HERD IMMUNITY: Forget Farmageddon, we are as busy as ever

In the first instalment of our new farming column, our man fills us in on the goings on.

Sean Deere

So Spring, has sprung (ish) after a long and wet autumn and winter. Farmers are busy - then again, we always are.

As this is the first instalment of this column, I better explain the lie of the land, no pun intended. I am a small farmer (well, I’m 5ft 11’ but you get my drift) working in tandem with my wife in rural Ireand.

There is no such thing as an agri shutdown so for the duration of the current crisis, I’ll be bringing you an update on the hardest working men in showbiz, the farmers, and how they are coping.

We will start where we always do, with the weather. In the months gone by, as I say, it has been mild but very, very wet. In those kinds of conditions, we - the farmers – literally spend a lot of time talking dung – more specifically, when are we going to get it out of our tanks and on to our land.

Excessive rain over the winter months creates unhealthy conditions in which to house livestock and at the height of calving season, that’s a big problem. This winter, slurry tanks were fast filling up and we were further handcuffed by the fact that even when there is a window of a few dry days, EU rules state that slurry cannot be spread before February 1.

Due to the mild temperatures and lack of frost, grass kept growing too but the constant rain meant cattle could not be let out to graze it. That put pressure on silage supplies, which is the bane of what I call The Bad Farmer, a character about whom you will hear a lot more in the coming weeks.

Who is The Bad Farmer? He’s the guy, usually but not always getting on in years, who still operates on the same model he learned back in the olden days. Instead of viewing his farm as a commercial concern, a small enterprise the purpose of which is to generate a profit, TBF’s work practices are so out-dated that his farm is more like an expensive hobby of sorts.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not ageist. There are many older farmers who have moved with the times. Some are actually leaders in their localities. To paraphrase Leo Varadkar from a couple of weeks ago, not all heroes wear capes. Some wear flat caps…

But I digress. Back to the slurry. Thankfully, just as it was getting near to the slats, February 1 arrived. That’s known now as St Brigid’s Day – back in pagan times, it was called Imbolc, falling halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

Modern day farmers greet its arrival with similar glee as did our loin-clothed ancestors (some would say not much has changed on that score). That’s the day we finally get our slurry out, just before, to coin a phrase, the shit hits the slats.

This year, I finally did so with an umbilical system fitted with a dribble bar which in my opinion is the Rolls Royce of slurry spreading technology. I was relieved that I made the move at that time as the weather deteriorated badly from mid-February on and we wouldn’t have been able to drive on the fields again up until the recent fine spell.

My father, who to be fair to him has stayed loyal to that aforementioned hunter-gatherer tradition, always says “there’s more drying on one day in Spring than a week later in the year”.

After it rained all over our (cancelled) parades on St Patrick’s Day, I was beginning to doubt the ould lad’s sanity but lo and behold, his words of wisdom rang true and about 10 days after that deluge, I headed off with some urea to, and I’m channeling my inner Boris Johnson here, ‘get slurry done’.

It really does amaze me how soil recovers so quickly in the right conditions. Here’s an example. We have one particularly soft hill which is a bit awkward for early grazing. Every year I try and graze it as late as possible and fertilise it early the next spring for early silage (I’m talking May here).

On Friday last, just before dark, I walked this particular field. After plodding through a few wet spots, I cursed my folly for even thinking about getting out with fertiliser within the next few days.

Yet on Saturday morning after all chores had been completed, some strange urge took hold of me to again get the wellies on and take a stroll around this field. Surely it couldn’t have dried that much, I thought, even though it had been a cold, breezy night and there had been an east wind blowing all morning.

But the old man’s maxim was churning around in my brain like an agitator (if you don’t know what that is, google it) and he was proved right - I hate when that happens. As if if by magic, the field was by now if not bone dry then certainly trafficable!

So, I returned indoors for a while and after the spuds, I loaded up the 0-7-30 and got back out to spread bag-stuff. And as I looked out the window of the trusty Six-six (for non-farmers, that’s the John Deere 6600) the thought struck me: after a terrible finished to 2019, with shocking weather and brutal prices, how satisfying it was to get back to some field work.

All in all, a good day’s work done. Fertiliser spread and the fodder looked after, it was time to put the feet up and spent the evening in front of the telly which, given the times that are in it, is probably as close as a farmer gets to working ‘remotely’.

Until next week, keep her country.