Dust bowl rather than mudslide greet plough champions
Not a drop of rain has fallen anywhere around the 500-acre site at the Ploughing Championships in the last six weeks. And if the dry spell continues, the National Ploughing Association of Ireland may have to water the ground to soften it out for the competitions today and tomorrow.
Event PRO, Anna Marie McHugh, boasted in the run-up to the event that she could skip around the 200 acres of competition ground and 300 acres of car parking in her slippers. Yesterday, she had her shades on and discarded her jacket.
For the first time in years, dust and not muck was raised as record crowds gathered for the first of three days of 21 ploughing competitions. Truancy levels in schools in rural areas nation-wide will definitely be up. Everyone from tots to teenagers to the young at heart wandered from stand to stand, looking for freebie balloons, hats or whatever else was on the go.
Agriculture Minister, Joe Walsh, got a warm reception, despite the pickets outside beef plants 24 hours earlier. He’d just got off a plane from Brussels to address the crowd. There wasn’t a cabbage, a hiss or a boo from the assembled masses, though his nine-page script was heavy on statistics.
Gavin Fitzgerald, 13, travelled up from Abbeyfeale in Limerick just for the day. He was delighted to get a chance to get a day off school. “The big tractors were great. I got a load of brochures on them. We’ve a fairly big farm at home and I’d be hoping to take it over in the future. There’s not much else free around the place,” he said.
Farming has moved a long way since the first ploughing championships were held 71 years ago at the cost of £150. Huge crowds assembled yesterday to watch the latest in space age farming technology.
Farmers can now drive their tractors ‘blind’ with the use of the latest in Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. Windows on the tractor were blacked out to show how the system can help with calculating and mapping for grant controls as well as spraying or doing other precision work at night time.
Today’s programme includes the farmerette competition. Sixteen women will be ploughing as straight and perfect a furrow as possible in the event today. And while they are toiling away on the land, the fashion shows, trade exhibitions and the fun of the fair continues.
The advice to anyone travelling to the championship, is to leave in plenty of time as there were hour-long tail-backs at rush hour yesterday.
