County/Area with least amount of tillage land

george_w_brush

Dickie10 wrote: »

So if I were to rank them il try, with help from you guys that know whats going down on the ground, literally; this is by % of land use NOT area. god u would know im a student! #timewaster
1-Wexford
2-Kildare
3-Cork
4-Louth
5-Meath
6-Dublin
7-Carlow
8-Tipp
9-Kilkenny
10-Laois
11-Offaly
12-Waterford
13-Westmeath
14-Down
15Antrim
16-Limerick
17-Galway
18-Donegal
19-Wicklow
20-Armagh
21-Tyrone
22-Dery
23-Rosscommon
24-Longford
25-Kerry
26-Clare
27-Fermanagh
28-Moneghan
29-Cavan
30-Mayo
31-Sligo
32-Leitrim
well what do we think??
21-
22-

Armagh should be above galway , loads of good land in Armagh where as the bulk of land in galway is poor quality ( though it is a large county )

Mad4simmental

george_w_brush wrote: »

I think you might mean north Dublin which btw has IMO the best land in all of Ireland , most of the land in south Dublin is actually quite average , you know , the south Dublin Wicklow border etc is mostly hilly , what land is left in south west Dublin beside the Kildare border is most likely good but the prime tillage land in county Dublin is most certainly in places like swords , naul , balbriggan , garristown , which are all in north Dublin

Yep your dead right north Dublin not south,

I said

george_w_brush wrote: »

Armagh should be above galway , loads of good land in Armagh where as the bulk of land in galway is poor quality ( though it is a large county )

Plenty of good land around east galway and was it last year it sold the highest number of combines according to journal.correct me if im wrong

reilig

towzer2010 wrote: »

Land quality isn't the only reason. Rainfall is a big consideration as well. The lighter the colour the more tillage I'd say

Reason for the high rainfall in those regions shown on the map is the mountains. Double whammy as to why there is low amounts of tillage - soil quality in mountain regions and rainfall.

Dickie10

any reason for east Donegal having good land or is it lower rainfall? would the reason being its on the leeward side of the bluestack mts do it? and does being on the leeward side of mountains back much difference in Ireland? I know south co Dublin seems to have a micro climate in areas like dunlaoighre, mount merrion, stillorgan and sandyforde or maybe its just all the perfectly manicured gardens that make it look like that!

bbam

Dickie10 wrote: »

any reason for east Donegal having good land or is it lower rainfall? would the reason being its on the leeward side of the bluestack mts do it? and does being on the leeward side of mountains back much difference in Ireland? I know south co Dublin seems to have a micro climate in areas like dunlaoighre, mount merrion, stillorgan and sandyforde or maybe its just all the perfectly manicured gardens that make it look like that!

I know south co Dublin seems to have a micro climate in areas like dunlaoighre, mount merrion, stillorgan and sandyforde or maybe its just all the perfectly manicured gardens MONEY that makes it look like that!

eeeee

bbam wrote: »

I know south co Dublin seems to have a micro climate in areas like dunlaoighre, mount merrion, stillorgan and sandyforde or maybe its just all the perfectly manicured gardens MONEY that makes it look like that!

They buy said climate. I've seen them at it

cute geoge

With Kerry low down on the list and probably rightly so , I wonder could we start a tread on the best farmers in Ireland with land size and quality examples .Some mighty dairy operators down here with small acres

Dickie10

just resurrected this corpse of a thread, as i have a bit more experience farming now. I went on a day trip over lockdown a few week back again over near mountugent towards kilnaleck in cavan , i remember thats what started this thread a few years ago, yes this area has to be surely the best land in cavan ,the image i have of farms in cavan was definitly not on show in this area, its as good a land as you would see in ireland, looks like anything pulled from the best of Meath or Kildare, actually reminded me of good Offaly and Laois type area. plus the farmsteads are very well kept. worth a drive anyone in the area.

Hard Knocks

Dickie10 wrote: »

just resurrected this corpse of a thread, as i have a bit more experience farming now. I went on a day trip over lockdown a few week back again over near mountugent towards kilnaleck in cavan , i remember thats what started this thread a few years ago, yes this area has to be surely the best land in cavan ,the image i have of farms in cavan was definitly not on show in this area, its as good a land as you would see in ireland, looks like anything pulled from the best of Meath or Kildare, actually reminded me of good Offaly and Laois type area. plus the farmsteads are very well kept. worth a drive anyone in the area.

On the Kilnaleck to Oldcastle trip it’s hard to know the border

amadangomor

Hard Knocks wrote: »

On the Kilnaleck to Oldcastle trip it’s hard to know the border

Once you go further East and directly North from there it is still decent land but gets too hilly for modern tillage. Good for dairying though.

