As the rain begins to pelt, people dash into half-empty tents, prepared to listen to any old sales spiel, writes KATHY SHERIDAN
YOUR AVERAGE tyre-kicker is sadly predictable. First he picks the most hulking machine in the place and strolls around it, striking knowledgeable poses. “How much is she?” he’ll ask. Whatever the answer, the response is invariably the same.
“Jaze, she’s dear.” Then, says Tony Drohan, “he’ll hit a kick on the tyre and say, ‘Ye’ll do better than that’.” Chances are, adds Tony, “your man hasn’t €20 never mind €20,000”.
But they’ve had a few “genuine ones” in looking at their Kuhn line-up. “You’d know them because they’re quieter. They don’t even want you to know what they’re looking at . . . ” They will be contacted again when the ploughing’s over. That’s when the serious business will be done.
Being an exhibitor at the ploughing is a bit like running a theme park, without the benefit of the admission money. Three inscrutable old farmers in their suit jackets, pilly jumpers and muddy boots line up in front of a huge, fancy tractor and silently hand a camera to a salesman. A small boy belonging to a different group is up in the cab at the steering wheel, squealing. The salesman has to scatter several loitering tyre-kickers, their sticks, hurleys and children, to take the picture.
At the Finning Cat tent, four 14-year-olds are gazing with intent at a mighty loader. "You have to have your picture taken in the wheel", declares 14-year-old Mairéad Doyle from Wexford. You mean at the wheel? No, she means in the hollow of the massive tyres. "Everybody sits inside a wheel for a picture. If you don't have one up in Facebook, you're – well – you're doomed!" Mairéad is with her friends Amy McBride, Célem Deegan and Ben Kielthy and basically, they say, the ploughing is about the craic and the free stuff. Mostly the free stuff. Which is great craic. "Pencils, rulers, rubbers, RSA [high-vis] jackets, especially the limited edition ones in pink . . . But you haven't a hope of getting one. And the Farmers Journal." The Farmers Journal?
“Yeah they’re free!”. Yeah – it’s completely baffling.
Brian Vaughan and his mates at Finning Cat look on indulgently. “There’s plenty of tyre-kickers,” says Brian. Their most popular machine is the Telehandler, a €60,000 telescopic thing that lifts all sorts of stuff. “But we’re not over-run,” he admits wryly, “it’s not selling as well as the hype says it is. For farmers, getting credit is a huge problem . . . ”
At the Super Wrench stall, Beau, the fit, fast-talking salesman grabs the tent’s metal rigging with a wrench, then lifts himself up by the handle to prove how fabulously strong his wrenches are. Most of us gaze on admiringly and wonder how the tent doesn’t come crashing down. But a sceptical farmer argues that someone told him that Beau and his ilk use a special wrench for the demos, not the ones on general sale. Beau stoically takes a fresh one out of a box and uses it to swing from the rigging. It’s no use. Despite all Beau’s gymnastics, the farmer pushes off, still giving out. Beau shrugs. “A pissed-up youth and an unhappy old man so far . . . ”, he says ruefully. The youth who had dropped by earlier had had a few drinks apparently. And it’s still only 11am.
If you can bear to pass on Beau’s superwrench, there is lots of other stuff. You could amuse yourself observing how Tesco, Lidl and Aldi – all a few doors down from each other – are portraying themselves as prime purveyors of Irish produce, with Aldi the busiest and most persuasive. If you spot a tiny tent flying two Tricolours, that will be football legend Paul McGrath’s, where a little queue of lads with sticks and the famous giveaway high-vis vests are waiting to have their picture taken with him but not necessarily to buy his €10 CD.
You could get septic tank advice because “Now is the time to get your septic tank in order!” – and that’s something rural people are taking very seriously these days. There’s even more interest in folk selling a blockage relief system for your slurry splash plate. In fact, generally speaking, there’s a massive fuss about slurry. How about a slurry wizard? Or a lined slurry lagoon? Or some slurry dribble bars? Or a few bars from Richie Kavanagh – live! – in a crowded beer tent? “Did ya ever get a ride/Ever get a ride/Ever a get a ride on a tractor . . . ”
It’s pretty much downhill after that. A few young fellows listen for a few minutes, roll their eyes and move off.
In the meantime, a storm had blown in and the rain began to fall and suddenly, half-empty tents had grateful customers, prepared to listen to any sales spiel.
Its probably why Micheál Martin smiled cordially at the rather large group of journalists awaiting him in the packed FF tent and said he was glad to provide the shelter. Looking his usual dapper self, with nice, clean wellies, he patiently denied that he and Éamon Ó Cuív were at loggerheads. We’re all just going to have to get used to a different kind of politics because diverse views were going to have to be tolerated, he said reasonably.
Then just as he made to leave, a familiar voice could be heard no more than a metre away and who was it but Éamon, who had come in, quiet as a mouse, in a Dublin-crested anorak and inappropriate shoes.
Micheál did a slight double-take and grinned but it must be early days in the toleration game, because not even a glance was exchanged between them.
Back at the bandstand, in the driving rain, they were striking up the Galway Girl. Suddenly, three generations of farming men, women, boys and girls were racing on to the floor, jiving and jumping in their wellies, wedges and trainers, the lads waving their new hurleys and €2 sticks in the air, the girls twirling each other with a mad recklessness as muddy rain splashed the bare thighs below the festival combo of frayed shorts and hoodies. As the rain lashed down and the older couples spun faster round the sopping timber floor in and out through the singing, jumping, joyful ranks of young ones, it was like a mad, wonderful, exuberant scene from an extraordinary movie.
It’s no wonder that as Irish Times Agriculture Correspondent, Seán Mac Connell, prepared to attend a Macra na Feirme reception to mark his forthcoming retirement and final National Ploughing Championships (he has covered 25 of them), he was feeling a tad emotional. “This is the ploughing,” he said, “the place where you’re looking into the very soul, the face of rural Ireland . . . ”