Behind the News: Farm worker John Murphy

John Murphy got his first ever job after spending seven months doing work experience on a farm in Co Cavan. Luckily for him, the job is still there, on Richard and Jackie Moeran's organic beef and tillage farm, where he loves working: "I started one day a week for 30 weeks, and now I have a job on the farm for three days a week.

Murphy’s work experience was arranged by Social Farming Across Borders, an EU-funded project that gives disadvantaged groups “more opportunity for inclusion, to increase their self-esteem and to improve health and wellbeing”. As part of the scheme, 20 farmers in Border counties North and South have taken on people with intellectual disabilities and mental-health problems.

“If you had asked me a year ago where would I be in a year’s time, I would have said hospital. I am not in hospital; I am working on the farm, which has given me a purpose in life,” says the 42-year-old. “I was nervous at first, because I don’t trust people too well, and I had no experience of farms.”

After an hour-long walk through the fields, looking at the livestock with Richard Moeran, Murphy got a taste for farm life. "I did some fencing and mucking out the stables at first. Then we worked together, bringing in sticks, and splitting and stacking logs."

Murphy has had learning difficulties since the age of six and mental-health problems since his early 20s. He attended special schools and then moved to training centres that he says didn’t suit him. “I was putting toothpaste into boxes, sticking stamps on envelopes and putting catalogues into bags.”

He says the opportunity to work on a farm has changed his life. “I don’t have friends as such. I find it hard to trust men, but I really enjoy working on the farm, going into the farmhouse for lunch and meeting the family and other farm workers.”

Murphy arrives half an hour early for his eight-hour shift so that he can check the animals in the sheds and see how the organic turkeys are doing at the beginning of each day.

“I have gained a lot of confidence in myself by working with others and by being given responsibility,” he says.

socialfarmingacrossborders.org