I’m Just a Farmer, Plain and Simple: By Bobby Collier
I’m Just a Farmer, Plain and Simple
By Bobby Collier
I’m just a farmer,
Plain and simple.
Not of a royal birth
But rather, a worker of the earth.
I know not of riches
But rather, of patches on my britches
I know of draught and rain,
Of pleasure and pain.
I know of the good and the bad,
The happy and the sad.
I am a man of emotions.
A man who loves this land,
And the beauty of its sand.
I know of a spring’s fresh flow
And autumn’s golden glow,
Of a newborn calf’s hesitation,
And the eagle’s destination.
I know of tall pines,
And long, waiting lines.
Of the warmth of campfires,
And the agony of flat tires.
But I am a man who loves his job
And the life I live.
I am a man who works with God,
I cannot succeed without his help,
For you see,
I’m just a farmer
Plain and simple.
Summer Poems : Haymaking, By Edward Thomas
Summer Poems : Haymaking
By Edward Thomas
Aftear night’s thunder far away had rolled
The fiery day had a kernel sweet of cold,
And in the perfect blue the clouds uncurled,
Like the first gods before they made the world
And misery, swimming the stormless sea
In beauty and in divine gaiety.
The smooth white empty road was lightly strewn
With leaves—the holly’s Autumn falls in June—
And fir cones standing stiff up in the heat.
The mill-foot water tumbled white and lit
With tossing crystals, happier than any crowd
Of children pouring out of school aloud.
And in the little thickets where a sleeper
For ever might lie lost, the nettle-creeper
And garden warbler sang unceasingly;
While over them shrill shrieked in his fierce glee
The swift with wings and tail as sharp and narrow
As if the bow had flown off with the arrow.
Only the scent of woodbine and hay new-mown
Travelled the road. In the field sloping down,
Park-like, to where its willows showed the brook,
Haymakers rested. The tosser lay forsook
Out in the sun; and the long waggon stood
Without its team, it seemed it never would
Move from the shadow of that single yew.
The team, as still, until their task was due,
Beside the labourers enjoyed the shade
That three squat oaks mid-field together made
Upon a circle of grass and weed uncut,
And on the hollow, once a chalk-pit, but
Now brimmed with nut and elder-flower so clean.
The men leaned on their rakes, about to begin,
But still. And all were silent. All was old,
This morning time, with a great age untold,
Older than Clare and Cobbett, Morland and Crome,
Than, at the field’s far edge, the farmer’s home,
A white house crouched at the foot of a great tree.
Under the heavens that know not what years be
The men, the beasts, the trees, the implements
Uttered even what they will in times far hence—
All of us gone out of the reach of change—
Immortal in a picture of an old grange.
Land Divided Into Farms
Land Divided into farms
County Kerry
Ireland
Nigel Borrington
Land Divided Into Farms
The land it was divided, into farms for cattle and sheep,
Some land they grew the corn, for the workers to keep,
Some they had wheat to sell, was taken to the mill,
Their stone ground for bread, the baker’s shop and his van to fill.
Some land it stayed in woodland, itself to regenerate,
As old ones fall and lets in light, young saplings they do await,
A long cycle of new to old, from the old forestation to new
Fenced all round now, and preserved for this nation.
5 Images for May, Friday
Ok , Today is more of a collection of images than one single image, to close the week 🙂
May and the local farms are getting busy, Irish farms are usually a little smaller than in Mainland Europe, so for some of the work a small tractor is still needed in order to work the smaller fields.
These images are a study of a little tractor most likely still used for many tasks around the farm over the next weeks of this busy month …..
A Winters day on the farm …..
WinterFeed in the barn
County Kilkenny
Nigel Borrington
Winters on a farm are a hard time of year, dealing with the weather and the cold, the dark evenings and early mornings. Life as a farmer must have many great moments but its not hard to imagine that there are less of these in the winter months than in the summer.
