Teen who digs the old ways

To say Stefano Howell is a natural at loy digging is a bit of an understatement. Fresh back from picking up second place at the National Championships in the Under 21 category, the 16-year-old and his father Graham takes us back to the Leitrim Championships in April.

“I was looking at old tools and I saw a loy and wondered how it was used and decided I’d like to take it on,” he recalls.

A Leitrim loy digger by the name of Kevin McNamee had given him a 10 minute crash course immediately before the match. Stefano worked his magic turning the sod with a loy he had literally just bought.

“There were old guys who follow the ploughing in that way and they said to me, ‘He must be at it a right number of years now?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, all of an hour’. They just couldn’t believe it. He’s so gifted in it.

“He looked like a natural at it all his life.”

Winning his category, he came fifth overall across all loy digging categories.

The following week in Roscommon brought another win. People were over asking his dad, “How come we didn’t hear of this guy before?”

Cavan followed and Stefano was set for the National Ploughing Championships in Screggan. The good land of Offaly requires a different loy from the land we have in these parts. While his Leitrim loy was perfect to get him to Screggan, he’d need a wider foot for the Nationals. He stumbled across a loy foot - the metal part at the bottom that cuts into the sod - at a vintage fare in Streete in Westmeath.

“We said we’d buy it,” recalls Graham. “The man didn’t even really know what he was selling.

“It’s a wide foot because it’s more suited for that type of ground because the clay would be very crumbly when you are digging it, so it held it together.”

The foot needed a handle however. It’s really only at this stage of the story that the Celt got an insight into Stefano.

“I made it exactly how it was made 100, 200 years ago, with the exact same tools,” says Stefano.

His arms become the timber, his hand a blade as he articulates each step precisely in both word and gesture.

Stefano actually began work on his loy with an enormous ash log and split it using wedges first in half and then in quarters. Affixing a taut string he established a straight line.

“I come with an axe and chop to the line, and come with an adze and chip back so it would be flat for about nine inches and then you plane it then so it would be nice and flat and then draw the trace of the loy you would like.”

The loy he liked took about four days to make, spread over a couple of weeks. Propped at the door of his workshed, it was clearly worth all the effort. It’s a work of art.

Similar hand crafted items can be found in his workshed, like a pair of súgán chairs, with the seats woven from twine, he made from scratch. The enormous offcuts of the ash log stand in one corner, but it’s antique tools that Stefano is drawn to. Despite their vintage, the well-minded tools are as robust as they day they were made.

“The oldest plane I have is 1824 - a nice wooden plane with the date stamped on it,” he says.

“I have a tool out there - the adze - that tool probably did two craftsmen. It survived over, what, a hundred years? And they never had to buy a new one.

“You go out now and buy a new tool and it will only do you three or four years.

“The saws out there - they’ve lasted one craftsman and they are going to last me. You go out now and buy a new saw with hardened teeth, when that thing’s done you just throw it away.

“That saw’s over a hundred years old and it’s still going,” he says, explaining he sharpens it using a triangle file.

“That will do me my whole life,” says the St Aidan’s student.

His dad listens on, proud and bemused in equal measure of how his son has taken to such interests. His 18 year old sister Erica is completely different.

“Stefano is born in the wrong era,” quips his dad affectionately.

“Sometimes he does drive me a bit mad in the old fashion ways because I’ll be like - ‘I’ll just cut it with a chainsaw’ sooner than he’d take into it with a handsaw that could take him a couple of days to do it.”

Stefano’s interest in antiques extends to motors, “depending on what age the vehicle is,” clarifies Stefano. Anything newer than 1975 is of no interest. He has a Land Rover a Series 2A from 1969, sitting in a shed out the front.

“It mightn’t look restored but underneath it’s all restored,” he assures.

It’s little wonder he’s struck up a friendship with legendary collector Eugene Markey from nearby Canningstown.

Graham is a mechanic by trade, and speaks admiringly of his son's work installing a new chassis, axles and brakes.

“He stripped it down and rebuilt it.”

However it’s his work with the loy that brought him to Screggan. He wasn’t daunted by the occasion.

“It was just like digging anywhere else at a ploughing match,” he said.

He was a little unlucky with his plot.

“I found a big stone at the third turn, but other than that it was perfect. I had to lift the rest of the sod around the stone.”

Graham enjoyed fielding the now usual questions from the onlookers.

“There was a man who came up to me who said, ‘I love the way he’s doing it - he looks like an old man who’s been doing it for hundreds of years, he just knows the little tricks and how to hold it, how to turn it’. Other young lads doing it are just like digging with a spade.”

“I did my best and I got second place which I’m happy about.

“You never know is right,” he says with a laugh, adding, “Hopefully I’ll win one All Ireland.

Graham’s pride in his son is evident in just the way he looks at him.

“I used to do Cavan ploughing - tractor ploughing - and I never came near what he’s done.

“We know by the level of workmanship with the loy, it’s only a matter of time until he’s number one out there.”