Features
Farming Outside the Box
"Gods own country" is the phrase Kate Carmody borrows to describes her farm situated at Beale on the Kerry coast looking north to the Shannon estuary and west to the Atlantic.
Conservative dairy farming country is an unlikely setting to find a Liverpool born and raised native and Kate readily admits to ruffling a few feathers in the agricultural community. She represented the ICMSA on the Organic Development Committee and feels she made a positive contribution while also remaining firmly involved in local farming issues.
Trial and error
Describing herself as a 'dedicated environmentalist', Kate took over the farm when her late husband Patrick retired and she decided to convert to organic farming in 1997. "The writing was on the wall for conventional dairying and I converted without a lot of help or advice other than a few good books", she says. Adapting an intensive dairy farm to organic requirements presented problems in relation to housing from the outset. "It was trial and error to begin with. I was advised to remove alternate cubicles in the lying area but it didn't work", Kate says. "Cows crowded into the larger cubicle and udders were trampled causing a lot of damage." A number of cows had to be culled and she bought in eleven pedigree in-calf heifers to bring her herd to sixty pedigree Holstein Friesians.
Hay and silage, including arable silage mixes of barley and peas or oats and peas is made on the 130 acre farm that borders on sand dunes at the seaside. The poor summer weather presented no problems for Kate this year. "We are on good free-draining soil here and it dries up fast", she says. "A lot of tillage was carried on in previous years. Sugar beet was grown very widely after the war". Slurry spreading caused some damage to clover swards and now it is spread only in autumn. "It's not a problem because we have lots of storage so there is no pressure to get it out," she says. Normally, Kate re-seeds one eighth of the farm every year using a mixture from Western Seeds that includes timothy and fescue. "I find that it binds the sward well," she explains.
Cheese tradition
By comparison to most farmers Kate has invested heavily in her farm over the years whether it be plant and machinery or the forty tonnes of ration she buys in for cows annually. Cows are milked all year round and the bulk of it goes to Glenisk with some going to Kerry Co-op. A small percentage goes to produce her own cheese, a business that she hopes to expand. "I began making cheese in 1987 after my mother gave me a present of cheese press," says Kate. "We had a sort of a family tradition - one of my aunts made Wensleydale cheese. I experimented and treated it as a science at first. Now I treat it as a mixture of science and art." She makes an unpasteurised hard acid type cheese and has begun making pasteurised cheddar this year. "All of the cheese is matured for three months," Kate explains "but it will keep for up to fifteen months." She has benefited from the assistance of an expert mentor who provides advice and she also had some help in designing her brand.
The cheese is marketed under the distinctive Beal brand and is sold through several markets in the Cork/Kerry region. It is also distributed through Trevor Irvine of Cheese etc. in Northern Ireland. "We sell off the farm as well," Kate says. "We get a lot of people calling, especially in the summer months." She plans to add two more cold rooms and a processing plant to her enterprise this year.
Utilising waste
Kate has a great fondness for pigs and can raise up to forty in the course of the year. "They are mixtures of all sorts," she says. "Tamworth, Saddleback and Landrace. I love pigs. They are the ultimate waste disposal - a great way of getting rid of leftovers." Some are sold as weaners and the remainder go to a mixture of friends and acquaintances.
Waste of another kind is also on her mind and she has plans to install an anaerobic digester on the farm. "This will be based beside the slurry pit and will take any kind of organic waste," she explains. "It also kills weed seeds and will help to control the spread of weed seeds going back out on the land. It will generate methane that will be used to heat water. We use lots of hot water so it will make the whole farm more sustainable. We might even run the car on it in future."
New attitude to farming required
Kate has some concerns about the future of farming and organic dairy farming in particular. "The price of milk is not keeping pace with conventional prices and there is no incentive to convert for such small gain," she says. "The ideology of the original converts to organic farming is no longer there and that is a big challenge. Not enough farmers are producing organic cereals and it is too expensive at present." She feels that a major rethink is required on the way farming is practiced. "The agri-chemical input into farming frightening. We are sitting on a time bomb. Endocrine disruption and evidence of genetic mutation attributed to chemicals is growing."
The fact that farming and food production has a low priority contributes to the problem in Kate's opinion. "A lot of farmers are farming for the wrong reasons - in many cases because it was the only choice they were given," she says. "Now we have so much education that they don't appreciate what farming and food production is about and how it should be done right. How can you produce a £2 chicken and say it that it is good food? You are what you eat and nothing will be truer in the future."
Kate thinks that organic farming can provide some of the answers to the crisis facing agriculture at present but emphasises that "it is a frame of mind. You have to see outside the box. It's much more satisfying to produce something that people actually want."
Organic farming can be isolating and Kate would like to see more networking opportunities. "The Skillnet programme is a wonderful opportunity for farmers to be in contact because you learn so much from other farmers," she says. "I'd love to see more short courses and to see better use made of the Organic College at Dromcollogher."
Balancing the scales
I asked Kate how she had adapted to a farming lifestyle after growing up in an urban environment. "My family were chemists and in some ways contributed to polluting the environment," she says "and my own training is in bio-chemistry. By becoming an organic farmer, in a strange way I'm redressing that and giving something back. This is such a lovely place; it's easy to acquire a love of the land and the animals. It's a wonderful way to live and be in tune with your environment."
Kate's mild mannered exterior belies an inner strength, and the courage and stoicism she has brought to coping with the recent loss of her husband Patrick as well as raising a family and running a business is admirable. You leave Beale feeling that you have been talking to one formidable woman.
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Tom McKeogh,
Willowbrook Bed and Breakfast, Nenagh, Co.Tipperary. I also worked with you in the lab of Nenagh General hospital in the mid 80's..!
www.willowbrook .ie