Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of working on a farm where things are done at a slow and steady pace. It’s a place where the old Irish proverb “de reir a ceile, togtar an caislean” or English equivalent “slow and steady wins the day” still hold true.

We were castrating bucket-reared weanlings using the banding technique. Once the animals are suitably inoculated for the prevention of Clostridial disease, it is a very effective and delicate way of turning bulls into docile bullocks.

Growing up on a farm with one foot in the past, I had the opportunity to work with older equipment and I developed an appreciation of the craftsmanship and ingenuity that went into farming implements.

In the yard where today’s procedure was taking place was an old tractor trailer I recognised as a “Lee Trailer”. These were the silage and grain trailers of my youth with their rich colours of blue and red and the beautiful varnished timer finish on the inside.

I enquired how old the trailer was, to which the reply came “1974”. You could hear the pride in the voice telling its age and how through care and attention the trailer had survived the last 45 years. One of the two brothers went on to explain how they had replaced the timber floor with a metal one and how the sides were changed at another time. The older brother then recalled how they needed to repair the drawbar at one stage following a little misadventure.

As we worked our way through the crushes of cattle my eye was still drawn to the trailer and I remarked how different the wheels are to the modern giants we see on the roads these days. “We changed the wheels in the mid 90s,” they said.

With that I asked the lads if they liked Only Fools and Horses on the television because this trailer started to sound a lot like Trigger’s sweeping brush.

He was a character on the comedy show who once declared he had the same sweeping brush on the council for many years. In that time, it had had 14 different handles and 17 new heads! The older brother started to cry with laughter and the younger conceded that apart from the axle, the 1974 trailer wasn’t the same at all.

Chris McGrath works at Comeragh Vets, Kilmacthomas, Co Waterford. www.xlvets.ie