There’s plenty of doom and gloom at the moment in rural Ireland with growing fears over Brexit and the beef dispute that’s somewhat reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher and the coalminers.
So, it was nice to see the sun shine down in all its glory on the National Ploughing
Championship, which is affectionately dubbed the Electric Picnic for farmers.
It was nothing short of a miracle there wasn’t a single drop of rain during the entire three-day event in Ballintrane, Fenagh, Co Carlow.
According to the Queen of the Ploughing, 86-year-old Anna May McHugh, she couldn’t remember three consecutive days of a dry spell ever occurring before at the event.
She had to stretch her mind back to 1985 for the last time the sun shone so splendidly out of the heavens for it.
It’s easy to imagine numerous attendees prayed for the good weather seeing as 61% of those polled at it said the Hail Mary was their favourite prayer.
I know many jackeens, to use the pejorative term some country folk like to use for us Dubliners, find it incomprehensible that farmers pray to the Virgin Mary for such things.
But the National Ploughing Championships are a good reminder for Dubliners and the all too many politicians with a D4 mindset that there is much more to this little island than the capital.
Such a biased attitude was evident with RTE’s recent scaremongering to sell off their Cork building when they should instead offload their valuable Dublin real estate and relocate to the midlands.
I’ve always felt, in the interest of fairness, our national broadcaster, as well as many government departments, should be spread out across the island.
Leo Varadkar’s detractors accuse him of being so out of touch he doesn’t even know where rural Ireland is on the map.
But to give him his dues, he certainly wasn’t afraid to roll up his sleeves and muck in with the lads to plough a few furrows the other day.
Our Taoiseach might’ve looked like a fish out of water, but at least he didn’t shy away from the challenge – unlike Minister Creed who reportedly turned down a request last year to have a go at ploughing himself.
It’s disappointing to learn the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, of all people, would shy away from being a good sport at such an important national event.
It’s appropriate for our President or Taoiseach to be there in their official capacity, but I’m uncomfortable with political parties having tents at the event because it should be apolitical.
I don’t think political animals should be parading around it like peacocks pressing the flesh as a vote-catching exercise just like they do at funerals.
Even though I’m a true blue Dub, one of my first jobs as a cub reporter was writing for a farming publication and I lived beside farmers when based in Westmeath for 11 years.
So unlike many others from our Fair City, I can appreciate just how important the annual event is for the 297,000 people who turned up this year.
It would be an exciting idea if the National Ploughing Championship took the bull by the horns and farmed it out to a remote Dublin location one year.
It would give us jackeens a much better appreciation of country life.
But I wouldn’t bet the farm on it happening.
