A sunny spring to remember
Kathleen Duffy's popular Stand in the Gap column features in this week's Farm Focus in the Celt...
In the farming world we have just experienced an unbelievable Spring and all are in good form with lots of jobs completed early.
The weekend’s rain was very welcome in farming and gardening circles as trees had become stressed and had started to go into survival mode, hopefully we won’t lose the abundant fruit that has flowered already. For the five weeks of dry weather, we got great long sunny days but it did get cold for lots of nights. The good weather made a hectic spring so much easier than the wet and cold spring of 2024. In the last two weeks the ground started to crunch underfoot doing grass walks and it was beginning to become a bit of a worry about regrowth of grass in this end of Cavan, but the rain has come.
All the silage was collected in beautiful sunshine and all over the country the silage bales were visible from every road. Grass was getting strong and we took out paddocks for baled silage, the red clover in Corfad is baled and over to the sheds. We have put in a few acres of maize and luckily it seems to have struck with the plant coming up under the plastic. We used to grow maize about 20 years ago, but stopped because as it became too expensive. However it is an excellent feed for the early calved cows in spring.
This year the price paid for calves, weanlings, cull cows and finishing cattle was never seen before and is a welcome boost to the farmers’ income. So many new costly improvements need to be done on every farm, especially to comply with the new rules for nitrate storage. We need to increase storage this year which will take a lot of planning. The GEAC 2 rules protect wetlands and peatlands, particularly high-carbon soils. We all got new maps with the BISS applications showing where peatland is part of our fields with red grids, again we have to figure out what practices, if any, we need to change as to how we use this land.
The CAP Schemes of BISS, CRISS Eco and ANC schemes are being sorted again for another year but because of the nitrates derogation, we had to use Teagasc’s help with filling it in.
The circle of life is starting again. The robot automatically records heats so no need for tail painting the cows but we need to observe the heifers. The first serves are being done and we have synchronized heifers again this year as they are on the out farm.
Schools are almost out for summer and we had a Street Feast in the Show Centre with beautiful food from many parts of the world. There are many more events coming up even though a lot of clubs close for the summer. We have children’s summer camps, dementia inclusivity, and fundraisers for various charities including Lavey GFC’s Big music festival - and that’s all in June. July and August are busy too, and if the weather comes back as good again, there is no need to fly to foreign lands for holidays. Think of all the carbon that could be saved!
End of an Era in Virginia
For over 50 years our family have grocery shopped in McEvoy’s. First up at the shop along the road, where Paddy could be seen looking over the vegetables in the back of the delivery truck before anything was off-loaded. He was a farmer for many years as well and a great exhibitor of Shorthorn Cows, winning first prize at Virginia Show. May O’Reilly was in the Post Office and Phyllis Sheridan manned the counter. The McEvoy family grew the business taking it from Spar then Eurospar and then Supervalu, but always known to us as McEvoy’s.
The huge undertaking of developing what we know now as Virginia Shopping Centre driven by Padhraig and Laura was equally as successful. They all worked so hard and gave so generously to all the causes in our own area and further afield, especially in both community and sporting fields. In my time we have used their facilities to fundraise for Daffodil Day, Lurgan Community Games, Virginia Show and Virginia Show centre.
We thank them and wish all the family young and older all the best as they retire from the grocery side of the business and move into the next chapter of their lives staying as the rest of Virginia Shopping Centre.