I took these images while out on a walk yesterday and as you can see, on this farm some of the cows are still out in the fields while some have been returned to their winter shed, soon all of them with be inside. In the Barn close by is stored some of the feed that will be used for the cattle over the next few months. In an area of the barn next to the feed is the farmers haybob that would have been used only a few weeks back to help get the hay bales ready.
The next few weeks are all about rest for the land and keeping the live stock warm and health in the sheds, life slows down and less work out in the fields is needed. While welcome in some ways you can imagine that this lack of activity can at times feel a little to slow but this is farm life.
Here in county Kilkenny each year you develop a great sense of the farming seasons and the activities that go along with them.
County Kilkenny landscape : A poem : Over the Fence , By jesse.vanwallene
Kilkenny Landscapes
Over the Fence
Nigel Borrington
Over the Fence
I remember the giant field that was just a house away from my parents’ house and how I could tell what season it was by what it was being used for.
I remember how in the fall the field was used for corn and how in the spring it was used for alfalfa or cotton and how at the start of summer it was used for lazy sheep to graze and get fat.
I remember when there were no crops or livestock in the field and it was just dirt and tumbleweeds and how the desert wind picked up the earth in wild dust storms and dirt devils would race onto my street.
I remember venturing out with my brother, jelly jars in hand, to the center of the field and capturing tiny black and red lady bugs before sun down, just to compare who could catch more before our mother called us back for supper.
I remember how shocked I was when they put up a fence around the field with no trespassing signs posted and when I saw the giant earth movers roaring their engines trying to produce man made hills and lakes for a retirement community golf course.
I remember how mad I was that someone had taken away my refuge and how I took it out on the Porto potties every once and a while just to let out some frustrations.
I remember when the grass came in and the sidewalks were built how quickly I stopped being mad and how we bought frozen blocks of ice to sit on and slide down the grassy hills with on long summer days.
I remember skate boarding to a spot on the course overlooking a lake where I would listen to my music and watch as the wind passed through the trees and over the water creating tiny waves that moved from one side all the way to the other where I sat, escaping.
I remember the smell of the fresh cut grass and the cold sting of the unsuspected sprinklers and the duck families and the old people and the trees and the wide open sky at the edge of the city where storms could roll up or the stars could stretch out further than my eyes could see.
But most of all I remember how wonderful it was to have a place to escape to and ease my thoughts with only the blistering sun or the chilling winds of the changing seasons to keep me company.
Randolph L Wilson’s Poem : Red Farm Tractor
The Red Farm Tractor
Nigel Borrington
Red Farm Tractor
Randolph L Wilson
I long for the smell of fresh turned soil , an experience I’ve never forgotten ..
The smell of diesel , oil and grease ..The ringing of harrow and bush hog …
My Liberty overalls and size ten clod hoppers , suede cowboy hat , pocket watch and Bloodhound tobacco ..
Bob White Quail walking the wood line waiting to
get their fill of turned ground morsels , grains and grasshoppers ..
Curious Whitetailed Deer hiding in the shadows , Redtailed Hawks
with a keen eye for field rats escaping the plow ..
A sixty two Massey Harris that ran like a’ Top ‘ through rain
and heat , never missing a beat !
My mind prays for the simple life of man and machine , the brushfires
of March , the restoration of God’s green earth ..
Landscape Images of County Kilkenny , a winters day on the sheep farm.
Images of County Kilkenny
Sheep farm in the winter
Nigel Borrington
These late winters day have been full of early morning mist and fog, many of the farmers keep their animals enclosed in barns or walled yards at this time of year.
I came across this great scene last weekend while out walking in the mist , an old farm house and its yard used these days for this very function.
Kilkenny Photography – Cattle market
Nikon D700, 50mm f1.4 lens
Kilkenny Cattle market, Gallery image
Irish photography : Nigel Borrington
Kilkenny Cattle market, Thursday Morning 24th Oct.
I have just spent the last two Thursday mornings at the Cattle market in county Kilkenny building up some Gallery images and selling some cattle I invested in.
The market meets each Thursday Morning from around 9am, the sales provide one the most atmospheric locations to take images in and I just loved watching all the farmers selling or buying cattle.
