Darragh McCullough: Farmyard Robbery a reminder that some mothers have them

Normally, Mother’s Day and Daffodil Day are a week or two apart, but whatever the calendar went this year, they came on top of each other.

Daffodil Day has always been very busy for us. For years we supplied the Irish Cancer Society with bouquets of daffodils at cost for their volunteers to raise funds in every town and community across the country.

But like many things in the modern world, dealing with fresh flowers for the charity whose primary goal was to raise as much money as possible turned out to be more of a chore than it was worth.

However, many of the volunteers are unconvinced by the idea of ​​flogging plastic daffodil needles instead of the real ones.

As a result, we are still shipping thousands of daffodil bouquets at cost across the country. There is always some level of logistics involved, but modern courier services, to which we are affiliated via our online sale, make this all doable.

Then it’s Mother’s Day.

Most people outside of the floral world think that Valentine’s Day is the big event, but orders for Mother’s Day always put Valentine’s Day to shame for us.

I don’t know if that says more about our mothers or men’s priorities.

Of course, men are absolute last-minute dealers when it comes to ordering flowers. The vast majority of our customers are female for the rest of the year, and they have a better understanding that if you want a specific type of flower delivered to a specific location on a specific day, you need to do a little planning in advance.

Unfortunately for florists there are many panicked men who call at 5.50pm on the Friday and Saturday before Mother’s Day looking for the devil and all for Mammy.

Of course I shouldn’t whine.

Every business has its pressure points, but I was the sucker who decided he could also hand out sunflower seeds to every Tom, Dick, and Harriot who emailed, phoned, and texted during the same period. Doh!

Meanwhile, the land has come alive as soil conditions made it possible to start growing potatoes on the farm and cows are beginning to adjust to a grazing routine with less than 15 percent of the herd yet to calve.

All of the inflation is becoming very real now that we are back in the fields, burning diesel, applying fertilizer and spraying inputs on crops.

The price of inputs makes every farmer nervous and prays that every plant and animal will do what it’s supposed to do to pay the bills.

But it wouldn’t be so bad if we only had to deal with nature and agriculture.

Years ago we installed electric gates to prevent random suitors from cruising in and around the courtyard.

But the day the fieldwork got underway in earnest here, I set the system to permanently open so the machines could continue their work.

In fact, some guys were driving around the yard in a car and found one of the guys’ unlocked cars parked in the silage pit. Everything was scattered everywhere and the thieves only managed to steal one set of earplugs, but even that was annoying for the car’s owner.

They also tried it on at my farm shop, trying to distract a clerk from the register so they could browse.

Again we were lucky that nothing was taken.

But it was a timely reminder that there are always guys who are just badass eggs and if you give them half a chance they will rob you blind. Just think of their moms.

Darragh McCullough runs a mixed farm in Meath, elmgrovefarm.ie