LATEST ARTICLES
News
Farmer Writes: improved weather brings a flurry of field activity
Gerald Potterton
The greatly improved weather has brought a flurry of field activity and hopefully the current damp and warm soil could make up for some of the lost time, Gerald Potterton writes.
10 May 2023 Farmer Writes
Farmer Writes: mixed-up, fire brigade State policies
What’s green about importing woodchip from Brazil into Foynes, then hauling the 1,500 lorry loads of it across the country to Edenderry power station, asks Gerald Potterton.
26 April 2023 Farmer Writes
Farmer Writes: spring barley sown in a dust storm
With fertilising the winter crops largely finished, it’s full-on spraying time now, writes Gerald Potterton.
Farmer Writes: one of the wettest springs in decades
We never get the cattle out much before mid-April; our grass fields are often wet until May.
12 April 2023 Farmer Writes
Farmer Writes: our tillage industry is in the national interest
Financially poorer tillage farmers are unable to compete with dairy farmers for land rental, and the tillage area is in decline.
29 March 2023 Farmer Writes
Farmer Writes: where do seagulls kip at night?
I’d say a flock of seagulls can greedily devour a huge percentage of the fat worms from a freshly tilled field.
15 March 2023 Farmer Writes
Farmer Writes: The €90,000 limit in new TAMS is super
Gerald Potterton needed the health and safety ticket to qualify for a TAMS grant payment on a new Bogballe fertiliser spreader.
1 March 2023 Farmer Writes
Farmer Writes: fine February carries a health warning
Now I know there are old weather piseogs for every month of the year but most of them have some sort of a sound basis.
15 February 2023 Farmer Writes
Farmer Writes: a man of straw
It seems there’s poor organisation in straw deliveries, and farmers are often left with bales carried over until the following year.
1 February 2023 Farmer Writes
Farmer Writes: old order has changed, it's now all about the environment
Five tonnes per acre of golden wheat, after a full pesticide programme, piling into the grain tank on an abnormally hot harvest day still excites me.
18 January 2023 Farmer Writes
Farmer Writes: back when Ursus and Zetor came on the scene
Gerald Potterton ponders if things would be different if he bought a John Deere when he took over the farm in 1984.
4 January 2023 Farmer Writes
Farmer Writes: it's been a cracker of a farming year, Santa
If the sucklers go, people’s livelihoods go and Santa, there’ll be no need for you to go out west as it’ll become a wilderness, writes Gerald Potterton.
21 December 2022 Farmer Writes