Was probably handy enough land for small farmers in the past as in wet times the hilltops would drain readily and in dry periods the bottoms of the hills would stay damp for longer.

West Cavan is a different beast. As soon as you head West of Cavan town it is very rushy and rough country, like Leitrim's identical twin.

ruwithme

If you attempted to have a go at tillage in cavan, even on this best of land, the neighbours would be saying prayers for it to fail (suppose we have a fair idea of our limitations)

lalababa

Aren't tillage farmers losing money??

_Brian

Dickie10 wrote: »

was driving through a large tract of co . cavan the other dayand was amazed at the lack of tillage or ploughed tilled land, some of this land looks quite dry and good although a bit hlly but that wouldn't make a difference when you see places like gloucster or Worcestershire in England, just wondering why there wasn't much tillage going on, up the road in meath tillage land starts appearing straight away almost at the border, so land cant be too different, a strange anomaly I thought.

Wgere would they tillage area of this county be? surely there has to be a region to supply grain for meal and feedstuffs to the mills

Shallow variable soils would be a serious problem round these parts.

Drumlins are the spoil ejected from glaciers as they pass, dropping a mix of stuff collected over a wide area which basically means from field to field the soils and conditions vary considerably.

Yes there are some decent tracts of land but when you scratch the surface it can be a bit messy.

Panch18

lalababa wrote: »

Aren't tillage farmers losing money??

Good tillage farmers are making as much money as anyone - and a better lifestyle than most

20silkcut

reilig wrote: »

There doesn't have to be an area that supplies to the Mills - most of the grain comes off the boat for the Mills around here and is drawn with lorries and 25 ton trailers.

Leitrim is the county with the least number of tillage farmers - a number of years ago there was only 1. Since then there have been a couple of attempts at wholecrop but there are centainly less than 5 tillage farmers in Leitrim. It's simple really - Drumlin land is not suitable for tillage! the drumlin belt runs from Cavan across leitrim.

I’d say you’d grow some stuff in the troughs of those drumlins.

Lady Haywire

20silkcut wrote: »

I’d say you’d grow some stuff in the troughs of those drumlins.

We have both meadow & pasture in the flats below the hill. I think in history Lord Leitrim portioned out those 'trough' areas to the tenants on the drumlins so they had places to make hay as the hillsides were to steep to build the stacks on. So there was pasture on the hills & meadows on the flats.

Meadows are grand on it, but very wet, so you need to keep drains up to date, that's the drier side of the hill too. On the opposite side of the drumlin we have switched it to pasture as the way down was just too steep for it to be safe carting bales & machinery up & down.
The soil itself is dark, almost pre-bog type but inclined to hold water, even with a tributary river flowing through at the bottom of it. The neighbour with the flat across the river from us uses his as meadow but only gets it all cut 2 out of 3 years. This year he had to leave a chunk in the middle of one meadow & at that he even marked the edges.
It was great land all through the drought in '18 but the grass died off in areas where there's massive rocks just under the ground so you'd want to clear them all out if going at tillage. As it is I strike a few of them with the topper as they stick up :pac:

Like heres the side we use as meadow but as you can see, we get lucky as the river floods onto the lower land the other side of the river. This was a couple of years back, we tend to stick dry cows or bulls out there to eat off the grass before they go into the shed.

forgottenhills

There used to be tillage on every sizable farm in Drumlin areas like Cavan up to about 70 years ago except in the mountainy areas in the west of the county. Every large scale farmer grew their own potatoes, barley and oats, even some wheat. Flax was also a big money crop in the early part of the 20th century. However all that was in the era of horse-powered farming and a little later in the era of the small tractor and binder.

But once the era of the large machines and combine harvesters came in most of the land there just couldn't cope with heavy machinery because of the heavy clay types combined with the fact that almost all fields are hilly, many being very hilly indeed. Going forward farmers sensibly switched totally to something that was more suited to the land such as dairying or beef systems. The best fields (the few drier and flatter ones) are typically the ones cut for silage. It is hard for farmers from areas like Wexford to believe but after only one days rain you could see ruts after a tractor passes over a field in the Drumlins. Also it is a challenge to drive a tractor and pull something heavy without sliding across a wet slopy field, you don't have that challenge in most of Wexford or Kildare! So very little tillage left in the Drumlins region even though many of the flatter fields and valley areas have good depths of decent clay, its just of a type that never drains quickly. Many of the hilly fields have only a few inches of clay before you hit some horrible grey/beige stuff underneath, used to hear it called "leac liath".

