Celebrating 30 years in business, Eamonn Tarrant & Son Agri Contractors provide a complete agricultural contracting service to their many customers in Co. Cork. Billy Tarrant explains more about his family’s business.
Eamonn Tarrant & Son was established in Kanturk by Eamonn Tarrant to service the needs of local farmers. Nowadays, Eamonn runs the business along with his son Billy and staff member Malachy Regan. Five part-time staff are also employed.
Despite not being directly involved in the business, Eamonn’s wife Breda has a key role to play as she looks after the family farm, allowing Eamonn and Billy to concentrate on the contracting service. The 200-acre farm is a mixture of dairy and beef, and Breda takes on the not-so-simple task of milking 90 cows most days. Eamonn and Breda’s daughter Maria also keeps horses on the farm for hunts and Point to Point meets. Billy’s girlfriend Lisa also helps out whenever she can.
The Tarrants have a passion for farm machinery which Billy believes is in their DNA. “My grandfather William had two threshing machines and my father probably inherited his interest in machinery from him, and then passed it on to me. It’s in our blood,” he says.
Committed to providing a top-class service and complete customer satisfaction, Eamonn Tarrant & Son specialises in slurry spreading, ploughing, reseeding, silage cutting, corn harvesting, excavating, plant hire and sugar beet planting and harvesting. The Tarrants have a wide range of machinery to carry out your work quickly and efficiently, providing you with value-for-money and an alternative to investing in your own expensive equipment.
The success of Eamonn Tarrant & Son is down to the knowledge, skill and expertise of its staff, as well as the quality of its equipment. The family-run concern delivers the value and quality farmers expect from their agricultural contracting partner.
Eamonn and Billy run a fleet of six John Deere tractors, including a brand new 220hp 6190, which was purchased from Farm Power on the Mallow Road out of Cork city. The other models – 6930, 6830, 6820, 6630 and 6620 – were also bought from the same John Deere dealership.
Other plant / equipment operated by the Tarrants include a John Deere 7500 forage harvester, a John Deere 1075 combine harvester, a JCB 426 loading shovel, a Volvo L90 loading shovel, an O&K L20.5 loading shovel, a Hitachi 120 track machine, a Kane dumper, a five-furrow Kverneland plough, two HighSpec slurry tankers, three Herron silage trailers and two Kane silage trailers.
All machines are upgraded on a regular basis to avoid breakdowns and downtime. Servicing and maintenance is carried out in-house, while machines in need of repair are sent to Farm Power.
Eamonn Tarrant & Son has a large and loyal client-base in the Kanturk, Millstreet and Newmarket areas. Most of their customers are dairy farmers, which is hardly surprising given the close proximity of the Golden Vale.
“Our customers mean everything to us,” says Billy.
“Many of them have been with us for 30 years. We will go the extra mile to look after their needs and provide them with a service that won’t be beaten. We cover within a 20-mile radius of Kanturk and are lucky to have so many good customers on our books.”
The Tarrants are busy all year round with their agricultural contracting business. In the early part of the year, the focus is on slurry spreading and planting. The silage season, which typically runs from May to September, is a particularly hectic time for the Tarrant team who will work around the clock to keep their clients happy. The harvest then takes precedence, followed by more slurry spreading.
Eamonn Tarrant & Son also specialises in sugar beet planting, harvesting and washing. They have a mobile washing unit which can be moved from farm to farm. There has been a long tradition of sugar beet growing in the area which continues to live on, despite the closure of Ireland’s last remaining sugar factory in Mallow almost a decade ago.
Eamonn is a member of the FCI (Association of Farm Contractors in Ireland), which was established in November 2012 and has gained considerable momentum since then. The Association was formed to give agricultural contractors a voice at Government and EU level.
Its other objectives are to promote good contractor / farmer relationships; to promote the benefits of a good agricultural contracting service; to provide members with knowledge and courses to help them run their business; to promote a good working relationship between contractors.
In addition, FCI aims to provide a fair playing field for contractors north and south of the border regardless of their size. Owned and run by its members for its members, FCI aims to make local branches as active as possible and to facilitate group discussion and possible group action on issues that affect their businesses.
Billy concludes by saying: “I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our customers for their support down through the years. We look forward to working with and for them for many more years to come.”
For all your agriculture contracting needs in the Kanturk area, be sure to give Eamonn Tarrant & Son a call.
Eamonn Tarrant & Son
Gurteen,
Kanturk,
Co. Cork
Telephone: 087 4172488 / 087 2531610
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 3 No 5, June 2015
