'I was watching her baling up that hill there earlier and there wasn’t a puff of smoke out of her'

Herd Immunity

The latest instalment of our farming column.

Sean Deere

“That’s some heat now!” proclaimed Mrs Deere as we sat down to our evening tea.

“24 degrees in the jeep,” I answered, “Only for the air-con I’d have been baked alive. Serious weather now!”

So, another great week of weather has passed by and according to a few weather gurus round here, July is set to be another fine month. How these guys know what’s coming in the morning, never mind next month, I never know but according to one off these weather prophets, July will be above average for temperatures and below average for rainfall.

And, of course, while that sounds good for all the staycationers among you, below average rainfall could leave grass tight as ground is already rock hard and dehydrated as we speak.

As myself and the good wife sat finishing our tea in the glorious sunshine, my phone began to ring on the table. It was Frank, my contractor.

“Howya, Sean,” she began, “is she hot enough for ya?”

(I should note at this point that the ‘she’ Frank was referring to was the weather, not Mrs Deere.)

“I’m on top of my head here,” he continued, “every eejit with a bit of spare grass is trying to make hay and I have a fair bit of silage to bale too but to top things off I have a tractor after calving.”

Now, before you say “how the hell did a tractor give birth?”, a machine ‘calving’ means it broke down; well in these parts it does, anyway.

Frank is a top-class operator. Over the course of the last five or six years, he had been steadily upgrading his fleet of tractors and equipment to fresher, seemingly more reliable machinery so a break like this would have been quite disappointing for him.

“Will you bring your horse (my tractor) and hook it up to a baler tomorrow?” he asked. “If you look after the hay, I’ll keep the silage going.”

“That’s grand,” I replied, reaching for another fill of scald, “and sure I’ll meet up with you and help you finish the silage when I have the hay sorted.”

“Deadly,” Frank replied happily, the relief evident in his voice. “I’ll WhatsApp you on a list in the morning.”

Sure enough on Wednesday morning at seven bells, my phone pinged and a long list of farmers and fields appeared on the screen.

“Paul Reilly, Carrickbrick, one acre…” it began.

“George Hughes, three acres. Tommy the Master, five acres. Danny Boyle, Claraghmore, half acre…”

The list went on and on. One acre here, five acres there. This was going to be a longer day than I had anticipated but I had promised to help so there was no going back.

“I’d better get my skates on,” I said to Mrs Deere - and off I headed.

So after covering almost all townlands in the area, I had the hay baled. Some guys had as little as three while others had good crops of 50 to 60. Frank was delighted to see me pull in beside him in a 12-acre field of silage at 7pm. We baled side by side for the next few hours until all was done.

“Fair play to you Sean, you took me out of a hole today,” he shouted to me as he climbed the steps into my cab.

“This old girl is going like a clock,” he added, “I was watching her baling up that hill there earlier and there wasn’t a puff of smoke out of her.”

“She’s going rightly,” I replied, “but I was thinking about changing her actually. I even went to the dealers to look at another one.”

“Ah, you’re a bollocks,” interrupted Frank, half in earnest and half agitated. “Why on earth would you sell this girl? I traded one of these yokes in for that newer one in the spring and look at her now, lying below in the yard waiting on some lad with a laptop to drag himself away from his desk to plug it into some socket in the cab to see what’s wrong!”

Frank was in full flow by now.

“God be with the days,” he continued, “when a pair off vice grips and a hammer got a lad going. If you trade this tractor in, I’ll disown you!”

“Ah now,” I laughed, “don’t take it that badly.”

“I’m telling you, Sean,” he said, his voice getting serious, “don’t even dream of changing. I’d sooner do up an engine or gearbox on this lassie than buy a new one. Too many buttons and electrics and not near as much grunt as these older ones.

By the way he shook his fist as he said ‘grunt’, I knew Franko wasn’t joking.

“Old school rules,” he finished turning and heading back for his tractor.

“Well,” I thought to myself, “that may be so but it’s heading for eight o’clock and my dinner is calling. School’s out for another day…”