Paula Hynes: Emilie is not in Paris, but Aherla instead
Our French student Emilie has been with us for just over a week now. She hails from Brittany, living not far from Mont Saint-Michel. While not from a farming background, her uncle is a dairy farmer with a herd of 80 Normande cows, which they also show quite successfully. Her uncle's farming system is quite similar to ours, so he grows a lot of grass and also has clover swards to reduce nitrogen usage.
Emilie fitted in straight away, no sooner had we picked her up from Cork Airport and arrived home, when she popped on the overalls and wellies to help milk the cows and get to know the heifers. She speaks very little English, and while shy, she has settled in straight away.
She has a fantastic work ethic, she doesn't need to be woken in the mornings; she is up at 6am and ready to crack on with the morning's farm work.
The one thing I love is seeing how students settle into home life here, some will not adapt and remain distant, but Emilie has made a huge effort to integrate into the family and now speaks a little English. We make good use of Google Translate, and I guess we have also learnt to speak more slowly and clearly so she can understand more of what we say.
With Emilie settled in, our next arrivals were Richard and his two sons as they were prepping the show team for Clonakilty show, as Becky is also busy with her Leaving Certificate exams. While they helped Becky clip on Saturday morning, Pete headed for the train station to pick up John Tauzel, who is a senior director on global agricultural methane with the Environmental Defense Fund in the US.
He has a superb understanding of how agriculture is working to reduce emissions globally and had been on a dairy tour of Uganda the week before visiting us, and China prior to that. John grew up on a dairy farm, so after he visited Dairygold and Moorepark, he jumped into a pair of wellies on arrival at the farm and helped with evening milking as it was all hands on deck to finish the packing for the show.
Clonakilty Show
Show day is always hectic; cows need to be milked, and the show team needs to be washed early before they travel to the show. Georgie, Emilie, and I finished the chores on the farm, and the show team had departed, so they would be well settled by the time we arrived.
Clonakilty Show, now in its 108th year, is undoubtedly the premier show of West Cork for dairy stock. Classes are always big and competition is always high quality, which is fitting as Clonakilty is also home to the IHFA headquarters.
Our first classes of the day were the Jersey classes where Khaleesi took top spot in the Young Jersey heifer class. Pete and John Tauzel were managing the poo bucket for the day on our line ensuring all our animals were spotlessly clean and taking it in turns to follow each animal to the ring with a bucket.
The poo bucket is a crucial job as if a show cow poos on the way to the ring she could possibly poo all over her clean tail. John competed at 4H in the US so has a great understanding of what is required at a show.
Kasey was next into the ring where she stood top of the line in the Jersey cow in milk class before going on to be tapped out as Jersey champion by dairy judge Pauric Coleman to collect our first piece of silverware on the day.
Next up were the showmanship classes, where Georgie won the Junior showmanship again. Becky followed suit in the Senior showmanship by taking the red ribbon again, and Emilie was also placed in the class, collecting her first Irish rosette, a big change for her showing Holsteins.
All our young Holstein heifers were in the same class competing in the autumn-born Holstein heifer class, where Becky again stood in first place with Rathard Sidekick Jagerbomb, while Emilie guided Arora into four th place, with our third heifer standing in fif th .
A successful class, having our three home-bred heifers in the top five, and Jagerbomb collected our second silver cup of the day as she was presented with the Pat Joe O'Donnovan Cup, which we also won in 2024 with a home-bred heifer.
The Junior Holstein championship at Clonakilty is always hotly contested, so we were delighted to claim our second championship of the day when Jagerbomb was tapped out as Junior Champion.
I always feel like the serious business at a show is when the Holstein milkers compete. As Richard did the final preps on Acclaim, she was surrounded by the team ensuring she remained calm, but she knows her job well, all she required was one quick pitstop with the poo bucket and she walked into the show ring for a really hotly contested Junior cow in milk class, with nine cows in the ring.
Acclaim stood top of the line from start to finish and added a further silver cup to our winnings on the day before going on to claim Reserve Champion Holstein with the Champion being awarded to the Helen family.
More guests
As the team began to pack up and head for home, I headed for the train station in Cork with John, as he was heading to Dublin to fly back to the US the following morning. We said our goodbyes and, at the same time, said hello to my next pair of guests, newly married Kayla and Jeff, who had just stepped off a train from Dublin.
Kayla had studied veterinary science at UCD and completed many placements on our farm a few years ago, to the extent that she has almost become a part of our family. The couple honeymooned near Lake Como in Italy before visiting us for three days.
Jeff had never been on a dairy farm before, but happily learned to milk cows with us. With all our US guests departed for home, we have a few days to prepare for Cork Summer Show, so the clipping machine will be back out as the show team we took to Clonakilty are having a rest weekend.
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