This week Anne Brady takes the helm at the @IrelandsFarmers twitter account.
Anne was one of the founders of the Irelands Farmers account (formerly known as tweeting farmers) and is farming with her dad at Erne Bank Farm in South West Cavan. They are milking a dairy herd of a hundred cows, milking a mix of breeds: Norwegian Red, Aryshire, Jersey and Shorthorn along with a few Holsteins that are left.
Erne Bank Farm was originally owned by Anne’s grandfather and her father has been farming it since the 1970s. They have a full-time employee and Anne has been working on the farm since she moved from Dublin to Longford. They are in a winter milk scheme so milk all year around. This means that the milking has to be done 365 days a year which makes taking a day off or a week-long holiday all the more difficult. ‘That is one of the downfalls of dairy farming, there always has to be someone around to milk every morning and evening,” she says.
Anne believes that there is still a lot of work to be done to educate consumers about the role farmers play in terms of putting food on our plates and also in terms of their contribution to the economy. No farmers means no food. Anne feels that consumers need to understand what farmers do in order to receive the CAP payment, as it is often portrayed as a free handout.
Follow Anne this week on @IrelandsFarmers for the latest updates from here.