I farm: “With my wife Áine and two sons, Tom and Jim. We farm around 55ha. It’s mixed land – a bit of dry ground a bit of peat ground. It can be heavy and difficult in the spring.”

Cows: “There are 115 cows here at the moment. The last few years we have been using sexed semen. Last year we put in 50 sexed semen straws and got 30 calves, 27 were heifers. The rest were Angus, Blues and we mopped up with a Hereford bull. We sell the bull calves locally. This year we bought SenseHub collars and everything is going to AI.”

Slurry storage: “Last year we put in a slurry storage tower. It has probably been the best investment that we’ve made, especially with the spring we had. We couldn’t spread any slurry with the farm being heavy and wet.”

Clover: “Last year we reseeded and put in red clover for the first time. It has worked out well – we used slurry and no chemical N and got a lot of grass off it. We plan on reseeding in the autumn and getting in more clover. We did a bit of overseeding last year, we got a good germination, but it doesn’t seem to be all there, it’s not great.”

Silage: “We got some first cut silage done in really good conditions, we cut it on 20 May. We will cut again, and maybe even a third cut because we got cleaned out completely with fodder this year.”

Open day: “Agri Aware approached me a couple of months ago asking if I would host the open day. They said they wanted to bring school kids out and show them where their food comes from, to make the link between urban and rural. I thought it was a fantastic idea.”

Quotable quote: “I think, as farmers, we need to help ourselves more and portray that good image out there. So our customers can see that we are producing food in a really sustainable way.”