Uploaded August 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Farming for Nature Ambassador Joe Roche is a dairy farmer managing 69 hectares (170 ac) of land near Gorey, Co. Wexford. With a herd of 115 cows, he operates a conventional spring and autumn calving system, milking year-round. He is a derogation farmer and has recently participated in the Ballymoney Stream EIP.
As part of that project, he dug a pond on his land, which collects water off the road and that he is now delighted to see is full with frogspawn in the Springtime. He ‘likes to see nature growing and developing, when you were young you would see lizards and eels and you didn’t realise the importance of them at the time. It would be nice to see them coming back’. Participation in the EIP helped achieve that on Joe’s farm. Bat and bird boxes were installed, and alongside that, 50 bats were found in a roost in an old farmhouse.
Around 5 hectares (12 ac) of the farm are under woodland, some of which is wet woodland. Joe holds hedgerows in high esteem and is continuously striving to improve their management, he has ‘been watching hedges for a long time and proper management of the hedges going forward is going to be crucial’. Equally concerned about water quality, he has signed up for Strathroy’s sustainable water scheme which will be building on the work he has already done to protect the Ballymoney stream in the last few years.
The Farming for Nature Q&A is supported by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
Farming for Nature Ambassador Joe Roche is a dairy farmer managing 69 hectares (170 ac) of land near Gorey, Co. Wexford. With a herd of 115 cows, he operates a conventional spring and autumn calving system, milking year-round. He is a derogation farmer and has recently participated in the Ballymoney Stream EIP.
As part of that project, he dug a pond on his land, which collects water off the road and that he is now delighted to see is full with frogspawn in the Springtime. He ‘likes to see nature growing and developing, when you were young you would see lizards and eels and you didn’t realise the importance of them at the time. It would be nice to see them coming back’. Participation in the EIP helped achieve that on Joe’s farm. Bat and bird boxes were installed, and alongside that, 50 bats were found in a roost in an old farmhouse.
Around 5 hectares (12 ac) of the farm are under woodland, some of which is wet woodland. Joe holds hedgerows in high esteem and is continuously striving to improve their management, he has ‘been watching hedges for a long time and proper management of the hedges going forward is going to be crucial’. Equally concerned about water quality, he has signed up for Strathroy’s sustainable water scheme which will be building on the work he has already done to protect the Ballymoney stream in the last few years.
The Farming for Nature Q&A is supported by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
