I stopped for coffee and a Brunch in Tom Doolan’s smart filling station below Tullamore on the road to Birr, where you’ll get the best Kenco coffee in Ireland. I’d left home over an hour earlier on the Fendt 724 which I was dropping down to Atkins in Birr to have a loader fitted.

We don’t really need a loader on this tractor – or any other – as we have a fresh and reliable JCB TM 310 which does everything.

But because the visibility is so bad out of the JCB and so good out of the 724, I naturally decided it should have a loader fitted.

The forward visibility from the centre-boom JCB’s cab is so poor you can hardly see the pallet forks, let alone slide them in under a pallet of seed without collateral damage.

I reckon the time spent baling could be more worthwhile

Anyhow, I thought a colour-coded Fendt loader would look smart on the 724. But now, in a desperate attempt to justify the extravagant expenditure on what must be Ireland’s poshest loader tractor, I should point out that as we have two farmyards, one loader in each will be handy. And Murphy’s Law will tell you as soon as fertiliser spreading begins – thus tying up the JCB – trucks will arrive to be loaded with wheat. Sorted.

As a matter of fact, I’m thinking of jacking the drying and selling all the grain off the combine, as the margin isn’t in it anymore.

I reckon the time spent baling could be more worthwhile.

However, like Ronnie Corbett in the rocking chair, I’ve digressed badly as I really set out to tell you my farming observations on the long tractor drive down to Birr.

Now, I should say that I’m not used to an elevated driving position as I drive around the country. You see, in the low-slung Mazda MX-5, you are sitting so low that your bottom is practically sparking off the road and, like the JCB, you see nothing.

The little sports car is not the vehicle to do a farming commentary from, but the Fendt 724 is ideal.

The drive from Kildalkey to Kinnegad is flat, bumpy and boring until you come to Tyrrellspass. As you leave there for Kilbeggan, you join the glacial great Esker Riada which is really good free-draining land where the countryside was green with lots of slurry spread. There were few stock out and they hadn’t a lot of grass.

Luscious crops

But I saw a dairy farmer out measuring his luscious crop of grass, presumably to brag about on WhatsApp, as I would a 12.5t/ha crop of wheat – if it ever happens.

From Tullamore to Birr, it’s a continuation of the great Riada Esker which forms rich and rolling gravel-rich lands.

This raised esker, traversing the low-lying and boggy midlands, formed a natural Stone Age trade route from Dublin to Galway, along which haulier Iggy Madden’s hairy and fur-clad ancestors would have man-hauled goods carts with tree trunks for wheels.

There is some really lovely farmland along this road, with large open well-managed fields, suitable for any agricultural enterprise, which would be dairy if you have sense and tillage if you have none.

It is a popular myth that Meath is all good land. Meath has some of the most difficult soils in the country which only become farmable due to the county’s lower rainfall and field drainage.

I’m often reminded by elderly locals that the low-lying centre portion of the farm on which I live was, 50 years ago, covered in rushes the height of a bullock.

Nowadays, this heavy land is in crops – it’s not at all suited to cows. Fortunately.