It’s an event to separate country men from city boys – amid mud and muck there’s shorthorn heifers, Piedmontese bulls, calf feeders with peach teats and oh, silage harvesters with a willow harvester head
“KEEP GOIN’ missus and stop for no-one and I mean NO-one.”
The last time someone said something similar to this driver, it came from a garda at the approach to a notorious Dublin mugging spot called Handbag Corner.
But what about all the humans sliding towards us in the muck? “Well, if you stop you’ll end up like that fella there,” he said, pointing at a stalled Coca Cola van. “He stopped . . . and look at him, waitin’ for a tractor to pull him out.
“And that’ll cost serious money”.
Well, no such indignity or expense was about to befall The Irish Times; we vroom-vroomed up the field, shouting "sorry" out the window to scattered pedestrians, before reaching the safety of a stubble hill.
After an all-night deluge, someone compared it to a fun version of the Somme what with the agonised yelps of the young lads falling face-first into the slime, the trailer loads of “refugees” being pulled from the car park to the entrance by tractors, and the obviously rushed preparations of many of the younger victims, dressed only in little strapless tops and fake Ugg boots.
Then again, it probably wasn’t so rushed. The ploughing is a hot social outing for thousands of transition year students, and you try looking cool while keeping your balance amid muck and buggies on the Cardenton catwalks.
“The agriculture and food industry has gone sexy,” said Kieran O’Connor of Glanbia, in the Avonmore tent; by sexy he means as a career option. Add an ear-splitting rock DJ and a couple of Munster rugby stars – Johne Murphy and Wian du Preez plus Wian’s wife Enelle looking perfectly at home in flowery Wellingtons – and it’s a perfect formula for drawing in the young ones.
Earlier a mass storming of the JFC stand – best seller: rainwater harvesting tanks – by transition year boys and girls had the company’s Nuala Cahill baffled. “They hit us like a swarm of locusts about 10 minutes ago . . . I think it’s Breffni to be honest”.
Breffni (Breffmeister from The Apprentice) is working with JFC for the week and seemed to be getting on with the job without much interference. So could it be linked to the JFC blimp that slipped its moorings on Tuesday and was last seen over Lusk?
“Ah, the blimps are fantastic . . . There’re only about four or five of them, the company’s name is on it and people use them as a meeting point . . . Ours is gone now and I don’t think we’ll be getting it back,” she said sadly.
But just in case: there’s a reward of a chicken house worth nearly €300 for the return of the intact blimp.
Nearby, there’s a competition to guess the names of the three little pigs currently lying contentedly under the sales table in a bed of straw – and the winner gets to take them home. If they end up grunting in your back seat, blame Bernadette Prendergast from Kildare for coming up with the idea to raise funds for Crumlin children’s hospital. So far the guesses include Holly, Molly and Polly; Mary, Miriam and Molly; and Lilly, Milly and Biddy. Or – “from the boys”, says Bernadette – Pork, Bacon and Rashers.
Typical.
Then again, if you think three little pigs would be a handful at home, imagine the scene if you won the Piedmontese bull. Or an Irish shorthorn heifer. Or a ram. Which you could at the ploughing.
In fact it’s the competition prizes that ultimately separate the city slickers from the real country boys.
Would you, city boy, know what to do with, say, a pallet of cubicle lime? Or a massive trough? Or see the appeal of calf feeder with peach teats? For that matter, could you guess the third lactation of a Holstein? Faced with a tonne-weight, supreme champion Irish Angus bull, what would you do? Run like hell? Or say, “turn him round for a look at his rear end there, Michael” and produce your camera – before going straight to the carvery stand beside him to lash into some succulent hot roast Irish Angus?
Do you really long to kick the tyres of a (tremendously popular) silage harvester with a willow harvester head? Then again, even city slickers might recognise the old show reliables with their vast and baffling appeal to crowds everywhere – the knife sharpener/ twist mop/drill bit merchants with their relentless sales patter and sales by the truckload.
And there’s the food . . . When Brian Cowen talked yesterday in Dublin about the agri-food business as one our bright hopes for the future he might have been thinking of Stephen Hennessy of Boxty Bakers, who got tired of hauling gifts of boxty to his English cousins and went commercial; or Jane Russell’s handmade sausages; or the luscious relishes and sauces produced under The Scullery label; or the home-grown ingredients used by the proud young producers of O’Granola.
The other heart-lifting feature of the Food and Craft village – where all 85 producers are supported by the Leader community programme – is the emerging cultural mix manifest in Aruna Indian family sauces, Jenny Lynd’s Bad Boy Caribbean sauces and Thai Launa’s Asian dishes.
There is serious, sophisticated business going on at the ploughing, the kind that many in the populous eastern part of the country might begin to acknowledge as Ireland is forced to look to its own resources for survival. “The passion is there and the pride is there,” as President McAleese put it in her opening-day speech.
Come early evening the rush for the exit wasn't nearly as exciting as the morning's Top Gear-style entrance, just a sunny, pastoral drive through big open fields and farm buildings with wandering ducks and chickens. The sunny bit didn't last long but the weather is only a trifling part of The Ploughing. It's nature, part of what we are, something these people perfectly understand . . .