Organic farming is not anti-science

Hell’s Kettle is hardly the most soft and fluffy of names for an organic farm, but that’s the name of the river that runs through Gavin Lynch’s organic beef and agro-forestry farm at Donard, near the Glen-of-Imaal in Co Wicklow.

“We were farming dairy intensively up until 2005. We used to fill 60,000 gallons of milk quota with 30 acres of grazing ground around the parlour. Our farm is at the foot of the Wicklow mountains, so we’ve a shorter grazing season. The milk price then was quite low, when got out of dairying and into suckler farming. We’ve had a small suckler herd since then, of 20 cows. Three years ago, we decided to go into organic.”

Like many Irish farms, Hell’s Kettle is fragmented. “There are three main blocks of land, we’ve another 30 acres a mile in one direction, and 40 a mile in the opposite direction. That also didn’t suit dairying.”