Weather’s a never ending worry
Stand in the Gap, with Kathleen Duffy.
The lovely sunny days generates a holiday feeling for everyone. The shoreline in Virginia and the Lakeside Manor have been packed with people relaxing and soaking up the good weather and enjoying good food. If only it would rain at night it would be perfect.
No one is more affected by weather then farming families. You only have to look at lawns and orchards to see the affect the drought has had on quality. The vegetable growers are having terrible trouble getting germination. In our case, the plums trees are greatly affected and have lost fruit, only the old tree that was sheltered and in deeper ground has held some fruit, while the apple trees are okay. Mary in the Centre tells me it is a great year for honey and she has her beautiful honey for sale. It is darker than what I bought at the end of last year, but Mary says it is the dandelions etc. that makes it this way, nature at its best.
The roses are doing fine because I keep a basin in the sink and rather than letting the water down the sink, and throw the water on the flowers.
June 23, St John’s Eve, used to be Bonfire night for me growing up, a celebration of the summer solstice took place to celebrate the longest day of the year. Also June 24 was considered midsummer day. When we went to Bonfire Night at Quilca Crossroads, forty years ago, there’s no way we could have foreseen we might need to do a rain dance in 2023 in the hopes of overcoming a drought in the month of June. The experts say this year is shaping up to be one of, if not the hottest - and will be all over the world.
Most of the AI serving is over, but we are still getting a few repeats so the bulls will be running with the cows and heifers to mop up. The first scanning will soon take place and we, like all farmers, hope for good results. We don’t need tail painting except for the heifers over in Cross as we have the robot to monitor the cows here at the homefarm.
The grass should be measured every few days, but there is not always someone to do it. The growth rate here last week was 37dm/ha which is low, the downside of our gravelly dry soil, while the rotation is at 23 days. We are waiting for rain to soften the ground so we can put slurry on the silage ground and protected urea on the grazing ground. With the robot we have a three way grazing system, but with the current slow growth rate of grass and even though there is a lot of clover in paddocks, we still have to buffer feed some of this year’s red clover bales. We had to take out some paddocks and pre-mow others as the grass was too stemmy.
We started reseeding one field in the end of May. The bare ground is still there waiting for moisture in the soil to germinate the seed that has yet to be sown.
This soil moisture deficit is the same all over the country. We travelled to a family funeral in Ballinskellings Co Kerry last weekend and we see the same bad quality of grass and unsown reseeds as we travelled down almost all of Ireland.
Our friends tell us the same thing. When the rain came it only landed in certain areas. Lough Ramor seems to split the rain. You look out the window and see the big black clouds and only hope they are coming our way and as true as God they go towards Mullagh. This week is forecast for rain so we may get our wish.
This war in Ukraine is so serious and is having a terrible effect on the world, causing turmoil everywhere, with worries about the cost of living, job security, education and especially the lack of housing. In farming we were somewhat cushioned from this last year with the increase in prices given for our produce. Just when we were starting to spend to improve farming the price of milk is slashed and we are going below cost of production again. The new broom in Lakeland Dairies needs to be very pro-active in turning things round if our latest electricity bill is anything to go by. The worry is the huge increase in costs of inputs, we see the gains eroded as soon as they happen.
The National Farm survey shows dairy and tillage farmers with big gains in profit last year; we will be lucky if it’s not losses we make this year. We are looking at putting in solar panels, and even though there are TAMS grants available, it is a pity that the milk price didn’t stay a little higher to get these new costly jobs done.
Thomas is finishing his stint as Vice President of CEJA (European young farmers Association); he also finished his term on the Board of Macra last month. It was a great experience for him and for us to hear the way agriculture is treated at a European level. He has made friends across many EU countries and we look forward to having a French Ag student here with us for a few weeks.
Every week for the last few years, Catherine O’Leary has had a farming column in the Country Living section of the Farmers Journal. In her recent writings, she tells us how she is undergoing treatment for cancer and we, farm women, wish her a speedy recovery. Our thoughts and prayers are with her and all who are not in their full health at this time, especially those we know and are close to us.