Say my name

Has there been ground in leitrim touched and levelled with Hymacs and dumpers?

You'd imagine if there was a bit of work done you'd make land.

I know economics, sac's and climate.

But I'd say mixing the gravel and black clay and possibly that grey whack could make something.
Or is this yella belly too naive on this?

orchard farm

Few lads tried plowing liming and reseeding round here and made a bad situation alot worse,okay for sheep but thats about it

forgottenhills

Say my name wrote: »

Has there been ground in leitrim touched and levelled with Hymacs and dumpers?

You'd imagine if there was a bit of work done you'd make land.

I know economics, sac's and climate.

But I'd say mixing the gravel and black clay and possibly that grey whack could make something.
Or is this yella belly too naive on this?

There have been plenty of bits drained, levelled and improved but you can't really start into wholesale leveling of fields with up to 45 degree slopes. The clay type will never become free draining and will get worse with compaction. Its not really a matter of lack of soil fertility, as there is plenty of land in the likes of Leitrim and Cavan that is great for growing grass or crops, its the issue of soil type, weather and slopes that don't make it sensible for modern tillage.

Castlekeeper

Say my name wrote: »

Has there been ground in leitrim touched and levelled with Hymacs and dumpers?

You'd imagine if there was a bit of work done you'd make land.

I know economics, sac's and climate.

But I'd say mixing the gravel and black clay and possibly that grey whack could make something.
Or is this yella belly too naive on this?

A bit alright, a dirty wet crumbly brick is all you'd make.
Plenty work been done on those kind of hopeless projects up and down the west of Ireland.

youllbemine

Interesting west Cavan being mentioned. My father is from a farm of land back there and one of the fields is called 'The Rye Field'. It would be approx 1.3 acres in size and one of the better, flatter fields. The rye was fed to the horse and donkey. Both would have been working animals.

My father remembers hiding in the standing sheafs as a boy in the 60's. He reckons the field last grew rye/grain in about 1965. All would have been done by hand. Wouldn't fancy the work my grandfather & grandmother did stooped over harvesting that field by hand. But proof that there was grain grown in that neck of the woods within living memory.

I'd imagine every small farm there would have grown a field of grain, their own potatoes, cabbages and turnips up until ireland joined the EEC. Cattle grazed the rest of the land, pigs in the pig shed, hens for eggs and meat and turkeys sold for Christmas. A small living made from a small piece of land. There was no running water or electricity until 1972 I believe.

Most of the surrounding land is in forestry now. The generation that inherited land around there had moved away and sold up in the main.

Dickie10

isnt it very sad, the same thing is creeping into counties like meath,westmeath and kildare now, from what i can see around me. vast areas let out to big farm operators, people not able or maybe i should say unwilling to farm lands of 60-120 acres, it seems anything under 100 acres you wont farm full time unless your at dairy and very few going to get into that in the next few years with falling milk prices etc

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121877691#Comment_121877691

Yep - for all the vast largesse spent via CAP(just a political slush fund now for big agri business in terms of 80% of monies) there is increasingly little to show for it in terms of maintaining farmer numbers or self sufficiency in grains, veg, fruit etc.:( - and worse could be coming down the line if right and far right elements gain in the next EU elections, as the likes of the EPP have pledged to roll back any progress made on convergence etc. with even more money going to industrial scale operators and corporations at the expense of the majority of EU farmers, especially as the same political elements are very keen on damaging trade agreements like Mercosur etc.

youllbemine

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121879497#Comment_121879497

That's it, the big farmers won't be big (150 acres) for long the way things are going. Expansion or diversification is the only way to stay going full time in the game in the next decade. Grand saying all is good here now but its whether or not the next generation will be able to do the same thing. I know the argument that farms have always gotten bigger but less farmers is definitely not a good thing. Check out Talamh Beo. They're all for small scale model of farming.

I'm 32 and honestly don't know any farmers between the ages of 18 and 40 who actually know how to grow anything to eat. Farmer friends who wouldn't know how to sow potatoes when their parents would have grown up doing it and their grandparents would have relied on it for sustinence. I have a keen interest in growing and have decent knowledge in veg growing but don't make a living from it. Lads my age see it as a business more than a way of life.

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/89623925#Comment_89623925

We had some land in Leitrim and there were still the traces of (I'm guessing) famine-time potato drills in one of the fields.

The soil was a heavy gley - plenty of stones in it but they weren't the problem. It was just too heavy and too wet to grow anything. Even if you could manage to grow a crop, you'd never get a modern tractor out to plough, spray or harvest without tearing up the place. There's a reason why the average field size is so small up there!