The Déise at the Ploughing

The National Ploughing Championships, a mammoth trade show with a side of ploughing if you please, is the mecca of the Irish agri-business industry. For many of the thousands in attendance, it is an annual pilgrimage, while for others it is a bucket list item that simply has to be experienced. If they chose 2024, they were in for a special treat.

Each morning of the three-day event the sun rose above a mist that lingered over the grounds at Ratheniska, Co. Laois, burning it away by elevenses-time, when, from then on, it was baseball caps and t-shirts. Not a welly to be seen unless you were over by the Portwest Welly Throwing Competition, watching men and women, with serious concentration, fling with all their might.

Of course, any bona fide farming family won’t miss the 11am refuel, the porridge had long previously in the early hours before setting out from all corners. So to Rumbles me and my farming-colleague-in-arms Catherine Moore, herself of fine farming stock, headed for a fry up, complete with brown soda bread. Spot on.

We were on a mission to seek out the Déise at the Ploughing, and bring you some of their stories. In the meantime, we conversed with a generational farming family sat beside us, who had travelled from Galway, a day out, a beaming smile from the youngest when the ‘no school’ pass was mentioned. Grandad effused delight as he mopped up his fried egg.

Out on the quest again, we ploughed on, through the crowds, past the queues of next-generation teen farmers at the O’Neill’s tent, finding the pace a little calmer in one of a series of craft and small enterprise hubs. Here we encountered Aoife Greene from Fenor with her fabulous ‘Designs by Freya’.

A mechanical engineer for Irish firm Catalyst during the weekdays, Aoife’s home enterprise involves a unique turn on jewellery-making.

“It is botanical jewellery from my mum’s garden in Fenor,” she says, with her father Pat Greene quipping: “She robbed them!” A proud dad, he is here as her support sales assistant. Not a difficult job as displayed are exquisite brooch and earring creations.

“Everything I do is handmade. I have a little log cabin workshop at the end of my garden.” I spot roses, daisies, pansies, and all sorts of more complicated Latin-named delights. The delicate flowers are freshly sealed in resin, which protects their colour, preserving them in Aoife’s beautiful creations.

Her fourth Ploughing, she couldn’t say enough good things about the McHugh phenomenon.

“The Ploughing is the largest event we do in the year. We start prepping in January,” she says.

“We love to do it every year, it’s so organised and so well supported. We meet lots of repeat customers and new customers every year.” 

We leave Aoife to her customers, back into the now scorching midday sun, and take a different route, this time through the Government and Ireland Village. The name might be a bit heavy, but the area has that light touch, which is to be expected of the Ploughing. Passing the An Garda Síochána tent, a member of the gardaí leans casually against the familiar garda lamppost having the chats, while families take snaps of their youngest with the massive garda-logoed tractor.

Waterford being a proud coastal county, we beeline for the Irish Coast Guard area, where we are welcomed by an ebullient Billy Crowley from Kill. We were on the money as the Déise was well represented, by teams from Bonmahon and Tramore, determined to raise awareness around the work of the Coast Guard, water safety and who to call in an emergency.

Billy, a volunteer member of the Bonmahon Coast Guard team, works by day as a caretaker at the Copper Coast Unesco Global Geopark, a job that allows him the flexibility to immediately respond to an emergency when the need arises.

“Any call that comes in I’m the first in the station, I’ve everything ready to go (for the team).” 

He works alongside Officer in Charge Brian Fleming, who he says does tremendous work, and a team at Bonmahon’s state-of-the-art new €5.3 million station, working in conjunction with their colleagues in Tramore and Ardmore.

Billy comes to the Ploughing every year with the same mission – to keep people informed.

“It is like Spain to us this year!” he laughs, chatting to us alongside Ivan Longmore, the Divisional Controller for the Marine Rescue Coordination Centre, which is based in Dublin.

“We are here for the exposure, to meet people and get the message across.” If someone is in trouble near Bonmahon – or anywhere along the Waterford coast – they emphasised that people must ring 999. The response will be much faster than trying to contact a volunteer directly, who might be in work at the time.

The 999 call comes in to Ivan’s team and within seconds Billy’s pager goes off.

“A lot of people think that when you ring 999 you get the guards or the fire brigade,” Billy says, pointing out that the Coast Guard is alerted via the very same system.

At the Ploughing they explain to people what the Coast Guard does, and the different systems on the rescue boats, the helicopter, climbing equipment for cliff rescue, and so on.

“We have access to the Ardmore team if we need it,” Billy adds; Ardmore has recently broadened its skillset to include drone usage.

