KEVIN PLOUGHS THE OLD FASHIONED WAY
Reporter David Medcalf ventured to Coolboy for a chat with Kevin Doran, who compares horse ploughing with Formula One racing
‘THAT’S my play pen!’ laughs Kevin Doran. He is pointing to a small field in the hummocky countryside close to the village of Coolboy in south Wicklow. What sort of play could a grown man possibly be enjoying in such an out of the way place? The answer is ploughing, and not just any ploughing, but ploughing the way it used to be.
Kevin is a very modern person, enjoying all the up-to-date comforts in the house he share with his wife and three daughters. Yet for recreation he chooses to yoke up a couple of horses in order to turn over sods of earth. The ‘play pen’ is his training ground on the 40-acre farm that surrounds the house.
‘I practise there and everywhere I can,’ he says, every inch the dedicated sportsman – at least in the evenings and at weekends. He has to admit that work in Dublin must take top priority while the ploughing is his recreation, his hobby, his pastime. Not for him the fairways of Coolattin Golf Club in the next valley or the trials of playing football. He prefers to roll back the years and re-create a way of life that ended for most in the sixties.
The tractors which took over as the chief fetchers and carriers of agriculture made the traditional ways redundant. There is no commercial or sensible reason for keeping this old flame lit other than the sheer joy of it. The mechanised equipment is capable of turning a field from green to brown many times faster than the mere muscle power of a pair of cobs. Kevin is in no doubt as to why this throwback to the farming methods of his forebears has caught his fancy.
‘I have a love of the horses,’ he explains simply. ‘And then the plough came in.’ He wears a sweat shirt proclaiming the message ‘ keep calm and plough on’, which is as good a motto for life as any. He has certainly ploughed on since being brought up on a farm in Carnew, a few miles down the road. His father (county councillor Pat Doran) and his three brothers have remained involved full time in agriculture. And the family’s Wexford connection taps into deep farming roots around Carnew and Kilmuckridge.
KEVIN DORAN, on the other hand, was drawn to construction for much of his adult life, making and losing a fortune in the Celtic Tiger boom. His day job draws on the same practical building skills, so that he is generally to be found working Monday to Friday in Dublin port. His own farm in Coolboy is far too small to be considered at all viable, though it supports a fine flock of sheep. The ewes have produced a good crop of lambs this year, the little ones skittering around the meadow in the cute way that only lambs can achieve.
Their owner recalls how he was helping his uncle out one day some years ago on land in Askamore, over the border into Wexford near Carnew. He spotted an old plough abandoned in a ditch and it turned out that this rusting relic was something of a family heirloom, as it was used by Kevin’s grandfather. It may have belonged originally to Michael Redmond of the The Harrow near Enniscorthy.
‘ That’s where it all started,’ muses the man from Coolboy who salvaged this piece of heritage, which turned out to be a Pierce plough made in Wexford town. It was in a very poor state of repair, not only corroded but also clearly worn out by decades of use and many of the component parts were missing, never to be retrieved. It certainly was not fit to be licked into shape for competition. Nevertheless, Kevin was hooked. He reverted to the methods and interests of a past generation.
It was his father Pat who brought one of the first, if not the first, tractor to Carnew. Now the councillor’s son found himself delving into the non-mechanised approach which was the norm for his grandfather and those who went before. The find in the ditch triggered his interest in the art of ploughing with horses as he tinkered with the piece of heritage he had salvaged from the side of a field.
It was very much a side-line at the time as he was working flat out making the most of the Celtic Tiger boom which threw plenty of business his way. Nevertheless, he found time to tinker with the long neglected plough that came to his yard from Askamore. When he was eventually ready to compete, he entered the arena behind a different Pierce plough altogether and he had also acquired a mentor along with the hardware. Kevin’s guide in his venture into vintage ploughing is a Louth man called Gerry King from Dunleer.
It is no coincidence that Gerry is not only a dab hand at creating a straight furrow, he is a master too of practical engineering, with his own forge. Contests are won as much in the workshop as they are in the field as the old rigs are refined and re-jigged and all but re-invented.
The Wicklow man recalls that he made his
AT THE NATIONAL PLOUGHING CHAMPIONSHIPS, IT IS ALWAYS THE HORSES WHICH ATTRACT THE AUDIENCE AND THE PHOTOGRAPHERS
debut at the All-Ireland of 2008, which was held in Kilkenny and it turned out that the new boy had reasonable technique.
Now 49 years of age, he was just about eligible back then for the Under 40 grade – ‘ the under 40s in ploughing are like the under eights in football,’ he cracks.
As in most amateur sports, he finds the fun and fulfilment lie not just in the competing but also in having the craic with the people he meets.
Kevin’s family have found themselves caught up with his passion for the ploughing. Though wife Nuala would never describe herself as a plough woman, she joins the expeditions to events along with the couple’s three daughters, Toni, Ella and Sophie.
‘When you get into it, you cannot stop. It involves the whole family.’ The team also includes neighbour Jack Dagg (also known as Murphy), who helps to look after the horses, and Billy Molloy. Ah, yes, the horses. Kevin muses that he always had a love for the working horses needed to pull a plough but never actually owned one.
ONCE the decision was made to take ploughing seriously, it was necessary to purchase Tom and Jerry, a pair of easy-going piebald cobs. Not quite as big as the Clydesdales in the Budweiser adverts, they are substantial animals all the same. Acquired at the horse fair in Ballinasloe as foals they were broken by David Nolan and made ready for the job of pulling the plough.
Their owner reports that his charges are quiet, steady and obedient – perfect for the job – with sure feet that do not trample on the freshly turned ground. They also need to be able to ignore what is going on around them as they are inevitably the centre of attention whenever they appear in public. At the national ploughing championships each year, scores of competitors are in the field, yet it is always the horses – not the tractors – which attract the audience and the photographers.
When Jerry became injured, he was replaced by Womble, so now it is Tom and Womble who munch hay in the barn next door to the house. They share the accommodation with a thoroughbred mare and Sophie’s pony.
Beside the horse barn is an ancient stonewalled shed filled with a jumble of ploughing paraphernalia in various degrees of repair.
‘I have the Pierce plough and I would not be able to put an age on it,’ he says. Though much of it must be more than half a century in service, Gerry King’s workshop in Louth has delivered a substantial board made from a new piece of steel. The board is the part which turns over the freshly cut sod.
‘We are all the time looking for a better way,’ remarks Kevin of the constant refining of equipment which is a major part of the fun, ‘ but there is no point having the best car in Formula One, if you can’t drive it.’
Along with the horsepower and the plough, he needs the knowledge of how to tackle a plot in a stubble field or in a meadow to bring out the best in the brown earth.
He speaks of ‘ins and outs’, of ‘skim’ and of ‘flesh’, all part of striving to do the perfect job, assisted by a battery of rods, tapes and spanners.
The meticulous attention to detail bears absolutely no relationship to commercial agriculture.
The farmer who devotes four hours to ploughing a small plot would surely soon go bankrupt.
The competitions take Kevin and the rest of the entourage to various venues where they meet up with friends, whether in Shillelagh, in Laois or in Cork.
‘ There’s a great old camaraderie,’ he says, revealing that the horse plough sing-song is always the best social event at the nationals each September.