B125: Fields of Gold

5/3/2024

My father Mickey left school at the age of 12 but yet was one of the most knowledgeable people I have ever met. During his working life he worked as a general labourer for Sisk (Construction Company), Unicast (Modular Homes) and Ferrersflex (Leather Shoe Insoles) where he was well-known for coming up with clever solutions to complex problems. But he started his working life as a farm labourer, working for a number of Co. Waterford farming families.

I remember him telling me about working in fields of gold…..and he certainly made those days of hay making sound idyllic….with bottles of tea drank out in the field to wash down a few sandwiches if you were lucky to have them. Nowadays, hay is generally not allowed to go to seed or ripen. For silage, it is blown into trailers taken to the haggard to the silage pit on a concrete base; the trailer goes up and down to pack it, a plastic sheet is placed over it and old tyres placed on top to press it. Very little done by hand like in my father’s time.

Mickey at school in Crehana National School (back row 2nd from left)

Many of the farmers in Ireland now base their viability on their milk quota. In my father’s time, the cows were milked by hand in small numbers and the milk was brought in churns to the creamery, where it was separated and the skimmed milk then brought home, so the creamery was generally a great social centre. Since about 1983, the milk quota became important, a farm’s viability depends on it, with farmers penalised for exceeding it. Cows of course are no longer milked by hand, but by machine in milk parlours, often now robotically. The bulk tank comes to collect the milk to bring to the co-op headquarters.

A dairymaid milking a cow by hand

The crops generally grown were potatoes, leafy veg like cabbage and kale and smaller quantities of veg like carrots and parsnips. The potatoes were planted in ridges or beds and drills. Root crops grown were swede turnips and mangolds - mainly for livestock feed. All thinning and weeding of root crops were done by hand and these were Mickey’s least favourite jobs. Back-breaking work.

Gathering the sheaves

But by far, Mickey’s favourite time as a farm labourer was around harvest time when crops of wheat, barley and oats were harvested. Before combine harvesters, a threshing machine would travel from farm to farm over the weeks of the harvest and the extra labour to feed the thresher was provided under a “meitheal” system – an Irish word for the co-operative labour system where groups of neighbours help each other in turn with farming work such as harvesting. As they say “many hands make light work”.

Of course, after the threshing was always the threshing dances. And if the truth be told, this more than the harvest itself, was probably the reason Mickey liked that time of year so much. He loved playing the box (button accordion) for dancers more than anything.

Mickey Playing the Box

So, whenever I hear “Fields of Gold” by Eva Cassidy (although it’s about two lovers walking through a field), I always think of Mickey. A few weeks after he passed in 2009, I was sitting in the waiting room of the Blackrock Clinic awaiting my annual work medical results, when “Fields of Gold” was played on the radio. Eva’s soulful voice is so moving. There was only one other person in the waiting room, a middle-aged man. I was sitting there with tears streaming down my face and I’d say the poor man thought I had just been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Anyway, he had the good sense to say nothing and I eventually pulled my self together. So, this week’s blog is about one of the memorable songs I love, “Fields of Gold”. Enjoy!