`I absolutely love it and I think if it's something you love doing, that is much more important than any amount of money or anything else.

"The early mornings and late evenings don't matter because I just love it. I love the cows." That's how Jennifer Halligan describes her job as a farm manager.

Halligan (26) is the manager of a 120-acre dairy and beef farm in St Margaret's, north Co Dublin, and relishes every minute of it. "I start at 8 a.m. and continue to about 6.30 p.m.," she says - adding "I have had longer days."

Jennifer is urban girl gone rustic. Born in Skerries, Co Dublin, the daughter of an engineer, she says her family now call her the "mucker".

"I think they all think I'm mad. But they think it's really good that I've found something I really like to do. Both my parents were a bit iffy but they came 'round. We did have guinea pigs and dogs and stuff like that, but we never had millions of them."

Farming was not her first choice when she was a student at the Holy Faith De La Salle College in Skerries. "From the time I was 12, applied biology was the only thing I wanted to do. I was studying for two years in Herefordshire and I hated it. Basically, it was the course. "I wanted science, but science degrees here entailed physics. In the applied biology course, there was an agriculture module, which I really enjoyed. That was the spark. I came home and wanted to do agriculture or forestry. "I went to the agricultural college in Ballyhaise, Co Cavan, to do agri-forestry, with a view to going to UCD to do agriculture. Half way through that year, I decided I loved farming and that that was what I wanted to do. " She cheerfully remembers that she would hardly have known a cow from a horse at that stage.

"I did a one-year `green cert' course and during that time the Farm Apprenticeship Board (FAB) came to the college and I applied for the farm apprenticeship scheme."

This involves three years of work placements on different farms, being assessed on a regular basis by FAB inspectors. "The first farm was near Enniscorthy, Co Wexford. It was dairy and beef, about 40 cows and their followers. Then I went to Drogheda, Co Louth, to a big herd. There were 140 to 150 cows, pure-bred Holsteins. Then I went to a dairy and beef farm near Navan, Co Meath, with about 80 cows, similar to here. "The FAB is very good. You have visits during the year. They come out and make sure you're doing your book work. It was a good scheme and you got out of it what you put into it."

Halligan is responsible for the day-to-day running of the farm. "I do the milking, the feeding, whatever has to be done on the farm. It's just the boss and myself. I work every second weekend - it's a sixday week. I love it. I love farming. "It's a great way of life, the whole life that comes with the job. We meet with other farm managers in a group for a night about once a month, the ones who live fairly near each other." She has no fear of mud or dirt. And, in her present job, she doesn't have to do the farm accounts, just the detailed and sometimes tedious recording for the herd, which is now required by the Department of Agriculture and the European Commission.

The pay, she says, is not bad. "It goes up as you get more experience. Most places would offer a house as well."

Halligan says she would love to own her own farm one day but acknowledges, laughing, that she might have to marry into one. "With the price of land, it's just not practical."

So her short-term ambition is to manage a top-class pedigree herd. "Quality means a lot," she adds seriously.