‘I am definitely in farming for the long haul’

GERRY LANGEN is heading off for a weekend in Iceland at the end of the month — courtesy of Massey Ferguson Tractors — which likes to reward its best tractor salesmen on these islands with a New Year’s break. He’s off with a fellow Massey salesman from Clare and “three lads from England”.

While away, he will leave the heavy lifting on his family’s 300 acre suckler and sheep enterprise at Castletown in Co Sligo to his parents Anne and Paddy, with whom he farms with on a partnership basis.

It will probably be Gerry’s only break in 2017 because “busy, busy, busy” does not adequately sum up the 31-year-old’s working life.

Apart from rearing and selling an average of 60 Texel sheep and a similar number of Limousin sucklers, he is a salesman with McHale machinery in Kilmaine, Co Mayo.

The job involves selling McHale balers and the Masseys from the company’s main outlet — a 60-mile commute.

In the evening and weekends he is helping run and expand the family’s 150ac (owned) and 150ac (leased) farming enterprise.

The self-confessed “machinery head” is currently concentrating on the farm and is busy supervising the build of a new three-bay shed on the farm for the suckler herd.

“It should be finished in a few weeks which will be good for the herd. We are also busy reseeding. The land on the farm is good but the grass is old so we have to do this job,” Gerry explains.

“Then there is lambing in

I MAKE SURE ALL THE MACHINERY WORKS AND I WOULD BE ON CALL MOST EVENINGS DURING THE SUMMER