![\"John](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/4793597_3_articleinlinemobile_20250922_181015_1_.jpg\" "\\"John")
John Arnold with his wife Mary and their grandchild at his final milking in Bartlemy<\/p>\nOne literary critic declared that its central theme dealt with \u201cthe demise of a way of life that had survived for centuries\u201d.<\/p>\n
Those few words kind of summed up my feelings on last Tuesday morning as I milked my herd of cows for the last time.<\/p>\n
In this townland of Garryantaggart, the Walsh family were the occupants and farmers in the 1700s. After that there were McGraths, Arnolds, Barry\u2019s and Buckleys.<\/p>\n
Around 1871 or 1872, my great great grandfather Daniel Arnold came to this place as a tenant farmer of the landlord James Bury Barry.<\/p>\n
From what I know, cows were always milked here; 200 years ago, before the \u2018Great\u2019 Famine, every farm had three or four to provide milk and butter for the family. Back then, the cow on Irish homesteads was practically a domestic animal.<\/p>\n
In many cases, the family shared a common dwelling with cows. Cow stalls or byres for milking were not needed. Each morning and evening, someone of the family simply sat on the three-legged stool alongside the cow and milked by hand into a bucket.<\/p>\n
Sixty years ago, as a small boy, I remember Mam and Paddy Geary and Auntie Jo on occasions sitting on the stools over in the stall with their head resting against the warm stomach of the cow. The cows\u2019 four teats, or paps as we called them, were pulled rhythmically and the squirt of milk made a lovely sound when it hit the galvanised bucket.<\/p>\n
As they were milked, the cows would eat hay or mangolds, turnips or beet pulp. They were so used to being in close proximity to humans that they were generally very quiet. Any heifer or cow inclined to kick the bucket was \u2018spancilled\u2019 with a rope – her legs tied to prevent her lashing out.<\/p>\n
\n Many\u2019s the nearly full bucket of milk that \u2018went west\u2019, but there was no good crying over spilt milk!\n <\/p>\n
During \u2018The Emergency\u2019 of World War II, an increase in agricultural production was called for \u2013 \u2018one more cow, one more sow, and one more acre under the plough\u2019.<\/p>\n
In my father\u2019s time farming, we had maybe 15 or so cows. He died in September, 1961, and Mam took on the dual task of rearing five children and running a farm.<\/p>\n
We had a \u2018closed herd\u2019 – not generally buying and selling but just breeding our own animals. I remember then in the mid-1960s we got a milking machine. The arrival of rural electrification made this possible on most farms.<\/p>\n
Austin Mulcahy was our Insurance Man, calling maybe once a month to collect the \u2018contribution\u2019. He told Mam his cousins, the Caseys in Ballynoe, were selling their Gascoigne bucket-plant milking machine and we bought it.<\/p>\n
Each cow was milked by a suction-powered cluster and the milk went into a special vacuum-sealed bucket. The milk was then put into churns -cooled by a hose with a trickle of water. Dave Ryan collected our churns every day and took them to Castlelyons Creamery – one of its founders was my grandfather John Twomey.<\/p>\n
A few years later, we bought a pipeline machine – Vacaar brand, from Roy Warner. This was a great advance as the milk went straight from the cow to the churn.<\/p>\n
Dave Ryan died suddenly in 1973 so we had to get a plastic bulk milk tank – replaced a year later by fabricated steel tank which cooled the milk.<\/p>\n
Back in 1974, when I had completed my Leaving Certificate Examinations in St Colman\u2019s College in Fermoy I thought the world was my oyster. I\u2019d no idea what I \u2018wanted to be\u2019 but farming wasn\u2019t high on my list of career choices.<\/p>\n
In August that year, when we got the Leaving results, my \u2018oyster\u2019 was shut fairly lively! Yes, I got an A in Honours Irish but no other Honour and an NG (No Grade – less than 13%) in Pass Maths.<\/p>\n
\n Truthfully, I can’t say if I had harboured any ambitions of going onto Third Level education – if I had, my Leaving results put the kibosh on any such lofty thoughts!\n <\/p>\n
Mam suggested: \u201cSure, stay at home until Christmas anyhow and we\u2019ll see after that\u2026\u201d You could say that Christmas never came but home I stayed and I went milking cows.<\/p>\n
In 1980, we \u2018moved\u2019 the milking set-up from the old stall below in the yard to a kind of green-field site where a milking parlour complete with an eight-unit Alfa Laval milking machine was installed.<\/p>\n
So the great plans we had to milk 75 cows never came to fruition, what with bank interest rates of 22%.<\/p>\n
Yes, it was very tough for years trying to pay back the loans we had, but we kept at it. In truth, I love animals and milking cows was such a special experience. To see cows giving birth and then three years later to witness that calf joining its mother in the milking herd was so gratifying.<\/p>\n
John Arnold with his wife Mary and their grandchild at his final milking in Bartlemy<\/p>\n
To literally \u2019watch\u2019 the grass growing and see all that lush greenness turn into white foaming, creamy milk is something that always filled me with awe and wonderment.<\/p>\n
I suppose I was an old-fashioned type of farmer \u2013 I never knocked a ditch in my half-century on the land. Be good to the land and it will be good to you, was always my motto. Similarly with animals.<\/p>\n
\u2018Twas said \u2018a kind word never broke anyone\u2019s mouth\u2019 and kindness to animals was always to the fore on our farm. Sometimes, maybe we kept cows too long – if we were \u2018productive\u2019 and \u2018modern\u2019 farmers we should have regarded them as production units but no, I never, ever thought cows or any livestock were \u2018dumb animals\u2019 \u2013 they have their own innate animal intelligence.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, back in the Spring, we made the decision this would be our last season milking. We thought we might \u2018dry-off\u2019 the cows in November and maybe sell them in December, or then again maybe keep them and fatten them and sell next March or April.<\/p>\n
In Romeo and Juliet, there is a line \u2018Parting is such sweet sorrow\u2019, and I knew whenever the cows would go – in a month or two or three – I\u2019d find it hard to say goodbye.<\/p>\n
Last week, we decided to just make the break quickly with no long \u2018lead-up\u2019 to the final farewell. So, on Monday evening, with the help of the grandchildren, I brought the cows down the road from the Field Inside The Tubular Gate. After miking I left them out in good grass in The Boiler House Field.<\/p>\n
\n Yes, I cried and cried all through the milking on Tuesday morning. Then the lorry came and Arnolds\u2019 cows in Bartlemy were no more \u2013 just a memory.\n <\/p>\n
Yes, gone, but not forgotten – how could I forget all the cows of the last 51 years?<\/p>\n
And so life moves on, nothing stays the same. I have all this year\u2019s calves and maybe next year I might buy some more and grow more grass for hay and silage. And the land, the fields, the Glen, the stream, the Holy Well – ah yes, they will always be there.<\/p>\n
On the way home from the Mart on Tuesday, I called to Mam\u2019s grave in Rathcormac – it was September 23, exactly 29 years to the day since her funeral in 1996.<\/p>\n
\n Ah yes there were times, I\u2018m sure you knew\n <\/p>\n
\n When I bit off more than I could chew\n <\/p>\n
\n But through it all, when there was doubt\n <\/p>\n
\n I ate it up and spat it out\n <\/p>\n
\n I faced it all, and I stood tall\n <\/p>\n
\n And did it my way.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I have never actually read The Last September, the novel written by Elizabeth Bowen. I know it was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[18,117,13181,19,17,56073],"class_list":{"0":"post-84569","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-farming","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-john-arnold"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}