Similar to Adele, Madonna and Cher, Anna May is best known by her first name only. Think Ploughing and we automatically think Anna May. And it’s no wonder, as this will be her 67th Ploughing, having served as the National Ploughing Association’s secretary from 1952 until 1973 and since then as its managing director.

Sitting in the good room of her home outside Ballylinan, Co Laois, which is also home to the NPA offices, she tells me to ignore the chaos as the final preparations are made for this year’s event.

The octogenarian has seen a lot of change over that time, as she remembers how it has gone from having 25 exhibitors when she started to today becoming Europe’s largest outdoor trade exhibition. Last year, it hosted 1,700 exhibitors and almost 300,000 visitors over three days.

Good ploughing is great practice for farming

She, or the Ploughing, hasn’t moved far from where it was founded by JJ Bergin. She tells me how he was a good friend of her father’s and one day he asked could “the young lady give a hand out in the office”.

She told her father after the first few days that she wasn’t going down there any more as “he was a very old man”.

She said she “went down on the following Monday, down on the Tuesday and the rest is history”. When asked did she ever want to leave it since, she answers with an emphatic “no” and adds that she never envisaged it becoming as big as it is today.

What happened?

“It’s not necessarily that there was a plan. Honestly, everything was accidental, but we took everything on board when it was mentioned.”

She gives examples of the fashion show which was added in 1984, even though 31 men around the table said it’s a ploughing match we are running. But she was determined to “have something for the ladies”, as she puts it.

She says that livestock also happened accidently, after there were a few sheds in the host’s yard one year and someone suggested could “we not get a few cattle into the sheds”. The livestock was created out of that where up to 500 cattle are now shown.

Leadership

It’s a well-known fact that the Ploughing wouldn’t be as successful without the 600 or so volunteers that make it happen. I ask her how she gets people behind her. She stresses that people enjoy being involved with something that is a success. “It’s only for the three days,” she explains. “We hotel them, or get them some kind of digs”.

Believe and never doubt yourself

Last year we saw the real dedication of volunteers where they stayed in the site office all night, waiting for the rain to stop. Then from 4am they did tremendous work to make the Thursday of ploughing possible.

“I bring them along with me. I don’t talk down to them,” she says, adding “I delegate to them, I hear the reports, and if they want something they will come back to me.”

She believes everybody out there is better than herself. “I like working with people who are better than I am because they keep me going,” she explains. “I’m on a catch-up with them all the time, but if decisions need to be made, I am there.”

The impressive thing is that none of this was learned in a business school. Having completed a short-hand typing course and book-keeping after national school, she describes it as “you can have all the letters after your name from your elbow to your fingertips, but if you don’t have common sense you won’t succeed”.

When asked what advice she would give her younger self, she said it had to be to give herself a rest.

“I don’t switch off, I never take a holiday, but I worry too,” she says, adding that “it is a big responsibility”.

However, her advice to young people would be to never underestimate your own ability. “Believe and never doubt yourself,” she adds. “I got that push from JJ Bergin. I misspelled words but I learned.”

Even though she never competed in the Ploughing herself, her happiest memory is when Ireland won the World Ploughing for the first time in 1964.

She says the event can never let the word ploughing go out of it. She believes it is important to also promote and retain the skill of ploughing. “Good ploughing is great practice for farming,” she adds.

Finances

In 1931, the first Ploughing took place and the running cost was £9, three shillings and five pence. Last year, the cost was more than €5m. But it lost €80,000 last year where “Wednesday was a million euro shower,” she says. But she explains that it hadn’t lost money for many years and it is always the intention to have funds to be able to meet years like that.

Plans for the future

Anna May explains that she doesn’t want to see it become bigger, but wants to make it better. She says moving to a permanent site would make it easier for them, but she does not see this happening in her time.

At 83, Anna May has no intention of retiring. “I would miss the association too much,” she says. “I love opening the office door every morning and starting work early.”

She concludes: “For me, the Ploughing is breakfast, dinner and tea.”