Plough sound revives a wealth of memories

As the nation’s ploughmen and women begin to enjoy themselves at the annual hosting of the clan on 700 acres of green (and easily ploughed!) land outside Portlaoise, I would like to speak today in my normal learned and factual way on the subject of milk but first I recall from somewhere the yarn about a canny Cavan farmer of the 1940s whose rocky acres would challenge any ploughing competitor.

You see, he worked very hard to raise a family of six daughters and three sons and deployed every resource available to him. He had his own big horse and plough for the tilling and planting and all that heavy farmwork of that era. He also kept the only big black bull in the parish and in this way earned either a few extra bob or benefits in kind from neighbours whose cows and heifers needed to urgently make what was then chastely called a trip to the Bachelor.

No AI men at all back then in that different Ireland. And that for sure is the pure truth again. But what happened was that a shocking disaster struck him one morning on the eve of the ploughing season. He went out to the back field behind the house to begin the ploughing and dammit if he did not discover his grand old horse stretched out stone dead just inside the wooden gate. Worse still as he viewed the fallen one the morning sun was glittering on the brand new horseshoes on which he had spent no less than 15 hard-earned shillings the previous week and now was not going to get any return at all.

At that time up there he probably would have to pay another half-crown at least to have the poor animal removed. And where was he going to find the significant price of another big horse? Disaster indeed on a bigger scale than any Portlaoise ploughman will face this week.

But we are in north Cavan, mark ye well, and it was around these rocky and rushy acres that the quintessence of resilience and canniness was bred and born. Our friend lit his crooked pipe and leaned in deep thought against the gate for no more than six minutes.

Then he went directly to the nearby shed, fetched the harness and a whip, entered the field where the happy big bull was awaiting his first heifer of the day, attached the harness to the bull, cracked the whip quite sharply against the surprised bovine backside, and uttered the immortal words overheard by my own cousin then passing on his bicycle — “Come on my lad. It’s time for you to find out that there is more to life than romance.”

Now I want to speak about milk and milk production and maybe this important message is potentially of more value to those manning the small city of trade stands around the championships.

Many of these stands are connected to the marketing of milk and all its many related products such as cheese and yoghurt and flavoured smoothies and all that sort of stuff. I have said it here before that I am amazed nowadays at the range of milks on the market. Once upon a time there was just milk, skimmed milk and buttermilk. Now there are a hundred offerings of all kinds of reinforced strange milks on the supermarket shelves. The choice is baffling and even a bit frightening.

I often wonder how the shelf-life of the litre in the fridge has been extended so considerably. What are they adding or subtracting exactly? I do not have the foggiest notion. But what I do know for certain after my trip to The Netherlands last week is that there is a gulf in the retail market for one milk-related product which I have never been able to buy here at all. I am a coffee drinker from morning to night and my only real lifestyle extravagance is that I always have cream with my cuppa rather than milk.

And cream is expensive. Our European brothers and sisters have coped with this reality by producing shelves of what they call Koffiemilk. It is a gift from Heaven for coffee drinkers like me and, for sure, there are tens of thousands of us all around the nation.

Don’t we drink as much coffee nationally today as tea? And this gloriously tasty Koffiemilk, in bottles of various sizes containing a creamy white liquid exactly like our expensive cream, and in both bio and non-bio varieties, is so cheap that they are almost giving it away gratis.

A few cents will buy as much as I need for a week. I am so crestfallen that I cannot purchase it here at home and that the anti-liquid airline regulations prevented me from bringing home enough of a supply to last me until Christmas. And that is the absolute truth altogether.

Maybe somebody on a trade stand at the championships will read this and take steps to remedy the situation. The profits from such an operation would probably easily outstrip the profits of the lad in the stand nearby who is trying to sell tractors.

And if somebody does soon launch an Irish brand of Koffiemilk I would nearly bet my last euro that his or her grandmother hailed from the County Cavan. And I, for sure, will be amongst the first rush of customers.