Earlier this year, I shamelessly sold my soul to chemical company BASF at a gig and was rewarded with an opulent two-night stay in Kilkenny’s Lyrath Estate which we did recently. The little Mazda and Mrs P and me were all spruced up for the trip and, surprisingly, we had three fine days in a row which allowed a final autumnal fling with the roof down.

I always like Kilkenny and in the very quaint and olde-worlde riverside town of Inistioge lies the beautiful Woodstock Gardens and Arboretum which are well worth a visit.

Now, I love trees and especially so the stately living giants like you’ll find in the great estates of Woodstock or Birr Castle or Tullynally, Co Westmeath, and elsewhere. It is very much a lasting and living legacy of these estates that their owners in the nineteenth century had the foresight and the vision to plant these beautiful trees.

It is this vision today which we often lack when it comes to planting trees but we as farmers are uniquely placed and indeed privileged to be able to plant trees. Most of us have larger gardens than townsfolk and we all have awkward field corners which are suitable for tree planting, be it amenity or commercial woodland. And we are in the fortunate position of being able to avail of grants to plant commercial forestry.

As I’ve said before, you’ll never be remembered as a super-duper dairy farmer or world-class tillage farmer – these things are transient – but you may be remembered as the person who planted a pair of prominent redwoods or a row of oaks or, better still, a few hectares of hardwoods. While commercially softwoods make more sense, they will never have the positive environmental impact, beauty or longevity of hardwoods.

As for me, we’ve planted a substantial percentage of the farm’s lesser-quality land and awkward corners with hardwoods and I’ve a nice little collection of oaks and others in the garden which is now all planted up. But I’d like to start a pine collection and may have to encroach on an adjacent tillage field …

Mandatory

While tree planting should of course be voluntary, I nonetheless think it should be mandatory for farms of over 200 cows to plant a certain percentage of their farm in hardwoods. This would serve many purposes. It would break the monotony of monoculture paddocked grassland and increase biodiversity. Equally, hardwoods would sequester carbon for years to come to help offset ruminant-produced methane.

A bit rich, you may say, coming from someone who believes cattle are just an easy target and have little or nothing to do with global warming. But it’s about public perception and we need to keep Joe Public (and the media) on side. And, as I say, there are other benefits.

Now I’d better retreat to the safety of tillage matters before I head further up the creek.

Wet autumn

I never remember such a wet autumn as we’ve had this year. While we got most of our wheat sown, I think 44ha of this will never emerge to be a viable crop due to the cold wet soil, puddling and probably slugs. It certainly wasn’t an autumn for min-till and the ploughed wheat fields should be OK. Early sown direct drilled crops seem to have fared better.

With hindsight, I’m now sorry I sowed these fields albeit in acceptable conditions at the time. But they’ve lain wet for too long. The single field of winter barley looks sick and the oilseed rape isn’t inspiring. We are in desperate need of an early and dry spring. Oh, how I wish this horrendous weather was a result of global warming. Then we could do something about it.