“If they have a cliff job they will call us in,” Billy adds. “All our teams liaise and work together. We could be tasked to Bonmahon, Carrick, up the Comeragh Mountains; we do land, sea searches, the guards could call us in to RTAs, even an incident on the Greenway. Each task is different.

“All the other services call us in for extraction because we are trained in that.” 

After some photos with their vehicles proudly on display, we are conscious that a story about the Ploughing must have a story about a farmer.

Surely Waterford is represented among the best when it comes to livestock – with our fine herds of cattle and renowned Comeragh lamb.

We find just such a man in the Sheep Tunnel, two of his cross-bred ewe lambs happily munching hay in their pen as we chat.

Shay Kennedy from Churchtown Hill, Carrick-on-Suir – the Waterford side! – is showcasing the Rouge breed. His prize-winning flock has been claiming rosettes for decades now, and he is a regular at the Ploughing when it comes to representing the breed.

“I’m 20 years coming to the Ploughing,” he says.

It is quite the accolade as only the very best are chosen to show their animals at the event.

He is here “to get customers – we have to sell rams, to generate custom for breeding rams,” he explains. “We show the merits of the breed. They are a dual-purpose breed – they’re a good cross-bred ewe with saleable male lambs as well; the male crosses are good for finishing.

“We sell rams for crossing with commercial or pedigree Rouge flocks – the better ones go to pedigree flocks.” A lot of Rouge meat is exported, though they produce lamb for the domestic market as well.

“They are a better grade of lamb, suitable for the French market with a lean carcass with minimum fat, and the animals have good confirmation – plenty of saleable meat!” Shay, who also has the Vendeem breed on his farm, as well as drystock cattle, says there’s plenty of interest in sheep.

“There seems to be more interest in sheep than previous years. Farmers are getting better prices at the moment.” As is common in farming, despite being based in the far reaches of the next county, he is familiar with my own father, who was involved with the Quality Lamb Producer Group in North Wexford in the 1980s-90s. I recall the hand-drawn logo being created, and farmers arriving for meetings in our sitting room, my mother making sure there was plenty of brown bread and jam for them. Their aim then, as is Shay’s now, to champion excellence in Irish sheep farming.

The essence of the Ploughing is there in our exchange, the recognition of names, that sense of community that is immediate in all conversations.

We take a snap of Shay with his sheep – though trying to get a ewe to pull its head out of the hay for the camera is quite the challenge.

The Sheep Tunnel, though the smells are pleasantly reminiscent of my childhood, is quite the sweltering place to be so we move back out into the fresh air and rejoin the crowds milling along, row after row.

My companion Catherine, whose husband Jack and son Niall farm a dairy herd near Annestown, is surprised not to have met anyone she recognises yet.

“Ah Deckie,” she suddenly exclaims as a jovial man emerges from the crowd.

Declan “Deckie” Murphy farms dairy and drystock beef alongside his brother Kieran at Ballyheadan, Dunhill – neighbours of Catherine’s across the fields you could say!

Deckie is only delighted to wax lyrical about the Ploughing.

“I’ve been coming to the Ploughing since I was a kid, about 35 years,” he says. In the early days that was barely rising above the height of his father’s wellington boots.

“Once the weather is good it’s a day out with my own kids,” he says. “They love it.” His daughters Lexie (14) and Alli (9) have disappeared with their cousin Ella (15) into the vicinity of the O’Neill’s tent. Deckie’s wife Kim is having “a nice, quiet day at home”.

When we meet Deckie and Kieran they’ve come from the JFC Agri tent, “meeting people that we wouldn’t see for the year”.

“It’s a social day, we are seeing what’s new out there, machinery and livestock handling facilities.” 

I’m curious how they manage farming together.

“We have our own little jobs at home, that keeps the peace!” says Kieran.

Interviews in the bag, Catherine and I mosey about for another hour – fleeces are bought for Catherine’s farmer at home, and a delicate piece of pottery finds its way into my bag.

Before we call it a day I feel we are missing something. At the back of the Portwest tent I am sure I’ve read the map correctly. There should be horse-drawn ploughing taking place.

Sure enough, a wide, neatly ploughed expanse of ground opens before us, tilled by an old-fashioned plough and fine pairs of horses.

The Ploughing might be more about the festival-like trade fair nowadays, but its essence remains this quintessential of tillage practice.

Pointing the car towards home, the journey seems smoother. Maybe that’s just that sense of contentment that comes from a day at the Ploughing.