I will keep returning over the next months as I hope to keep building on this portfolio of images, I will also post the best images I have so far during the coming weeks.
Hay Bales – Black and white
Hay Bales, coolagh, County Kilkenny
Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
Make Hay while the sun shines
This time of year in county kilkenny brings many great subject to take photographs of, Freshly cut fields of hay are most definitely one of them. June and July have been wonderful warm months and the farmers have been very lucky at last. This Time last year we had weeks of heavy rain and even floods.
I captured these Hay bales before they were rapped, early morning when the mist still sat on the fields, it lifted soon after but I feel it made for some great images.
70 years of Potato farming
There are some seventy years between the two photographs above, the young Girl in the left, in the original photograph is Mona, my Wife Breda’s mother, these fields have been ploughed and planted every year since.
Last year I took the following images of the family planting the potatoes again for another growing season, then collecting them after for sale. The machine in the pictures was originally imported from the US and hopefully will be working for many years to come.
I want the following images to tell the rest of this story……
Little Red Tractor
Nikon d200, nikon 50mm f1.4 lens
The little red David brown
Landscape photography : Nigel Borrington
So we came across this little red tractor on a long days walk in the Lake District National Park sometime back, it was just sitting out side a farmhouse that had also been converted into a tea shop. We had to stop and take in some food and the views along with this little Red Tractor..
Pilgrim Hill
Pilgrim Hill – A Movie about the true side of farming life
Yesterday I watched a great review about a new film Pilgrim hill that has been made by young film maker Gerard Barrett in the above video he talks to RTE’s Nationwide about Pilgrim Hill. In cinemas April 12th 2013. Pilgrim Hill is the debut film from Gerard Barrett, winner of the 2013 Irish Film and Television Academy Rising Star Award.
“Jimmy Walsh is a farmer in rural Ireland. Like the landscape he inhabits, his life is bleak and hard. Looking after an ageing sick father, life is passing him by as he comes to terms with his changing circumstances. Loneliness and isolation are his continual companions, along with his modest herd of cattle.
A young twenty something neighbour is one of the only links Jimmy has to the real world. In him, Jimmy sees what he could have been, as he realizes what he is, a middle aged bachelor farmer with vanishing opportunities and on the verge of living the rest of his life alone on the side of a cold un-nourishing hill.
A final blow is dealt to Jimmy when it seems that life can’t get any worse. He is barely able to articulate his situation, yet his honesty and vulnerability speak to the loneliness that haunts the human condition in all of us”
In and around the area I live in Ireland, Co.Kilkenny there are many Jimmy walsh’s including members of my own family.
Sean a family friend is one of them, older than Jimmy but he will have travelled through many of the same things in his time.
Many of these farmers never got married and lived out their lives in remote places like this farm Burnchurch in Co.Tipperary.
Watching the review of the film last night, I wondered why these men’s lives have not been shown and received much more coverage than they have. Many other nation like the America have shown the hard lives their own famers have lived on the screen for many years, it time these mens live got the same exposure, please go a watch this movie if you can.
Nigel
Nigel Borrington 
The Farming landscape of county Kilkenny : Cows, Bulls and a field with a view …..
Farming landscapes Grange hills
kilkenny County Kilkenny
Nigel Borrington
The Hills above Grange in County Killkenny, offer some of the most stunning landscape views in the county, here you are looking across the boarder into county Tipperary.
The day I took the following images I had been walking for a little while when I took a rest at a gate, there is that moment in the county when you see some cows resting on a sunny morning and they spot you from a distance. It only take a little time before they all stand and walk over to the gate, I think they are wondering if your the farmer and it time for their feed. Sadly for them I was not and all I could do for them was take some pictures of them to share on WordPress 🙂 🙂
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July 17, 2017 | Categories: Comment, farming, Landscape, Nature and Wildlife, Story telling gallery | Tags: cows, farming, Farming Landscapes, Grange Kilkenny, Ireland, Irish Landscapes, Kilkenny, Nigel Borrington, Tipperary | 2 Comments