Michael sows sustainability
Farmer Michael Gleeson was presented with a Special Recognition Award at the recent Teagasc/FBD Environmental Sustainability Awards for the work he has done to establish agroforestry on his Ballyhar farm.
The farm north of Killarney belongs to his wife’s family and Gleeson has been farming it organically for the past 15 years. “I’m an environmentalist as much as anything else,” he says. “So when I started farming, I started as I meant to go on.”
He operates a 25-cow suckler herd on the farm, finishing his animals from grass and using home-grown oats as feed. He doesn’t use chemical fertiliser. He recycles slurry and farmyard manure through careful composting and utilises rushes for bedding. He is strict about the observation of buffer zones and closed periods. He practices careful grazing management to help minimise poaching and to protect the soil. And he installed solar PV last year, to further increase his farm’s sustainability and self-reliance.
Read the full story in Kerry’s Eye Digital Edition.
Parlour gains are paying off for Jenny
Jenny Flaherty’s life changed when she married a dairy farmer. Her husband Neilus operates his family’s farm of 140 cows in Moyvane and when Jenny married in, she says she had to be “a quick learner because I don’t have a farming background and had no experience”.
What she did have was experience of managing the fresh foods for a large retail group. That experience gave her an idea for a way that she and Neilus could diversify on their farm and create a new revenue stream. That idea has now come to fruition and it’s called Glenview Farm Milk.
“I saw a gap in the market as there are very few people selling pasteurised non-homogenised milk that was fresh from the farm,” says Jenny. “I knew how high quality the milk is on our family farm and thought this was a gap that we could fill.”
Read the full story in Kerry’s Eye Digital Edition.
