Ireland, the weather was turned on for us the drizzle cleared just long enough to have a down pour!! Not that we expected anything different first up was a visit to country crest, a great couple guys with some fantastic innovation, unfortunately I feel they have suffered under the supermarket monopolies far to greatly with there appetite for risk far beyond anything I would be comfortable with.
Next up sheep farming Irish style, James and Kelly were in their element, with Kelly really getting her hands dirty, and Rich Fitzgerald, showing his skills or lack of on the pneumatic crush, there may be some sheep missing some limbs.
C&F tolling was a stand out with a huge business in tooling, automotive, wind turbines just to name a few, a real lesson in doing something no one else is doing and doing it with quality.
One of the highlights of the entire trip was the visit to the Bruen pronounced burn, this is an ancient landscape that had remnants of human life dating back 3000 years unbelievably preserved in what is a pretty inhospitable area. At first glance looked like just a mountain of rock but when we delved into it, the buren harbored one of the most extensive Eco systems that you could possibly imagine dating back to the ice age.
Then to the Cliffs of Moher, another example of mother nature at its best 600 feet vertical very impressive.
First time I had ever seen an "extreme" danger sign so had to have a bit of fun.
Next day we were off to Andrew Gows farm, he looked after us very well, and his enthusiasm for dairy was fantastic great farm.
Cashel was next with visits to the Rock of Cashel which is the castle that dates back to 600AD where St Patrick himself baptized the king of Ireland, then the castle was rebuilt with stone in the 12th century, with additions in the 13th and 15th centuries.
There were many more castles and old buildings the surprising thing for me was that most of these castle type buildings dated to 1800 to 1840 at the time of the industrial revolution rather than earlier, the other thing that surprised me was the amount of old buildings that had never been restored they were dotted everywhere.
The visit to Coolmore stud for horse racing was incredible with the top stallion in the world currently earning $300k per service equating to $60M per yr.
There were many other places but these are just a few of the highlights.
Finally we finished off at Peter Bakers for a farewell dinner, with Peter being quite the host and an inspirational talk from Jim McCarthy on operating agricultural enterprises on a global scale, world Ag is a small place when you talk on his level, which I must admit i was struggling to fully comprehend it all, you just don't think like that naturally.
Well that's it for the GFP what a ride, now off to Holland and UK. Stay tuned.
