared.
29 January 2025 Viewpoints
Home Farm: straw runs out
The first job is to get the slurry fully under control so that if we do get a prolonged spell of wet weather, there won’t be a problem with storage capacity under the slats.
22 January 2025 Viewpoints
Home Farm: crops fair well in cold spell
I have never seen ground conditions as good in mid-January and the longer heavy rain stays away, the better for the next few weeks.
15 January 2025 Viewpoints
Home Farm: slurry additives
Whether grazing so late in the year was the right decision, I am not sure.
8 January 2025 Viewpoints
Home Farm: Analysing our dairy beef results
The difference in final price between the best and the worst was a really signifiant €340.
1 January 2025 Viewpoints