I farm: “With my wife Ann. We have 100ac – it is average ground. About 40ac of good land and the rest is all drained and reclaimed.”

Family: “I have four sons, three daughters and about 15 grandchildren, so there’s a good crowd around to help, but I’m not sure who is going to take it on after me.”

Stock: “We have 100 milking cows and we keep a share of dry cattle. We keep all the calves. We’re spring-calving and milking twice a day. The cows are mostly British Friesian, they leave a good calf after them.”

Parlour: ”We’ve nearly finished a new Pearson parlour. It is a 12-unit herringbone. We’re only on four units for the last 50 years, so I’m looking forward to how much faster the milking will be.”

Denis and Ann Lane with some of their children and grandchildren, before the coronavirus social distancing rules were in place. \ Valerie O’Sullivan

Changes in farming: “The biggest change that has struck me is the paperwork. There’s a pile of work involved in it. You’d want to be very well organised.”

Sucklers: “I used to keep about 25 sucklers at one time and milk 30 cows. The sucklers were fine to start out with, but they turned into a dead loss.”

Triplets: “I bought a new Limousin bull last year. Thankfully, he’s easy calving. One evening I was in the house after the supper and my son went over to the yard and had a look at the cows. He rang me to say a cow had calved, then rang again to say she had twins and then rang again to say she’d had triplets. She calved by herself and all the calves got up. Two drank and we bottle fed the third. The grandchildren are delighted with them.”

Pressure: “There’s a lot of pressure on farmers nowadays. You’d see some farmers up all night, especially at this time of year and that’s not right.”

Quotable quote: “I’d say milk is the only thing now with a real future – whether that lasts or not, I don’t know.”