The two largest land-owners
in the parish were the Gores of Woodford and LaTouches of Dublin
(formerly French).
Others were Lord Leitrim of Mohill, who owned property in the
village as well as much of Newtowngore and the
Godleys of Killegar, the only family to survive in the parish
to this day. The system in Carrigallen was reasonably
benign. The third Earl of Leitrim had been known to evict people
from the village of Carrigallen, and in the
Newtowngore area and the townland of Druminiffe.
There were other landlords
but all were bought out gradually. The farms varied from good,
sixty-plus acres to very
small nonviable patches which have merged with neighbouring holdings.
The land is a mixture of limestone
(Newtowngore and surrounds, and
patches near the town); the largest topography being drumlin
hills with soil of a
good average plough depth of top-soil. Whins only manage to survive
in the dry ditches, so that land is not really
dry or sandy.
On the other hand rushes
were not prevalent, which shows the land was not over-abused or
waterlogged. Pre-war
Carrigallen, like much of Leitrim, was a mixed farming area-four
or five cows (ten or twelve in larger farms), a
sow or two, and bacon pigs for sale (one for the family),
a good kitchen garden, one to two acres of potatoes, a
couple acres of oats and maybe some wheat. Summer pasture and
meadow for winter hay made up the bulk of the
land. Dwelling houses ranged from two-storey slated to three or
four-roomed thatched houses.
(Left) John Harahan & John McLoughlin. At the back
is James McGovern. Making a hayrick. c.1945.
(Right) Ploughing enthusiasts. c 1950's. (Back)
Pee Mollahan, Eugene Corr, Jimmy Higgins, Vincent Greene,
Michael McCusker, Frank Corr, Mickey Masterson, Tom Doonan, Tommy
Reynolds, Farrel Molloy &
Jimmy McCusker. (Middle) Charlie Reilly & John Magarahan.
(Front) Larry Willams, John Carthy, Michael
Murray, Seamus Williams, Eddie Heslin & Tom Maguire.
The out-offices left much to be desired. The cow-byre was often
too stuffy with poor ventilation. Farmers did not
realise a cow has a tremendous high normal temperature of 103°F
(39.4°C), so she sheds much natural heat. The
modern byres correct this by ventilation naturally. The pig, in
contrast, was often housed in a veritable vault.
Bonhams especially are as protected. So winter was a hazardous
time especially.
The sow, who often suffered
from deficiencies, was hard to corral and often ate holes in the
wooden door.
Galvanised roofs added to the problem. A dry sow could get a lot
of protein balance from good grass but, even
though she does not chew the cud, she had not a good pasture to
graze on, especially in winter. So she rooted the
fields; (her primordial instinct for which she inherited her
nose) and thus, she found herself locked up.
(Above) John O'Neill, General Manager, Killeshandra Creamery,
Charlie Farrelly, Drumbreanlis, & Charles J
Haughey, Minister for Agriculture. Charlie Farrelly won'best supplier
to Killeshandra Creamery', 1965.
The piglets suffered several minor deficiencies, in the house,
because they are natural rooters also, and they could not
be let out for most of the year. So they often died of convulsions
which was really iron deficiency. The typical diet
was boiled potatoes, high starch, with imported Indian corn, also
starchy, with a balance of protein from skim milk.
This produced a slow growth and a very sweet fat bacon. This system
all changed in the fifties. The long lean breeds
came in.
Home-grown grains, balanced
with animal products fed dry, came in. Pig-rearing became an exact
science. The sow
or two disappeared from the farms, to be replaced by the large
units, for rearing hundreds of pigs-a veritable factory
with insulated houses including cavity floors, automatic feeding
silos and computer feeding.
Cattle and milk producing
had its problems in those far-off days. The traditional ways were
carried on from
generation to generation. The same fields were pastured from year
to year; the same fields were invariably meadows
for the winter hay. The potatoes were the usual crop to benefit
from farm-yard manure plus fertilisers. The corn
crops that followed usually made do with the residual nutrients.
The meadows might get a dressing of dung, often at
the expense of a blade badly blunted at mowing time from stones,
pieces of iron etc. The pastures were the most
neglected in the mistaken idea that grass is eternal which of
course it is not. The Emerald Isle looks green, but not
everything is grass. Pastures and meadows produced rosette weeds
(low growing wide-species) which took the place
of grasses and clovers. The drumlins of Leitrim are naturally
acid and therefore, while naturally favouring good
healthy potatoes and oats, they limited good grass sward and ruled
out barley and most wheat species.
(Above) Jack O'Neill, Main Street, with the first tractor
in Carrigallen town. 1952.
So there were naturally
low milk yields, often poorly fleshed cows; and store cattle needed
costly housing to get them
ready for the fair. The big problem was the universal hay diet
over a long winter-September to May often. Even if
there was a good aftergrass on the meadows, wet years brought
poaching, and late growth closed down. Silage
making was yet unknown. Another problem was the changing back
to grass after tillage. During much of the forties,
huge acres were ploughed for tillage all over the country. This
was of course compulsory. Carrigallen had an
advantage here because, in pre-war days, a department-appointed
instructor, the late Dan Keenan, spent much of his
time here instructing ploughing. Jack Nixon and John Carthy were
two of his finest students. Thus, the district
produced many all-Ireland champions as well as good average ploughmen.
