Being on holiday allows me to ponder on what to use for the next article.

I had time to remember the day the two cart horses left the farm. I can’t quite remember the day the tractor arrived, but I remember being told how the whole village stopped and came to see this tiny 20 horsepower tractor pulling a two-furrowed hydraulically-mounted plough; Harry Ferguson was definitely the Brunel of the farming world.

Prior to this, there was a big bulky Fordson tractor with a two-wheeled trailed plough, with a funny ratchet mechanism to lift it up at the headland and was very unmanoeverable, particularly in small Irish fields.

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I’ll never forget these two-wheeled trailed monsters since, as a young boy, I was sent to work on a neighbouring farm.

My job was to take a spade and dig up a field full of 'bulpoles'. I don’t know what they’re called in Ireland, but they’re funny tufty things.

The farmer’s nephew was given the Fordson tractor and trail plough to drop and lift, quietly driving round the field while I slaved away in the hot sun with a spade.

When the T20 arrived on our farm, PTO guards were just being invented. As a child, I well remember the Lister Blackstone elevator with the exposed gearing 10 feet away connected by a revolving rod and a Lister engine 10 feet away driving with a flat belt.

Strangely enough, there were never reports of children getting minced.

Relevance

What relevance is this you may ask? Well, it explains how far agriculture has travelled in a lifetime.

It has become a technological monster. Today, I climb into the tractor after my grandson has been using it.

I have to work out from the many levers and buttons how to readjust the seat, which lever raises the steering wheel and operating the radio is way beyond me, although I’m told it’s listening to my phone.

There are many switches on display – I could operate about one third of them successfully, but, occasionally, the flashing lights tell me that the engine needs a drink of blue or needs decoking, this is definitely above my pay grade. Call the grandson.

Yes, today we are a technologically advanced industry. I do appreciate the milking parlour with auto ID, auto feed, auto milk recording and auto cluster flush, plus a plethora of records on the computer, but it still needs some one to look at and interpret these daily and walk round and inspect the cattle each day.

My grandson is brilliant on machines, good at cleaning and greasing, but has very little interest in stock.

Fortunately, there are those of us who do. An old farmer who couldn’t read or write but became very wealthy told me all cattle should be checked before 10 o'clock in the morning and there are still those of us who get enormous pleasure checking the stock last thing at night.

Fortunately, there are those for whom the age of stockmanship is not dead.