This Farming Life - February

Jenny Young and the team at Castlefarm are busy preparing for spring – and watching TV in bed…

The arrival of February sees the birth of lots of calves (approx 70) at Castlefarm. All our cows are indoors full time. The herd is split into two, the milkers and the calvers. The couple of cows that are closest to calving are housed in looseboxes. We have calving cameras in the looseboxes. This is linked up to a TV in our bedroom, which is a handy way of keeping an eye on calving progress.

In the farm shop we are awaiting the arrival of our first Angus beef of the season. We are small scale beef producers. We concentrate on quality and only butcher one animal at a time, allowing the meat to dry age for three weeks for extra flavour. We butcher the animal on demand, selling most of the beef through ‘beef boxes’, essentially dividing the animal between 10 households. Each box contains a variety of cuts of meat.

The windows of our house are lined with pots planted with cucumber, tomato, aubergine, chilli and pepper seeds. I will transplant these into the polytunnel once the risk of frost has reduced. Our seed potatoes and onion sets have arrived from Fruithill Farm in Cork.

Allotment holders have been busy digging their plots in preparation for planting their early potatoes. When the next spell of dry weather comes Peter’s dad will plough my garden so that it is ready for planting in late spring.

I have very little growing in the garden, but later in the month we will begin harvesting the first of our rhubarb. There is nothing quite like the taste of fresh, new season rhubarb.

This month we welcomed the first of our school tours for a farm visit. Children especially love helping feed the calves when they arrive for a spring visit to the farm.


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This February Castlefarm Shop will open 10am-6pm on Friday 24th and Saturday 25th. Join us for a farm walk with a chance to meet the calves’ 3pm Sat 25th. New season rhubarb will be on for sale and we will also have Castlefarm organic Angus beef.

Castlefarm Shop opens the last Friday and Saturday of each month from 10am until 6pm. To receive our newsletter, news of new products & cooking tips by email please contact Castlefarm Shop, Narraghmore, Athy, Co Kildare, Telephone 087 678 5269, Email jenny@castlefarmshop.ie, log onto www.castlefarmshop.ie or telephone +353 (0)59 863 6948

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