Donncha has been a dairy farmer all his life (as was his father, and his father’s father). He has kindly offered to show me (a vegan) around his farm today. I must admit, I was a bit trepidacious about this as I adore cows and would hate to see them in any way mistreated or upset. Thankfully, I came to the right dairy farmer. Donncha dotes on his herd. He loves to see them as calm and curious as they are today. You can easily tell that they dote on him too, as they crowd around him to take a photo together.

Donncha’s farm has been passed down through generations. “When my ancestors took a lease on the place, it was about eighteen fifty one, and it’s been passed down ever since. From a young age, I was really involved. I was the only boy and I had five sisters. None of them showed an interest in the farm, so I took it over.”

Donncha shows me the house in which he was born and tells me his mother also still lives on the land. His own daughter tends to her horses in the stables as we chat. It’s very much still a family operation for now.

“I'm very aware of what's happening around here in all of Ireland, that family farms with a hundred cows or whatever are dying out rapidly. Up to recently, there was a living almost for two families, you know, which there kind of has to be if you're bringing your child in with you. They have to live, they have to start their own family. But then the older generation also needs to live, of course. So I definitely wouldn't be pushing my children into farming as it is now.”

Like most farmers, Donncha works relentlessly on the farm, rarely taking holidays, worrying about diseases and genuinely caring for the health and contentment of the herd. It’s a round the clock commitment. “When you’re calving, you may have 7 or 8 go in a day. It’s a tough enough time. If you have a really bad wet spring, it's very hard and it can be very labour intensive and you can’t take a day off. You have to milk every morning and evening. Then you have all the other work managing youngstock, animals getting sick, machinery breaking down. When you add it all up, it's a big enough workload.”

When I ask him if he has given much thought to retirement his wife chuckles in the background. I suspect this is a hot topic in the household.

“When I was a young man, I thought by the time I'm sixty five, I'll be gone out the door. But now that I'm fifty four, I'm kind of thinking that sixty five, if you're healthy, is quite young. So now I’m thinking maybe I’ll retire when I’m seventy five.”

He may not be retiring any time soon, but that doesn’t mean his life is plateauing, for Donncha is a man of many talents, not just milking. He and his wife, Teresa, keep active, full lives, on top of the dairy farm. Donncha has tread the boards of local stages and even tried his hand at salsa dancing. “I signed up for a dancing class in Cork City, and I almost didn't go the first night. I had a little look in the door and there were like seven or eight women, as you would expect. I was trying to sneak away but I was caught by the teacher and pushed into it. Thankfully I had a great time.”