I think that's he's from my area, he's a hard goer OK, not an easy path he's on but he's very focused. I hope it all works out for him, the milk price drop must be a bit of a bad surprise...

That's a road I'd be cycling on regularly enough, it runs parallel to the main Athy Carlow road and could only be described as quiet and relatively traffic free, I'm trying to figure out how 120 drivers could have been caught speeding on it in one day, especially with all the traffic whatsapp groups

There's a cost to all, that some of which ACRES covers but not all so it's a work in progress...

It's not in my interest to have expensive nutrients flowing away, we have over the last few years changed a lot of what we do, changed rotations, moved to liquid UAN so no waste into hedges, put in buffer strips, changed the way we maintain hedgerows all to try and be more sustainable,

If we have good conditions at harvest and very little grain goes out the back of the combine then regen will do very little for N absorption or feed very few birds. No one policy is going to work, it'll be interesting to see if the Nature restoration plan can bring some joined up thinking.

That would make sense really, but there are so many variables it must be hard to get any clear trend with natural regen, for example some of our land has been in crops for close to 50 years, there's less weed seeds in the soil than freshly ploughed ley but also much less organic N to be caught

2023 was just a nightmare harvest the combine was doing plenty of cultivations in places, getting straw dry enough to bale was a nightmare, having to cultivate late would have been just another pain in the backside. We had nice covers in after Winter barley though

We were sowing cover crops in 2018, from memory we got it very hard to get any fine tilth and the covers were very slow to come through till we got a few showers. Even with the fine summer though we only got the Spring malting barley straw baled on 5th sept, which is too late to establish any cover

On the other side if conditions are wet you'd have to cultivate and possibly damage soil structure. Hopefully the new EIP cover crop scheme will replace the suspended rules, it seems to have worked well from the farmers perspective this year, how it it will work in a less benign harvest is the issue

From a farmers perspective the big issue was that this rule applied no matter what the conditions, ground so dry that diesel usage soars (all that CO2) and wearing parts disappear at twice the normal rate, you still had to do it, even though no nitrate can escape under those conditions

Just to be clear, the stubble cultivation rule didn't have any requirement to establish a cover crop, we were told that natural regeneration (grains that came out the back of the combine and weeds present in the soil) would do the job.

I'm not sure it's 100% scrapped yet, just in abeyance till more research is carried out. Either way it's a reminder that rules implemented in a hurry as a kneejerk reaction to try to fix one issue usually have unintended consequences somewhere else.

A lot of decent groundwork to implement the NRL was done in some of the EIPs, I was part of one,

biodiversityireland.ie/projects/pro...

But as you say unless there is new funding then nothing will come of it.

In the midlands Emo Court often has good displays, a bit early in the year yet I think though

100 kms later I found some more flowers in a field, I don't think these are supposed to be there though

I often think that the best thing the Co Cos or TII could do when a greenway is planned is to give all the landowners a free weekend away at a finished greenway, the way many talk about problems with them, they can't have ever been on one, a day walking and talking to locals would be an eye opener

Yes, seems like a missed opportunity there but I'm not sure that no fencing was ever a runner so maybe crossed wires somewhere there. I think right to roam type access is a different thing though and shouldn't be mixed into the greenway debate, it's complicated enough as is.

Not quite the same thing as we are discussing but I live close to the Barrow Blueway and cycle on it at least once every week but 95% of the surface on it (and the majority on the Royal and Grand canal Greeways as well) is crushed quarry dust. Works very well, and maybe more traditional than tarmac

You have to remember that this greenway is a flagship project and accessibility for all (rightly) will be a very important part of the planning, the low budget, bridleway type that you mention is fine for able bodied folk walking or on MTB/gravel bikes but not very wheelchair or buggy friendly