Country life - A lasting effect

Country life Before and after the Cull

Connie McEvoy recalls a lifetime of living with Foot and Mouth

Before and After the Cull

As far as I know the first outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Ireland during 1941 occurred in Dhun- nan- Gall and the last outbreak was on my Father’s farm in Kilcarry, Cluain- na- Ngall in Co Carlow, he and my Mother were married in April of that year and Mam was three months pregnant with me when the outbreak started on our farm in September. Kilcarry lane was long and narrow in a remote area and eight farming families accessed it on a daily basis in order to work their farms of good land suitable to mixed farming.

As the disease was detected on our farm first all cloven footed animals from the other farms were brought to our farm and were taken with the animals of our farm to a field by a detachment of specially trained soldiers to be shot, destroyed and buried in quick lime. Then these soldiers stayed for a number weeks on our farm cleaning out and disinfecting all farm buildings and manure heaps using sprongs and shovels.

Mam and Daddy were marooned for the duration and were given the same food rations that were being supplied to the soldiers by the Army including cans of condensed milk, now at this stage Mam was suffering from morning sickness and just couldn’t stomach or even look at condensed milk. She never forgot the kindness of one of her neighbours who was outside the exclusion zone as she came every second day to the bottom of the lane with a five noggin bottle of milk which was to be conveyed by a soldier to her and her unborn baby.

What a way to start a new married life- being ten miles away from her parents and family middle ways up a long lane aged 20 years, her husband who was 40 was the next youngest person and all others in that vicinity were senior citizens. I was born on March 7th 1942 upstairs in the far room, Dr Cantwell, nurse Bond, Grandma Kavanagh and a neighbour were in attendance, Daddy was pacing the kitchen floor and keeping the kettle boiled but he wasn’t allowed in the far room until I was washed and dressed complete with binder and shawl . That is how things were during that pandemic.

Things had improved somewhat by that Spring though as the farming families involved were now allowed to go to fairs in order to restock rather slowly due to the fact that compensation paid for stock loss was totally inadequate. Now there is consternation because partners are not allowed to attend births in hospitals during this Covid19 pandemic but foot and mouth or not men were never present during childbirth in those days.

I never knew anything about foot and mouth until the summer of 1946 when my father who was in the habit of walking his farm on Sundays accompanied by his two children and his sheepdogs to take stock of crop progress and fence flaws had occasion to instil in me a sense of the utter devastation that had numbed him and his neighbouring farmers in 1941.

We had come to a field of after grass where my brother and I on noticing a large level area about the size of a football pitch which was raised above the level of the field scampered to play there with our ball and the sheep dogs. I will never forget what I sensed in my Father’s voice when he gently asked us not to play there, that’s where all of the animals from the foot and mouth are buried.

Then I grew up and married a dairy farmer in Co Louth, although we escaped when there was another outbreak in the UK in the 1970s and were outside the exclusion zone when the outbreak occurred in Proleek during 2001 an awesome chill ran down my spine and set my tummy rolling then when the terrible news came over the air waves. My Father passed away in 1979, my Mother must surely relive every moment of those dreadful days of 1941 when she went on her daily walk to the bottom of the lane.

My mother passed to her eternal reward May 2010 in her 90th year, my husband Mickey McEvoy predeceased her aged 74 years in August 2009.

A lasting effect

I wrote an article titled A Lasting Effect in the third person (as Mam was still with us in 2001) and it was published in Senior Times issue April

2005. I also worked a few paintings in acrylics titled Before and After the Cull depicting Cooley without mountain or lowland sheep after the outbreak there during 2001. The boy with his pet lamb is my son Lorcan as a 4 year-old with one the pet lambs that he reared on a bottle after it was orphaned. To be honest I more or less had put the Proleek outbreak to the back of my mind even though some sheep farmers in the Cooley area felt that they had been unfairly treated regarding compensation. My husband Mickey and I were present when this issue was on the agenda at several Co., Louth IFA Executive meetings for some time afterwards and with the passing of time I thought that things had been resolved. However on Saturday morning February 27th 2002 former Co., Chairman Matthew Mc Greehan when interviewed on Country Wide spoke of the lasting effect that the most recent outbreak of Foot and Mouth in Ireland had on sheep farming in the Cooley area twenty years afterwards!! I am sure that this Covid 19 pandemic will have a lasting effect on all surviving humans world- wide for years and years to come but hopefully due to vaccines things will improve soon.