For many, working in agricultural contracting is a labour of love, not a living. Yes, the hours can be long and the unpredictable weather causes more than its fair share of headaches but the positives far outweigh the negatives as far as the likes of William McKelvey of WJ McKelvey Contracting is concerned.
The secret to William McKelvey’s success as an agricultural contractor is attention to detail and the fact he loves contracting.
William is passionate about what he does and is hands-on involved in the day-to-day running of the business to ensure that the high standards they have set themselves over the course of the last four decades are always met.
“I set up the business in 1977,” he recalled in conversation with Irish Tractor & Agri magazine. “ I was running about then with a Ford Dexta. I finished college and always had an interest in machinery. There was a fella down the road, baling hay and he was giving up. I then bought a David Brown 950 and a baler. That was March, 1978.
“Then there was a lot of farm renovation and farm improvement work on. I started ploughing and reseeding at the start of the 1980s. In 1982 I bought my first Fiat four wheel drive, a 640.
“1985 was a bad summer and we weren’t able to do a lot. At that time baling and cutting hay and reseeding were the main services we were providing.
“I always had an interest in a round baler. The Cook brothers from Ballinahinch were big contractors at that time and some locals brought them down here and I got interested in that. In September of that year I bought a Welger RP12, the first baler in this area, and started round baling on September 18th, 1985.”
That’s what you call attention to detail! 30 years ago William shared his new-found knowledge with other farmers and put it to good use.
“Everyone told me I was mad buying a round baler. They said it would be lying idle but as things worked out I covered all of Tyrone and Derry from ’85 right into 1988. Balers were still thin on the ground then.
“In 1987 I purchased what was only the fifth wrapper in Ireland and a year later a second baler. There was still a lot of people bagging silage, they were sceptical about wrapping but it just developed and developed from there down through the years. I was doing 20,000 bales a year at one stage Nowadays, it’s approximately 12,000 a year.”
William’s forward thinking ways never diminished and he subsequently diversified into offering his loyal customers additional services such as slurry work, hedge cutting, snow clearance and tedding and raking hay.
Most recently, he followed the advice of his two sons, Allister and Gareth, and purchased an umbilical slurry system.
“Five years ago we bought an umbilical system. The two sons were on about it. I thought it wouldn’t work because we do work with a lot of small farmers and there was a big expense involved. I rented one off a fella initially and it just took off. From February 1st to April, we do quite a bit on it.
“We’ve been hedge cutting since 1983 but that side of the business has grown considerably in the last 10 years. Our two cutters do be busy between September and February 1st.”
Reared on a family farm, William runs a suckler cow and sheep enterprise on 170 hectares farm in conjunction with the contracting business with the help of his two sons and two full-time employees.
“I learned from the beginning that if you don’t have your word you don’t have anything. Reliability is the main thing in the contracting game and we have always maintained good working relationships with our customers, many of whom have stayed loyal with us since the eighties.
“People who work with me do say that they always find when I said I was coming, I came. Also we have the expertise to have plans in place ahead of any job so we’re not wasting anyones time.
“You’re under pressure a bit more now because the way the weather situation has gone. You could boing nothing for days and then, all of a sudden, everything then has to be done in a day or two. That leaves awkward to expand into other work but that’s part and parcel of the contracting.”
And William McKelvey wouldn’t have it any other way!
WJ McKelvey
Plumbridge
Omagh
Co Tyrone
BT79-8BW
Mob: 07767494631
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 5 No 2, March 2017
