Barry O’ Gorman’s farm is situated about 4 miles outside of Thurles town where he lives with his wife Bridget and three children Stephanie, Fiachra and Tadhg.  Barry is farming over twenty years and over those years has availed of many of the services farm relief has to offer. One year on after the milk quota abolition, many changes have happened on farms throughout Ireland Barry in particular is satisfied with where his farm is currently at.

Farming life is very important to Barry who says he has “stuck with it from day one”.  His farm is spread across 200 acres which keeps him busy on a day to day basis.  Over the past year since the abolition of the milking quotas he has planned and expanded his herd to suit his requirements.

“We have increased numbers over the past year from 90 to 140.  We’re farming 200 acres and we keep a small store to store beef as well”.

Farm Relief offer many services to their customers and Barry loves the fact that he can avail of the services if and when he needs them.  Barry does not have the need to have workers constantly on the farm but when he needs work done he never has to worry.

“In our situation, the farm isn’t big enough to sustain a labour unit but we use Farm Relief whenever we need them which is great.”

The past few months have proved rather busy for Barry with Calving season.  During this time Farm Relief sent him out a worker who helped him ‘religiously’ during the peak times.

“My worker only finished last Saturday, he was with me for 8 weeks because we were so busy and needed help during the calving season.”

Barry and his workers hit the ground running at the start of calving season and calved 90% of his cows.  It greatly helped having help on his side to get the work done efficiently.

“We calved 90% of our cows in the first six weeks of the season from the first of February right up to Paddy’s day.  That time is our peak demand and the worker from Farm Relief was there for me 6 days a week during that time which was great.”

Like any other farmer, Barry needs help every once in a while especially when it comes to the more skilled and specialised farm tasks like Freeze branding, de-horning and hoof care.

“I definitely need help with the more skilled stuff like hoof care and the freeze branding.  I need someone trained and skilled to come in and do that and the FRS workers I get never have a bother.”

Even though Barry’s family help him out every now and again he relies on the help of the trained Farm relief workers to come out and help him.  For him it’s complete satisfaction and reassurance knowing the work will get done whilst he carries on with other farm work.

“We can’t sustain the labour unit all the time and I can’t be relying on the family labour, they do help out but they are not there all the time – you can’t expect them to be.  Farm Relief are always obliging.  I would most definitely recommend them.  The workers are all skilled and have been on training courses too so they know what it is all about and always get stuck right in.”

For the near future Barry doesn’t plan to expand much more and is happy with his increase to 140 cows.  It was a target reached and he is satisfied.  Due to the increase in numbers, Barry predicts this summer to be pretty hectic for them and so plans to contract out farm relief for the evening milkings.  For him the beauty of the whole thing is being able to continue working on his farm worry free.

“This summer because our numbers have increased we will contract out the evening milking to Farm Relief and that’s my plan going forward.  I won’t have to worry at all and can go on about my business while they tend to the milking.  It’s great really”.

Barry also has the added peace of mind that if he couldn’t work his farm tomorrow due to an accident or sickness he could call in FRS to take over under his membership benefit scheme visit www/farmrelief.ie/membership for more details on the scheme.

Contact FRS Roscrea on 0505 21166 or FRS Cahir on 052 7441 598 and like the FRS Facebook page.