Not for the first time and absolutely not the last, a tale at my own expense to begin. My obsession with farming, tractors and all things machinery has always and will always be a part of me. But it hasn’t always been easy on those around me. Simply as one wasn’t disposed to taking no for an answer.
If I heard or saw a tractor or combine anywhere within earshot, a closer look simply had to be taken. Which was, for a lot of years, aided greatly by the fact that my brother Paul worked for Pat Clarke for a decade or more.
Not having a car at the time, that generally meant driving one of the tractors home. Which in turn meant yours truly getting pitched into the cockpit. The ‘fun’ would begin, though, when attempts were being made to evacuate me from the vehicle in question.
One night in particular, the obstinance was a such a pitch that not even every light in the place being quenched was enough to scare me into giving in. With hindsight, I’ve tried to convince myself it was a sign from somewhere to make the most of every bit of farming activity which could be got at.
Because, between Paul eventually leaving Pat’s and what feels like every bit of what was farmland in the place being polluted with houses, connection to agriculture and the land and machinery becomes more tenuous by the day. Indeed, on more than occasion, I’ve pondered what it would’ve been like to have been even a bit older when Paul was with Pat. Even a teenager, say. With a powered wheelchair.
That way, I would have been able to ramble up Barry’s Lane to Millfarm or up to their yard or even out across our own fields when we had them under my own steam. Now, thanks to the patience of my family – which was surely well and truly tested at times – memories and friendships were made which will – with the help of whoever it is pulls the levers up top – last a lifetime.
Which is why it was with absolute shock and indescribable sadness that so many of us learned of the sudden passing of Mick Cummins earlier this week. Mick has been part of my life since I was about four. Paul was well and truly in Clarkes at that stage and the tradition was that – having worked on the home farm with his late father Kevin during the winter and then link up with Pat and the lads in time for the first cut silage and be there until the following years winter crops were safely under way.
In that time, he generally took charge of the ploughing and the silage harvester and drawing the grain to Drummonds with the old Eureka trailers, while Paul was generally the baler man. Well, the square baler, that is. The much maligned, black sheep of the farm machinery world which still, to this day, has a role to play.
It’s very existence giving rise to a couple of particular precious memories which now take on an even more emotional importance in light of Mick’s death. One, a year when, very unusually it has to be said, there was both square and round baled hay made at the back of our place, so, with a big crew of men on hand – including an army of stackers – I recall, as clear as if it were yesterday, ma putting on a huge spread of grub and, at the very least the tractor drivers, dining with us at lunchtime.
The other square baler memory involving Mick (even though again it was Paul on the old Welger with the blue sleigh) is an unusual one in that I didn’t actually see it but it has stayed with me over the years. The crew were away working on a farm a bit away, a place I haven’t been to in a lifetime but will stretch every sinew to make it to before year’s end. As it happened, ma, da, Des and myself had just arrived back from a few days away in Clifden, Co Galway, but at about 11.45pm, the familiar growl of the Deutz was heard rumbling up the driveway.
I’m sure there were times when I drove Paul mad with the barrage of questions, but to be fair he never complained about my endless youthful curiosity. Though the debrief that night was one which has stuck with me all these years and please God will do so until there’s nothing left of me but ashes. Though, in the context of farming in the present day the story becomes ever more remarkable with age.
You see, on that sizzling summer Saturday, Paul had put 3,000 bales through the square machine while Mick made 180 rounds with its bigger counterpart – also a Welger at the time as it happened. Just think about that for a minute. There are farmers who don’t do small square bales at all now, some who might do 3,000 in a year between hay and straw, and some who would make 180 round bales in a few hours, never mind a day.
Now keep in mind those 3,000 square bales all had be stacked in eights, then built into a load on bale trailers and then unloaded and built again in a shed. All by hand. All gruelling work, yet the craic and friendships formed during those special few weeks of the year are an ode to a simpler and almost certainly better time.
Anyway, probably without even realising it, Mick facilitated two of the happiest memories I have from a lifetime of being in and around farming. One, from when the guess would be I was about eight, he helped Barbara lift me into the Deutz DX6.10 – the big green machine of its era – for a spin which transpired to be my one and only trip to Drummonds from the viewpoint of seeing the process of a load of grain being weighed in, the sample taken, the load tipped and the green docket – they were that colour then anyway – being retrieved from the office. I had the green pen from the run to Paddingstown for years thereafter.
The other magic moment which is all too poignantly vivid now revolves around what turned out to be my last time actually in a tractor. And it just so happened to be my favourite tractor of all time, Pat’s DX6.05. I say Mick facilitated it because, though known for being a strong-willed, opinionated character, he displayed unusual levels of patience and restraint when Paul was a bit late back after lunch because he had been lifting somebody, cough, into the tractor to spend a few hours with them.
They were drawing silage from the back of St Joseph’s Hospital in Clonsilla and it happened to be during the construction of the Clonee Bypass, so the only access to Dunboyne from the Clonsilla side was via the Rooske Road and so our family’s ancestral home – The Corner House – as it will forever be to me, and my greatest regret from that day, one which will forever fester now, but, if I knew then what I know now – that it was to be my last time in a tractor – I would absolutely have stayed with Paul for another few loads at least.
***
I always think it’s a glowing endorsement of somebody’s quality at their line of business that they never seem to be short of work. And that was certainly the case with Mick Cummins. If anybody in the farming community or indeed anybody required machinery operated, Mick would be the first man on any local’s list. Which is why, as the years went on, it was no surprise to see the big man appear with Denis Feighery (Tara Farms) and Noel Wright in Kilmessan, Mick Beirne and, most recently, Kieran Lavelle. All of whom knew they were getting a diligent, skilled, experienced person with a genuine interest and love for farming and machinery. In fact, he did actually dip into construction work for a short time but the lure of the grass and the grain eventually won him back.
And, as time has often proven to be the case, including with our Paul, a return to farming meant, for a time at least, meant a return to Clarkes. Where, of course fate had it, that while he was back with the lads, Mick rowed up our hay in a tractor he ended up owning, with a lovely old Haybob on a sunny August Thursday evening. As it happened, our after the late, great Con Houlihan was laid to rest and Katie Taylor had won Olympic gold in London.
It cannot be imagined that my dear departed farming friend was much into social media, if at all, so it was more than a little ironic that it was, in a roundabout sort of way, through contact with Kieran Lavelle and the TikTok sensation that is David Reidy, that Mick was tracked down again. And, tragically now, what has turned out to be our final meeting could hardly have been more fitting as, not only was it exactly a year ago this week, unsurprisingly, it was in the midst of the harvest up with Feigherys, as farmers do, when he, like yours truly it has to be said, had dropped in to see how Pat and David (Reidy) were getting on at the wheat.
In normal circumstances it would be customary to hope, Mick, my old friend, that you rest in peace in the yard far away, but I’ve no doubt you’re probably already in a John Deere or a Deutz up there readying a plough. Keep the furrow straight!