There’s nothing weak about admitting you could use some help on your farm

Bringing in labour – if you can find it – can make a huge difference to your farm and your lifestyle

Hannah Quinn-Mulligan with one of her beef cattle on her farm in Co Limerick – she has also diversified into dairy

Hannah Quinn-Mulligan

January 27 2023 06:00 AM

In the 1930s, some clever person had the idea to get schoolchildren across the country to record local stories. I’ve been working on a radio documentary for RTÉ and stumbled across the collection and instead of researching for the programme , I went straight to stories from my own area.

What was everyday life less than a hundred years ago now seems a world away, but one story in particular caught my eye: local men being hired by a nearby farmer to dig potatoes, and the hardship that employment involved.

“The farmer who hired the diggers fed and bedded them,” writes a 16-year-old from 1936.

“He got them up at dawn and had them out to weed as much potato-land as they could before breakfast. That over, they dug all day, only as much time being allowed for dinner as was necessary to consume the meal.

Different times: Farm labour in Ireland in the distant past. Photo: Getty

“The farmer always had a trusty henchman of his own that set the pace for the diggers. Those who failed to keep level were either dismissed, or had their pay reduced. Work did not cease until darkness was setting in, when the men came in to their supper.”

The grim story ends on a high note, with one of the workers using mud to darken the windows of the farmer’s house, resulting in the farmer sleeping in and a morning’s rest for the workers.

There are a plethora of stories and more than a few local family names scattered through the pages.

In a way, I’m quietly thankful my family only arrived in the last 40 years to the area and dodged any incriminatingly cruel ancestors.

The collection is free to access online at dúchas.ie if anyone wants to check out their own local history — or neighbours.

What the story really made me think about was farm labour. There are roughly 130,000 farms in Ireland and combined they use over 160,000 annual work units.

Our own farm dates back as far as the 1730s and was home to local parish priests. It has two courtyards, stone arches and stone sheds with walls thick enough to block any form of 21st-century telecommunication signal.

The yards and sheds were made for a time when staff was readily available and cheap, often paid more in potatoes than pounds.

I’ve visited a lot of farmyards in my time, some circa the 1850s and others with aspirations of the 2100s, but what differentiates them in terms of orderliness is usually the number of labour units on-farm.

Yet many farmers are like middle-class women in that they dislike admitting they have help around the house or farm. For some, it seems to be deemed a kind of weakness, but most farms, even the small ones, always existed with at least some hired help at certain stages of the year.

This was brought home to me during a walk on the farm of a top operator in Clare a few years ago. He seemed to be ticking every box until the advisor turned around and told him that he was the “biggest weakness” on his farm.

He was working seven days a week and if something happened to him in the morning the farm would be unable to function. The farmer was initially insulted but a few months later I followed up and heard he’d hired in someone to cover work and milking on Sundays, a habit he has stuck with.

I’m well aware, it is not easy to get labour on farms. But in the run-up to calving, I’m not afraid to admit I’ve got some help in to clean and disinfect sheds.

I’ll even own up to the fact that we get help in every summer via a website for organic farmers, where people come to paint, whitewash and weed the veg patch a few hours a day in exchange for bed and board.

My grandmother has a whitewashing obsession. As a result, I mixed gallons of lime and survived near blindness from early childhood, and having paid my dues feel I can pass on this chore to the students who want to experience real life on an Irish farm.

I can’t treat them the way you would a small grandchild or a 1930s labourer, and numerous investments have been made to make their lives more comfortable.

I will not claim to be an expert in the farm labour department but I know that admitting you need help is usually the first step and after that accepting the reality that people need a better perk than free potatoes is the next one.

Hannah Quinn-Mulligan is a journalist and an organic beef and dairy farmer; templeroedairy.ie