THE KING OF VINTAGE
100 tractors and counting
IDROVE a Ferguson 35 for the first time in nearly 40 years last week. The machine was the little workhorse of Irish agriculture in the ’60s and ’70s and was a joy to drive, bringing back many memories.
I was near Garrykennedy on the Tipperary shores of Lough Derg visiting Pat Egan, a retired farmer and plant hire contractor who uses his retirement ‘and a bit of development land money’ to fund his passion for vintage and old machinery.
His yard contains an array of Fergusons, David Browns and a few Fords along with a number of exotic creatures like Farmalls and a big yellow 1950s Case 400 that dominates them all, like an ostrich among chickens.
The machines are immaculately restored and most start on the button, aside from a few that had their batteries removed in a raid by miscreants a few weeks ago.
The tractors are only part of the story, an extensive shed is full of restored farm equipment from the horse era going right back to the 19th century, a collection that includes a hand thresher and a 1860s gorse mulcher.
According to neighbour Pat Hickey this latter implement was developed after the famine to mulch gorse into animal feed leaving root crops for human consumption.
The man himself, Pat Egan, is a lean man with a big smile. Sitting in the sunshine surrounded by his beloved machines he’s like the cat with all the cream. His life has been machinery. “I bought my first JCB in 1969 and spent a lifetime in hire work, doing mainly group water schemes and land reclamation. I also farmed the 60ac here at home and went out on hire saving hay,” Pat explains.
He remembers endless days in meadows trying to humour old square balers with their cantankerous knotters and their even more cantankerous packers.
On a trip to England in the early 1980s he spotted the round balers and wrappers at work for the first time. “I bought the first round baler in this area as soon as I came home,” he said.
On the farming front he was a breeder of purebred Charolais. “As time went on they were cursed with summer mastitis and as more and more people got into them the competition was too keen. My health wasn’t the best so one day I decided to retire, what was I doing it all for?
“When I retired I thought all I would do is read the paper. I mean the land is in great order, all cleaned up and that, so I had nothing to do,” he said. His venture into the world of machinery restoration happened by accident. “I saw an old JCB for sale on the paper up around Killucan in Co Meath. I bought it on the phone and went with a low loader to pick it up.
“While I was there I spotted a misfortune of a Ferguson 135 in a ditch with weeds and bushes growing out of it.
“I felt sorry for it and I asked the man if he’d sell it and he did. I put it on the low-loader, brought it back with me, restored it to perfection and I’ve been at it since.”
Horse-drawn
Pat has a collection of about 100 tractors but has also an extensive collection of hand tools and horse-drawn machines, fully restored and laid out in neat rows. More hang on the walls of his huge purpose-built shed. The place is a veritable farming museum.
After a number of years concentrating on tractors Pat turned his hand to implements.
“I had tractors and nothing to put on them. I began to look for horse-drawn machines in particular, they have more character to them, I think.
“Besides, my father was a great horse handler and ploughman who was known to have the best of equipment and could handle a pair of workhorses like nobody else. I remember how good he was.”
Pat makes no money from his endeavours and doesn’t sell the machines he restores. “Everything I buy is a prisoner,” he said, “I enjoy every minute of it.
“You see, there’s no point in me going to hurling matches any more, I can’t see a thing. This is my hurling now, I listen to the matches on the radio.”
Pat decided to open up his shed and put his tractors on display in the adjoining field to raise funds for the local parish.
“One of the lads suggested it and I said, ‘If you organise it I’ ll supply the tractors, the machinery, the shed and the field’. So, they have a big day organised for Sunday, July 15. I suppose with so few people going to mass nowadays they need to get money somewhere. I’ ll be delighted that people will get a chance to see what I have.”
I SPOTTED A MISFORTUNE OF A FERGUSON 135 IN A DITCH WITH WEEDS AND BUSHES GROWING OUT