An evocative look at farm life we can all relate to

THE Cow Book by young Longford writer John Connell is a remarkable read. I hesitate to call it a meditation on farming life for fear I might give the mistaken impression that it opts for the idyllic and rises above the lutter that characterises winter and spring on Irish livestock farms.

This book, however, is a meditation that wades through the reality of husbanding animals and managing relationships when the sun is low in the sky and the moods are darkened by weather and woe.

It is not a sad book — it is searingly honest, beautifully written, wholly evocative and ultimately uplifting.

John is an investigative journalist and filmmaker who, at just 29 years old, has worked on three continents and lived in some of the world’s most exciting cities. One would think the last place he would want to end up is at home in Longford on the family’s beef and sheep farm as he struggles with his demons and seeks to establish himself as a writer. Meanwhile, his girlfriend waits for him in Australia.

The book begins in January and ends in June. It opens with John helping a cow to calve. This is his first time to do this without his father taking charge of operations. It’s not an easy birth. The calf is big, John has to reach inside the mother to get at the hocks and even then, the calving jack is called for.

The description of the delivery is as gripping as that of a bomb disposal expert defusing a live device. Just when the job appears to be done there is another twist and by the time the calf finally balances itself on its spindles and sucks its mother, everyone is dripping with sweat and blood and amniotic fluid, including the cow, the calf, the author and the reader.

Connell is of the land, the soil and the landscape, a place where the living and the dead walk the roads and cross the fields. He not only gets it — he gives it. In living and breathing prose he evokes the textures, colours, sounds and smells of the intricate garment that is the family farm and rural Ireland.

The fields have names and the names are often taken from the people who owned them at another time. The memory of those that once farmed them is woven by the author into the present in a way that remembers and honours. “And so each morning I carry my bale of hay from the shed, and in some respect I carry the total memories of family and men that are no longer here.” A profound sense of place is stitched into every page.

Granny lives in the locality with his Uncle Davy who is the local undertaker.taker. We are told of two uncles who died too young. There are people and places and stories that connect to the War of Independence and the Rebellion of ‘98. His brother who inherited the building business is mentioned while the younger sister at secondary school is called on to help.

But the main action happens between the author and his father while his mother, a strong benign presence, struggles to keep a fragile peace between the two.

The mother isn’t the silent suffering ‘woman of the house’ but is self-contained and independent, running her own Montessori school attached to the farm.

The father is a strong and brooding man who can be given to impatience with his son and with life. There isn’t a farming family in the country that will not recognise the simmering tension between the young bull and the auld bull. Cows, sheep, Vinny the dog and the odd horse are at the core of this book, particularly the cows. Every now and again the author diverts into a history of the cow and her development from the ancient ‘auroch’ to the modern genetically engineered breeds. The strong historical interconnectedness between cow and human is traced and referred to throughout the book. These somewhat academic asides can be slightly jarring as the author oscillates between farmer and documentary maker.

Given the time of year in which the book is set, birth and death dance around the place as calves and lambs are born and die in the twinkling of an eye. When they die there can be blame accompanied by a feeling of failure and annoyance, but when they live and thrive, there is a quiet joy and a sense of achievement.

The author has come home to Longford a wounded man hoping to find his true north