John Mahon doesn't remember exactly how he tripped as he turned away after feeding his cattle. He remembers falling and lying on the ground unable to move, feeling nothing in his lower body. The accident, which happened so simply, has left him paralysed from the chest down. At one point his wife was told that he might die.
"To this day I still don't know if one of the cattle touched me, or pucked the bucket I was carrying as I walked away, or did I trip on my own. But I know I was fierce tired that same day."
Unlike the vast majority of farm accidents it is impossible to see how John's accident could have been avoided, except that over-tiredness is often a contributing factor. In short spells of good weather when farmers are rushing to get a lot of work done and put in very long days, accidents are most likely to occur.
Two years later, John is still managing his farm near Charlestown, Co Mayo, with the help of family members, but instead of 100 livestock he now has only 20 animals. A very active man, he shared a passion for developing the west with his friends John Healy and Monsignor Horan and has been a director of Knock Airport for the past 13 years.
He was 60 when the accident happened and had built up a very successful business, reclaiming 100 acres of bogland and running a supermarket where he sold his own meat. This success has at least helped him to cope financially. Like most farmers, he had no insurance to cover his injuries.
"I don't know where we'd be if we hadn't got the business," says John's wife, Aine. One of the first things she had to do after the accident was to learn to drive. Two of the couple's grown-up children help run the business.
They were building a new house when the accident happened and it has since been specially modified. A lift has been installed and an open shower area has replaced the bath. John has recently got an electric wheelchair and a specially adapted van.
These relative luxuries may make getting around easier but are a poor consolation. Tears come into both their eyes as they tell of the morning John had to be told he would never walk again. Both are full of praise for the staff of Rehab in Dun Laoghaire where he spent more than nine months, starting with tasks like buttoning up clothes. Now John jokingly demonstrates how he can raise or lower his new chair when he visits the pub, depending on whether his friends are on bar-stools or low chairs.
He hopes he'll be able to keep some stock on the farm, for "an interest". He made his first trip back down to the field where the accident happened recently, with the help of the new chair and van, but it wasn't easy.
"It was the first time I drove down the field since. When I got there, I was delighted that I was able to come down, but then I wept for few seconds to think that after coming down, I wasn't able to do anything."