FROM THE ARCHIVES:Quidnunc (probably Patrick Campbell) of An Irishman's Diary left his pretend club to experience the terrible harvest of 1946. –
JOE JOYCE
IT IS all very well lolling about on horse-hair sofas in centrally-heated clubs, with port washing about behind the double-breasted waistcoat, reading the news in newspapers that the recent heavy rains threaten to swamp the 1946 harvest; but it is an altogether different matter to be standing knee-deep in a field watching a farmer digging mud out of sheeps’ feet.
Yesterday, after lunch, I drove my brougham to the hinterland known as Finglas, and got my man to throw me out into an actual farm. And there was an actual farmer stalking a lot of sheep.
With the help of a dog he drove the sheep into a corner. Suddenly, then, he fell upon a sheep – wrenching from me a cry of wild surmise – and flung the sheep upon its back.
From his hip he produced a curved knife, and started slicing slices off the sheep’s hooves. Occasionally, he dug with the pointed end of the knife, and I covered my eyes with dock leaves.
The appalling rain is the cause of this foot-rot. The mud forces itself inside the shell of the hoof, and must be cut out. This farmer has forty-four sheep. He spent the whole day yesterday catching the forty-four sheep, and operating upon one hundred and seventy-six feet. It is only one of the troubles that the rain has brought him.
This farmer thought he had £800 worth of oats. He was looking forward to catching up with his commitments to the bank when it started to rain. His field of oats now lies in ruins.
It is a scene of heart-breaking desolation. The oats are laid flat upon the sodden ground; then there is a sudden crest of oats still standing; and then there is another fifty yards or more of oats flattened in quite a different direction.
The field looks almost exactly like a a head of unruly, straw-coloured hair.
This young man bought his farm last July. He now sees his savings sunk in acres of mud and dripping hedges, in forlorn, sodden sheep, in fields of grain that cannot be harvested unless, by a sudden miracle in the next few days, the sun decides to shine.
But the curious thing about it is that he is quite cheerful. He said to me: “I’ve paid out £9,475. On that, my profits have been £13 2s. 6d. My oats are beaten down, my sheep have foot-rot, my potatoes have blight, and if I can’t dry my wheat I’ll have to use it for animal feeding. But what can I do about it? I can’t stop it raining. Never mind, things will be better next year.”
I looked at him, standing ankle-deep in wet grass. He had cut his thumb to the bone with the knife that he had been using on the sheep, and poured iodine over it out of a pint bottle.
I threw myself back into my brougham. Somehow, a corked bottle of claret, and a leak in my new pair of goloshes , seemed of less consequence than they had before.
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