It is Easter week again! This festival brightly marks the rising of plant sap and the rising of farmers’ hopes for a fresh start, longer days and the new growing season. As the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, its historical basis is firmly rooted among agricultural priorities.

For thousands of years, it has been a marking post for tree planting, sowing, lambing, calving and the rising of hope in the heart of every farmer.

Timing is crucial

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This year also marks another kind of rising – the political Rising of 1916. Pearse, Connolly and co deliberately chose the time of their rising to rhyme with the deep-rooted natural, historical and religious risings of Easter week. Farming priorities mean that few farmers will see the lavish events being staged around the country.

In fact, I spent my own Easter Monday dealing with a calving where a retained placenta caused low maternal interest and no milk let-down, leading to kicks aplenty for both calf and myself. I eventually part-solved the problem by raiding another cow’s colostrum. Cow and sheep farmers make very poor rebels – you wouldn’t want to depend on us for an Easter rising.

Farmers of 1916

All that put me thinking about how farmers might have perceived the real event back in the day. I bet many were angry at the disruption to trade with delays in shipping of cattle, horses and butter for the European war. Many others whose sons had followed John Redmond’s advice to join the British army must have been really angry.

Martial Law in Dublin would have left vegetables and milk go waste. A few smaller farmers and landless men may have been excited by the thought of getting a divide of land from the breaking up of remaining estates, but I think the vast majority of farmers would not have been impressed. After all, the Easter Rising was conceived and led by socialists, suffragettes and urban middle class intellectuals with hardly a farmer in sight. The proclamation says nothing of agriculture or land policy. It is hard to see how such could have ever been agreed between the Marxist James Connolly and the other more conservative leaders.

An independent Ireland in 1916 would not have been good for trade, and farming then, as now, depends on trade.

Diversity

It was, however, the start of something. The War of Independence saw the fight move to the countryside and the involvement of thousands of farmers and their sons. The early decades of independence saw the social ideal of establishing as many people of Ireland on the land of Ireland and the division of farms of over 100 acres to provide the perceived ideal family holdings of 40 acres. Many present-day farmers owe their existence to a grandfather getting such a divide from the Land Commission.

Independence, self sufficiency and neutrality brought the need for diversity in farming; it brought the sugar beet and it brought the co-ops. Then 50 years later we moved from a national policy to the EC and now EU policy.

But that is all in the past. Now, it is Easter week with calves and lambs being born and crops being sown. 2016 may be an anniversary, but whether or not it is a good year for farming depends on how things go over the next six months. I must go check if that next cow is calving yet.