#Ploughing16: Spade work of a forgotten era

The ancient art of turning taobhfhóds will be exhibited at the three-day National Ploughing Championships which begin at Scraggan, Tullamore, tomorrow.

It involves using a Loy spade to manually break ground and turn the soil to the sky for the planting of crops.

Taobhfhód is a lovely Irish word often used in remote parts of rural Ireland to describe the upturned sod at the side of a potato ridge during planting.