Michael Fahy collects vintage tractors... and deserving causes
Fundraising for charitable causes brings its own rewards for a tractor collector committed to spreading around a little of the good fortune that he has enjoyed: interview by Justin Roberts
Michael Fahy started his classic tractors collection around 1990 with an Allgaier Porsche and Fordson E27
Fundraising for charitable causes brings its own rewards for a tractor collector committed to spreading around a little of the good fortune that he has enjoyed: interview by
Justin Roberts
Michael Fahy of Littleton, Co Tipperary, is as good an example as you are likely to find of the virtues of happiness and hard work.
Now on the cusp of his 60th year, he exemplifies what can be achieved through determination,
Yet it is not just his business success that marks him out from the crowd, there are also his money-raising efforts for a range of charities that have brought him recognition in Munster’s vintage tractor circles over the years.
A modest fellow, Michael estimates the total he has helped raise through the vintage and classic tractor movement at somewhere around the €200,000 mark.
His friends might well consider this a conservative estimate.
But action speaks louder than words for this man who started off in business when a lad of 17, his only assets being a chainsaw and a bicycle upon which to carry himself, the chainsaw, petrol, and maybe a sandwich on a good day.
Since then, he has never been far from working with timber.
Even during a ten-year stint with Bord Na Mona, he would return home in the evenings to split wood to sell at the weekend.
Eventually he left Bord Na Mona, and struck out under his own steam, purchasing his first stationary wood processor in 1988.
Driven by a couple of rather worn County tractors, the implement enabled him to prepare timber for the mills, but he still needed to improve the recovery and loading of the wood, so in the early 1990s, he found himself a 77 horse power County 754, which came with a hefty loader and winch which had been attached by its previous owner, the Land Drainage Commission in the UK.
Weight and stability are important attributes in forestry work, rather than raw power, and what this tractor lacks in grunt, it makes up for in solidity.
Michael still has this tractor, and he considers it as the very last which he would sell from his collection.
It burbles along as sweetly as ever, and starts from cold with barely more than a turn or two of the crank,
It runs so well that it will occasionally find itself working in the woods, whenever the need arises.
Countys are now very much collectors’ items.
There is even an Irish club dedicated to their preservation.
Michael keeps this one as honest as the day he bought it, and has no intention of restoring it until it is fully retired, which may be a long way off yet.
Its rare Leaford loader is firmly bolted to a sub-frame which runs the length of the body and was specially designed for the County. It is not something that can be removed by slipping out a couple of pins, it is as much part of the tractor as the cab.
Porsche and David Brown are the marques that Michael grew up with, these were the makes that his father used when growing his contracting business in the 1960s and 1970s.
He had started many years before with an old Case cross motor, bought for the grand total of £50.
In these, the engine sat perpindicular to the frame, and petrol was guzzled just as fast as it could be topped up.
Case stopped producing these machines in 1928, a long time before one was bought as a foundation of the Fahy family fleet, yet it served well enough until they could buy a two-cylinder Porsche which sowed 530 acres of barley in its first season!
This eventually gave way to a succession of Fordsons and David Browns which arrived in the yard during the late 1960s.
Michael can still remember half the parish turning up to see the two new machines, an 880 and 990.
The walls around the house were thronged by sightseers who had come to marvel at these wonders.
With a youth spent around tractors, a keen interest in mechanics and several machines working for him, it came as no little surprise that Michael started collecting classics around 1990.
His first two machines were an Allgaier Porsche and Fordson E27, and it is this latter make which he has specialised in since.
In his shed, there is an example of each Fordson model, made in either Cork or Dagenham, up until the New Major of the early 1950s.
Alongside these are several other machines which reflect his interest in tractors used in Ireland, an Ursus and Belarus being two fine examples.
It is an inescapable fact of Irish life that anyone who starts collecting tractors fairly soon becomes involved in charity work, this may range from an occasional run to what can almost amount to a second career in fund raising.
At about the same time that he started his collection, Michael found himself helping out at various rallies in a small way, but not for long, as his small involvement rapidly grew to organising functions of his own, despite never having joined a club, instead, he has gathered around him a small network of trusted friends who volunteer their services to help other organisations raise money.
One such collaboration in 2014 involved an attempt at beating the world record for the greatest gathering of tractors in one place.
The Order of Malta in Thurles needed funds, and Michael and his team stepped in, and within a few months, had got the day organised with the promise of sufficient tractors to make the gathering a success.
As it turned out, they just missed the record target, for reasons which were beyond their control.
But it succeeded financially, and a cheque for €30,000 was handed over a few weeks later to the Order of Malta.
What has driven Michael to raise so much money for charity?
Karma might be the immediate response, or what goes around comes around, an adage that he firmly believes in, yet there is more to it than that.
We might, for instance, consider his donation of a Ferguson TE20 to help flood victims as being a gesture of natural generosity.
Each summer he and his wife of 36 years, Olive, also pay host to a pair of children from Chernobyl, a visit organised by a local group which does not posses an expensive administrative superstructure.
Michael himself puts his fundraising efforts down to the satisfaction he gains in handing the money over.
For, despite all we are told about blood, sweat and tears being the sole ingredients of success, he appreciates that luck can also play a decisive role, and he is committed to spreading around a little of the good fortune that he has enjoyed during his life so far.