Most farms boasted a good plough, and a
pair of horses. Tractors were slowly appearing, first the old
Fordson with its long training plough but later the tidy
Ford and Ferguson models with the tidy hydraulic three-point linkage.
All this tillage left
the farmer weakened. Fertilisers almost disappeared till after
the war. Changing back to grass was
traditionally to under-sow grass, seeded with the last corn-crop.
If this grew well, it caused endless trouble in the
harvesting, being green when the corn was cut, and so hindering
the proper drying of stooks and stacks, which was
the only way to harvest corn. In severe cases, and in bad harvests,
dark fusted corn was the result. Direct seeding
was unheard of. In the late fifties a vocational teacher (an
agricultural graduate), Mick Duignan persuaded the late
John Carthy, a champion ploughman, to plough and harrow a fallow
field and direct seed it with good grass-seed and
clover complete with fertilisers and the requisite lime complement.
The field that everyone thought would be idle for
so long, bloomed into a magnificent rye-grass clover sward in
six to seven weeks. John was convinced and he
proceeded to direct seed several fields. His neighbours were equally
convinced, so the method came to be common
practice. The addition of ground limestone to ploughed ground
was more effective than spreading it on grass.
(Above) Ploughing in Killegar.1944.
In those years Carrigallen had its problems with waterlogged soils.
The Land Project came in 1948, bank-rolled
initially by post-war American Marshall Aid. A pity it came so
late because dry land is a basic. Drainage was mainly
done the hard way in the west at least-with the spade or loy and
shovel. No suitable machinery was available. Small
fire-clay pipes were laid in trenches 27 inches deep, herring-bone
fashion across the hills, seven yards apart; Sand or
gravel was then added and the drain was topped up with top-soil.
The sub-soil had to be painfully removed. All
credit is due to the generation of farmers and their children
who undertook this task.
The scheme was grant-aided
but it was a well deserved grant. In some cases, a farmer might
have the means to
mole-drain across the drains, and thus speed up the job. Seven
yard intervals were too wide a spacing to drain the
drumlins. In the sixties, a deputation headed by
Fr Browne (Roscommon)
who was national chairman of Muntir na Tíre in the
sixties, and others from Carrigallen
persuaded the Land Project (through and Minister of Agriculture
of the day) to give a limited grant for
mole-drainage alone. The provisions were suitable catchment drains
at regular intervals, and good outlets to open
drains to be provided. The moles were to be at four-feet intervals.
By that time, heavy caterpiller tractors were
becoming available which had power and grip to drain up against
the hill and pull the large three-inch moles. This
scheme released much needed waterlogged meadows and pasture to
almost instant fertility.
(Above) Hughie Reilly, Longfield, in the bog. c.1930's.
The passing of the hard
war years and the return to grass farming brought many changes.
As said before, a dramatic
change came in pig husbandry; equally, a change came in cattle
husbandry, and many farms became identified with
an intensive way of farming. Tillage of all kinds (sometimes
even the kitchen garden) disappeared; spacious
cow-byres were constructed. Large slatted houses were built for
dry stock. Other farmers opted for single suckling
calves at the mothers' feet, in the same padlock. By then, rural
electrification had reached practically every farmer.
The huge jump in machine milking rather than the glow grind of
hand milking, the huge quantities of fertilisers and
lime being used and the introduction of silage making enabled
cow-herds to increase enormously.
The traditional breeds
of cattle also began to change. From the neat herd of Aberdeen
Angus, the beef Shorthorn and
the larger Hereford, farmers now introduced the Charolais, the
Holstein or Friesian (mainly dairy but also with a
large beef carcass), the Limousin etc. These are large animals
and demand high levels of fodder, but are large
producers in turn. It follows that the farms had to be geared
to meet them. Another development was fresh water,
not just in the fields but in large byres for high yielding cows
(a thousand gallons of milk or more in a lactation).
Farmers provided water from group schemes or bored wells.
The introduction of silage
came slowly, from recognition of the fact that short leafy pickled
grass was the nearest
thing to field grass. Bad summers and the invention of forage
harvesters were the two great incentives. The early
efforts were painful: long fodder had to be painfully collected
by buck-rake and shaken laboriously to get out the air
pockets, thus precluding moulds. Sloped walls in silo-pits, heavy
tractors to compact the grass, early forcing of grass,
and the forage harvester to chop it up, brought a whole new concept
to producing fodder.
(Left) Jack Nixon, ploughing champion
in the 1930's and 1940's. 1982.
(Right) Above: John Carthy, Champion ploughman in the 1930's
and president of the Co Leitrim Ploughing
Association in the 1990's.
The last few years saw the introduction of the baler, and later
still the large round baler that wraps the fodder tightly
in black plastic, thus eliminating the time and trouble to cart
in fodder to hay-sheds or silos. The traditional way of
bygone years is gone-the hand-cocking, trimming and roping, the
drawing in to the rick or hay-shed. Then, there
was the belief that the hay could not be carted in for several
weeks, in order to let it fully save. This was a ridiculous
waste as the tops and the bases were rooted or moulded. There
may be accidental or careless waste in silo pits, but
this can be avoided with care and know-how.
