Pencil-pushers in the agri-sector would have us believe you can construct various divisions and pigeon-hole people based on enterprise, area-farmed, age group, hair colour, etc, but the reality is that only two types of farmer exist.

There is the small group of us who like sheep and then there is everyone else. There is no middle ground – you either love them or hate them.

Sheep, on the other hand, demand emotional commitment

While a farmer can convert to dairy, and spend the next 20 years milking cows, he or she does not have to like them. It’s just a practical business arrangement. The same goes for stocking a beef farm with weanlings and store cattle, as long as there’s a margin.

Sheep, on the other hand, demand emotional commitment. You have to like them or else you will end up detesting the sight of the woolly buggers, sell them all and spend the rest of your life giving out about them.

Much of the resentment towards these misunderstood, ditch-jumping animals stems, I believe, from farmers’ younger days when they might have been used as a sheep-chasing labour unit on the farm of a bachelor uncle.

Back then, sheep fencing comprised pallets, baling twine, blackthorn branches, and furze bushes. And so, many the wannabe young farmer was put off sheep for life, having spent summer holidays hunting them back in from the neighbour’s place.

Small wonder many grew up determined never to have those little white yokes around the place

The next job was to get the band-saw and cut a few big thorny branches. You then dragged them into the sheep’s escape hole and spent the next few days picking thorns out of your hands. All the while waiting for the sheep to find the next hole in the ditch, when the process would begin again.

Small wonder many grew up determined never to have those little white yokes around the place.

The number of furs bushes in active use has steadily decreased since and a few different types of fence have been erected

Memories of digging thorns out of my fingers with one of my mother’s sewing needles have been on my mind these past few weeks. After coming close to getting rid of the little white yokes in 2018, we decided to try to do things properly this year. We started with fencing.

The number of furs bushes in active use has steadily decreased since and a few different types of fence have been erected. These range from 24in sheep wire with two strands of barbed wire on top to five strands of barbed wire at boundary ditches, and four strands of electric fence along roadways.

Each option was guided by what was needed and what was already available, as well as the cost of materials, naturally enough. The average cost per metre so far has been €2.50 to €3, not including labour. We have concentrated on field boundaries so far, but internal paddocks will be gradually set up over the next 12 months.

Already, the transformation has been more than we could have imagined.

The odd blackthorn branch is still strategically placed here and there

I make no apologies for throwing out a clichéd phrase, but we have grown more grass and carried more stock than we did before the fencing was in place. It really is that simple, and my initial reluctance to invest was plainly incorrect.

The odd blackthorn branch is still strategically placed here and there. But I’m hoping our young lads, if they have an interest in farming, will grow up to see sheep as a viable option, and do not develop that involuntary twitch most other farmers have at the very mention of the word sheep.