Delinquent donkeys a distraction from irrigation battle as drought bites hard

It seems like we are right back in 2018 again. Back then it took forever to get ground dry enough before we could get sowing in the final weeks of April. Then Mother Nature turned off the taps completely for June, July and August.

The only difference this year is that the drought has kicked in a month early.

Granted, these concerns will all vanish if the rain starts again, but it is starting to look like the climate scientists’ prediction of more extremes is starting to pan out.

When these climate scenarios were first mooted a decade ago, many of us buried the politically incorrect hope that our Bundorans were going to become the new Benidorms.

And more of us were quick to dismiss these notions because it all just seemed a stretch too far.

Like most things in life, the reality is a much more nuanced situation, and suddenly totally credible.

To hear of neighbours looking to drill their first new well in decades because their existing wells had run dry in May says a lot.

It looks like the irrigation battle is about to get underway here on the home farm in earnest next week, when millions of litres of water will be rain-gunned onto onions.

It’s no small undertaking, with every hectare requiring at least 100,000 litres of water in every pass. Once you start irrigating, you’re committing to a weekly chore that you can’t stop until a decent amount of rain falls again.

It often turns into a gruelling regime of man-power, horse-power and long days and even longer nights unblocking pumps and bleeding engines that inevitably run dry of diesel over a weekend when somebody wasn’t on the ball.

Water rights are already standard practice in the UK and I can see it become far more stringent here.

Debacle

Only for the water charges debacle five years ago, farmers would already be facing much tougher rules on water extraction.

The impact of the current drought at field level depends entirely on the crop involved.

My peony rose crop has thrived in the dry, sunny weather, and avoided the usual onslaught of wet-weather diseases like botrytis and fusarium.

But the spring barley has started to head out at a stage when the crop is still only 70pc of its normal height. That’s going to mean that straw is going to be scarce this autumn.

It’ll only get scarcer if the drought continues and suddenly every blade of fodder is required.

Thankfully, we’re not reliant on the cereal enterprise here to keep the bills paid.

Daffodil bulb harvesting kicked off last week, with dusty clouds making the tough job of standing on a cleaning line all day that bit tougher.

As always, I have the handy job inside the office chasing payments, new business and my tail.

In the middle of all this, there always seems to be some issue of head-wrecking paperwork to be sorted.

This week it was trying to get my two donkeys officially registered in my name.

I need to prove to the Department of Agriculture that this pair of delinquents belong to me in order to allow an overdue GLAS payment to be processed.

Up to now their only job was to discourage foxes from getting too familiar with our turkeys that graze the same area from July to December every year.

At Christmas I pen the duo in a shed for the weekends and ask them not to bite the hands off the hordes of kids that visit looking to ‘pet the donkey’.

Of course, they ignore my pleadings and generally sulk until I let them back out into their paddock.

During the course of the season, they appear multiple times in videos promoting our turkeys on the farm’s social media.

Identity crisis:

Darragh needs to prove to the Department of Agriculture that this pair of donkeys belong to him in order to allow an overdue GLAS payment to be processed

But when it came to counting up the livestock units used to graze my permanent pasture, the Department computer said no and my GLAS payment has been on hold ever since.

Cue a whole series of procedures, including getting the vet out to microchip the layabouts, an application form sent off to Horse Sport Ireland, who wouldn’t register them until an equine number had been added to my existing herd number.

It’s the kind of stuff that would nearly make you grateful for the distraction of a proper drought to deal with.