Another torment on the
farm of yesteryear was the prevalence of so many parasites. Cattle
hosted three deadly
parasitic worms: liver-fluke in dry stock and cows, stomach and
intestinal worms in dry stock (cows, harboured
these but were not affected), and hoose worms in the lungs
and air passages of young calves. Remedies were poor
and not effectively applied. Veterinary personnel was very scarce,
and vets were not noted for the volume of
information they passed on. Other pests were bacterial, chiefly
blackleg in young stock, trichomaneisis (failure of
cows to bear calves), bacillus brucellosis (cows aborting
calves) and of course the omnipresent tuberculosis. While
veterinary care and more powerful drugs have left most of these
scourges a bad memory, TB and brucellosis persist.
The two-winged gad or warble fly that made all bovines, flee for
their lives in hot weather, could not be stopped by
the older derris powder.
Thankfully, new washes
have left this scourge a bad memory. Horses had their share of
parasitic worms too, plus the
insidious bumbly horse or bot fly, that spent its larval stage
attached to the stomach wall. Those and poor nutrition
plus the poisonous ragwort or buachallán made a wreck of
many a working horse. A farmer can get a mechanic to
work on his tractor nowadays, but his father usually had to bury
the horse-his main source of power. One of the best
innovations to-day was the invention of the cattle crush, a simple
steel or wooden device for holding animals for
drenching and other simple operations that are so necessary. Not
all ills or course have vanished from the farmyard,
but there is now less reason for losses than in years gone by.
Then, there were diseases
of progress. For example grass tetany killed many good cows. This
was a deficiency
disease caused by the loss of the minor element magnesium, which
is temporarily depressed when high applications
of the major elements were supplied. This and other problems are
now solved. When stocking numbers rise,
vigilance is all important. Of course, the modern farmer has not
the endless chores of his father, the spring
ploughing and sowing, the tedious preparation for potato growing
and later spraying, digging, etc, cutting and
saving turf and hay the hard way, weeding and thinning etc. etc.
The tractor out-classes the horse in speed and
volume. Yet there seemed to be a charm of its own to the old style.
The farmer worked all the hours of light God
gave him to get everything done. The winters were restful. Second
level education had not become the norm as now,
so there was more time for the family to work on the farm, and
share the burden. They did not seek summer work
as often happens with teenagers today. There was no work available anyhow.
(Above) Ploughing Association members, 1996. (Back) John
Duffy, John O'Malley, Roy Taylor, Gerry Grimes,
Lorcan Masterson, James Grimes, Stephen King, Cathal Sheridan
& Paddy Carthy. (Front) Errol McCartin,
Margaret McCartin, Tommy McGuckian, Michael McKiernan, Anthony
Brennan & Jim Kiernan.
What of all the modern
improvements in the past forty years or less? Is there a price
to pay? Yes. In the bygone days
the farmer was to a large extent self-sufficient. He supplied
the basic food for his family and his stock. So his outlay
was small. He had to because his income was minuscule. But he
had no big bills to pay, for light, fuel, phone,
groceries, car etc. The expenses of the modern farm are enormous.
But the, wretched prices farmers got for stock
years ago were a terrible handicap. The entry of the Republic
to the EC in the seventies was a great epoch. Prices
and markets were guaranteed for the first time and a boom period
followed. It is true that the cost of other things
rose too. Nevertheless, a nation like ours with an agricultural
background cannot be successful when its farmers are
poor. There had to be adjustments the EC regulations to prevent
over-production, but nonetheless improved things
especially for farmers.
One final word about
the farming housewife. Gone are the free-range hens and baskets
of eggs, the temperamental
bronze turkeys carefully nurtured for the Christmas market, the
cart of shining bonhams several times a year. The
sale of these commodities was usually the housewife's personal
pin-money, as she did the lion's share of these chores.
The modern housewife does not miss these perks, one imagines.
She has a much better income. The social structures
have changed down the years. In pre-famine times, farmers had
nothing to pass on. They owned no land themselves.
Young couples could get a patch of land and build a cabin or even
set up house in the end of the parents' hut, a few
split bags forming the only privacy to the nuptial bed. After
the Land War, the parents formed a fierce attachment to
the house and land. Dare any outsider enter as a bride! Thus,
towards the end of the century and into the twentieth,
the age of marriage rose. The heir apparent had to wait until
all the other siblings were gone and he had to get a
dowry with his bride. Even then, it caused friction as it really
meant two generations in the one house. DeValera
advocated dower-houses in the thirties, but he was scoffed at.
Of course, the economics of the times did not favour
the situation, but it is interesting to note that the dower-house
is very much part of the farming scene today.
In conclusion, the social
history of our country has often been more turbulent than our
military history. We have
survived many calamities. Our farmers have been the bed-rock and
the progenitors of most of our race. Long may
they prosper.
© Ronan Ward Design
2003. All Rights Reserved.