ON A FARM IN Co Meath, a clutch of noisy hens eyes up a cow with trepidation. This is not your typical farmyard scene, however. While the cow clearly belongs here, the hens do not: these ones have large L-plates on their backs, devil horns on their heads and no feathers.
The bride-to-be is receiving tips from a farm-hand on how to relax the cow in order to prepare her for milking. The animal seems unfazed by the advances but the bride recoils at the first touch of the cow’s teat, causing some of the hens to shriek and turn tail.
This unlikely scene is par for the course on Causey Farm, a working farm near Kells, Co Meath, which provides activities for groups of hens, school children, tourists and even business people.
Everybody is invited to take part in such activities as milking cows, baking bread, set dancing and a (very mucky) Causey farm invention called bog-jumping.
The farm is run by the Murtagh family. Parents Lily and Tom live there, while three of their eight grown-up children are involved in running the business. They started by giving guided tours to primary-school students as a way to make some extra money, but it has since turned into a business in its own right.
Deirdre Murtagh explains: “We started in 1998 during the second phase of the BSE crisis when our farming income was way down, so it was totally driven by necessity. In 2003 we decided to a programme for tourists using the skills and resources that we had on the farm already such as bread-baking and giving lessons on how to play the bodhrán.”
Eight years on, three families are making their living from the enterprise, although Murtagh says it is only in recent years that they have done so.
The Murtaghs are not alone in branching out and a number of Irish farmers are using their skills to make money. Some farmers are selling their home-made produce and wares at cooperatives and markets. Others offer home stays to tourists.
Most farmers are doing this out of necessity. Some people are making good money from farming, but there are many households struggling to make ends meet. A national survey published by Teagasc last March found that farm incomes had increased by 48 per cent between 2009 and 2010. It showed, however, that the average income last year was just €18,000. The survey classified 37,000 Irish farms, almost 40 per cent, as “economically vulnerable” meaning they are not viable businesses in which neither the farmers nor their spouses have an outside income.
External factors, such as the weather, disease and fluctuations in the cost of animal feed and the prices gained for produce, mean that income levels are unpredictable.
Falls in the price of milk drove dairy farmer Johnny Lynch to take a punt on what appeared to be a madcap scheme proposed by his neighbour, businessman Toby Simmons, one St Patrick’s Day.
When Simmons suggested he breed water buffalo at his farm in Cork in order to produce Irish mozzarella, Lynch thought his friend might have had one too many. The price of milk was down to 20 cent a litre at the time, however, so Lynch decided he had nothing to lose. He sold his cows and with the help of a government grant imported 36 water buffalo from Italy.
The two are now producing Toonsbridge Dairy buffalo mozzarella for sale in market stalls. Demand for the cheese is high, helped by the fact that, the fresher it is, the better it tastes.
Lynch says he is delighted he made the switch and that business is flying. “Milk prices have come back up, but I’m not sorry,” he says. He has a herd of more than 60 buffalo and hopes to be milking 40 of them within the next year, with a potential yield of 2,500 litres.
Lynch says that more and more farmers are finding alternative ways of making money as the industry has become “nearly impossible” for those with small farms.
“If the single farm payments are hit, I don’t know how people will survive. Anyone with less than 100 milking cows? I just don’t know how they’d manage.”
While some farmers are looking at alternative ways to turn a profit, there are also people looking to get involved in the sector, in the hopes of creating a second income.
John O’Neill, for example, has begun farming Dexter cattle part-time at his home in Kilkenny in the hopes of doing so.
“Ultimately, my objective would be to produce beef,” says O’Neill. “The meat is extremely well-marbled and produces a very small joint, which is appealing to a certain market and it’s a very, very high quality beef.”
O’Neill, who is from Carlow, is playing his part in the conservation of an ancient Irish cattle breed. Dexter cattle are the smallest breed in Ireland and Britain and one of the world’s smallest at about one-third the size of a Friesian milking cow. They are about 40 inches tall on average when fully mature.
“You can’t make a living out of it but it’s a very pleasant sideline,” says O’Neill.
The breed, which used to be exported to England in the late 19th century, had all but died out here.
The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is now attempting to redress that situation by offering grants to help restore stocks of Dexter in Ireland.
