I was in reflective mood as we stripped the tin roof off Carr’s old cottage. I could tell you my thoughts were of topical issues like the meat factories’ greed or plummeting grain prices or even the dreaded fiscal space. But that’s all depressing stuff, which I try to avoid.

And so I simply thought about the character of the man whose cottage we were about to tumble and bring with it the end of an era.

Nicholas Carr (always known as Carr) lived and worked on the farm until he retired in 1980. He and his wife were genuine old-style country people of a sort, regrettably, you no longer see. Mrs Carr kept bantams and hens with turkeys for Christmas and he a brace of greyhounds for live coursing and a few prized cockerels for cock fighting.

Carr was born in 1909 and began working on the farm in the 1920s. With a wonderful stockman’s eye, all his cures revolved around Epsom salts, treacle and drenches dissolved in a Rose’s bottle and poured straight down the neck. Antibiotics were introduced, but were viewed with suspicion – as indeed was that other new idea, tractors.

Then there was the perennial task of searching for stray bullocks. He would instantly identify the missing animal among a neighbour’s cattle. Carr would round us up as kids to retrieve the rogue animal for which we were rewarded with sweets.

As part of his duties, every Friday, Carr travelled on his Honda 50 into the sales yard in Trim where he was head drover. Despite being short in stature, he could draw the required animal out of a bunch of 10 with a deft prod of his nail-tipped ash plant. The boss (my father) couldn’t be kept waiting up in the seller’s box. Besides, with any delay, a roaring trade could evaporate.

In the summertime, when I was a youngster, Carr would bring me into the sale on the back of his motorbike. With the sale over, he would relax with a pub crawl around the town. I was proudly brought along, and he’d have a bottle of stout and me a ghastly mineral from a brown bottle. After about six of these each, we’d begin to head for home.

On one such journey, the Honda 50 was swaying dangerously when we hit Kildalkey for another bottle or two each. Almost home, Carr rounded a bend on the wrong side, bounced off the bank and both of us were thrown into the ditch. Carr emerged first, shocked into sobriety, and shouted, “Gerryeen, (everyone’s name ended in een) not a word about this to the boss. If he hears about this, I’m f**ked.”

Later on that summer, Carr was keen to further my education with an early morning cock fighting session, deep in wildest Westmeath.

But with the prospects of Nickeen Carr, me and a box of fighting cocks all aboard the Honda 50, I politely declined.

Besides, I thought, if that didn’t kill me, the session afterwards with the illicit ‘Seven Up’ certainly would.

But now, and purely from a historical perspective, I think my education was incomplete…