With a 16-month old daughter and a full-time job as a chartered accountant, Karen O’Donoghue is an unlikely member of Ireland’s army of farm contractors, but it all adds up to a fulfilling lifestyle for the Co. Limerick woman.
Karen, who has been working with her father Michael’s business, O’Donoghue Agri, in Banogue, Croom, since she was 16, features in ‘Contractors’, a new series starting on TG4 on February 24, at 9:30p.m.
The seven-part observational entertainment-based documentary series explores the working lives and personal narratives of seven agricultural contracting families from diverse locations over the critical six-month period from April to September.
Karen helps out with all aspects of the family’s contracting offering including precision chop silage; round and square baling; raking; tedding; slurry spreading; dumper hire; wrapping and stacking bales; ploughing and tillage work.
“My dad had been a teacher in Croom for 37 years. In 1976, he bought his first tractor and baler as he was bored during the summer months. He bought the silage gear during the 1980s and that’s how it started,” said Karen.
“Now the line-up includes a Krone harvester; a JCB loading shovel; eight tractors – John Deere and New Holland, I’m a New Holland fan myself; silage trailers; Fusion balers; square balers; rakes and tedders; hedge cutters; slurry tanks; reseeding equipment; a disc harrow; a power harrow and rollers.”
Karen, whose partner is a Bruree dairy farmer, admitted that some people wonder why, with such a busy lifestyle already, she would want to continue helping with the contracting.
“It’s what I grew up with,” she said.
“There are four of us in the family; I have two older brothers and an older sister and they’re all involved. Micheal joined dad in the early ’90s and Gerard joined in 2009. Claire also helps out.
“I was very fortunate to be on maternity leave last summer. I always give a hand in the summer. This year I will take annual leave.”
While she acknowledged that contracting is demanding work with long hours, her passion for it is so strong that she even spends spare time looking at the work being carried out by other members of the family.
Bad weather, health and safety concerns and short seasons can all make for headaches.
“The harvester could be out for only three weeks – the Krone can pick up over 100ac on a good day – and labour is a very unknown factor,” said Karen.
“We depend a lot on college students but they have to have the knowledge. We’ve been fairly lucky with the people we’ve taken on every year.
“There are lots of costs and overheads involved in contracting. We’re fortunate to have a good client base since dad set up the business but for anyone going into contracting, there is fierce competition. We are surrounded by contractors but we have a few that we work with which is nice.”
Drawing silage is one of Karen’s favourite jobs.
“It’s fast paced. The days are long but they fly. You have the radio on and you’re driving away,” she said.
“I have a lot of deadlines in my day job as a fund accountant so it’s nice to have a sense of release. I often go straight from work to silage after getting a text from my brother. I can’t wait for the long evenings.
“Contracting is a big part of my life. I always try to get a day off for the first day out at silage or sometimes fortunately it’s a weekend.
“Come Christmas and we’re talking about the slurry season in January. We’re very busy at the moment with slurry and drawing bales. We will be reseeding in March/April, depending on the weather. We could get a call about silage in mid-May,” she said.
With her father having retired from teaching over 13 years ago and concentrating on contracting and her mother Marjorie acting as chef, it’s a real family affair for the O’Donoghue clan.
“We’re very close. We’re not the Brady bunch but we all pull together and we all live within a six mile radius of home,” Karen said.
“Clodagh is tractor-mad and with the nephews also fascinated by machinery, we have a readymade crew to follow in our footsteps,” she concluded.