It’s not often that Leitrim land is dry enough to elicit a wildfire, but we had one occur about a kilometre away from the farm before the weather broke near the end of May.

While it was confined to a bog, it did require quite a bit of work to douse as the area is very difficult to access. I do feel for the local wildlife having to run from the flames if they were able.

As I was watching the blaze from our hill after midnight while on my way to check a cow, I heard a deer in the meadow next to me and I’m not sure who got more of a fright. The following morning it was like Leitrim had elected their own pope as white smoke billowed into the air, but thankfully it was put out by the evening – though it did cause quite a swathe of damage.

The cow in question I was going to look at that night certainly took her time about calving. It’s quite a few years since we had one carry over 300 days, but eventually we had ourselves a large Blonde bull.

He certainly was blessed with brawn over brains, as he had all the intelligence of an ironing board and required tube feeding for the first couple of days before he finally got the hang of a bottle and then we had to persevere with switching him onto the cow.

Much easier said than done, as she has a kick that would rival any forward on a GAA team.

I’ve heard it said before that cows can’t kick backwards, but I’m here to inform everyone that they can indeed, and also sideways and forwards.

So I bore the brunt of a few well aimed hooves despite using all the anti-kicking tricks we could think of, and my arm has turned a lovely shade of purple in the past fortnight, along with my shin.

We’re now on the home run with calving for this year as the remaining few are either gone overdue or are due at the beginning of this month.

Not to be left out of any fun, I walked out to see the stock one morning to find a heifer shaped hole in the hedge and our two heifers gone walkabout. With one being black and the other white, I didn’t expect them to be hard to find but they were happy to prove me wrong.

After hours of searching on both tractor and quad through what felt like every back road in the surrounding area they were found merrily grazing away in a hidden corner beside the lake.

As they’ve never shown any sign of escaping before I have an inkling the aforementioned deer I blundered into the other night might still be around and being two young ladies prone to flight of fancy, they took off once it appeared.

One thing I will say, they’re easily moved anywhere as I put the halter on one and the other lady followed meekly behind all the way to the shed.

While halter training is time consuming, a person could get used to walking into a field and leading the stock away with no shouts or sticks being waved, not to mention no bucket needed either.

Though any feeling of smugness over well behaved stock disappeared when a few days later I found the cows had also completed a Houdini vanishing act, though being slightly less energetic, they only broke into the meadow next door and were merrily grazing away.