The good old days.....

Don't f** go there😉

I did all that too. I even milked a cow by hand, for the house for a few years. In contrast to all that, I remember last year sitting up on the contractors new Fendt with air conditioning and nearly nodded off with the comfort. You can keep the hardship of old.

I previously posted about mortgage interest rates hitting 23%. My off farm work take home pay covered the monthly repayments and left IR£35 in my bank account. On the flip side deposit interest rates hit 15% which was great for any with money in the bank.

Anyone who got the cow numbers up early in the 70s was ahead of the posse, by that I mean over 40 cows.

Yes they were well off farmers with good set up for the times. They were not the norm however, I'd say every parish had a couple.

Comparing cattle prices as a measure of tractors is like comparing sports stars of the past versus now. You just can't do it with accuracy.

Bales silage was bagged up to the late 80’s, it wasn’t until 89 that the wrappers arrived.

Back breaking labour. Welts on your hands from using the pike. Death trap tractors and trailers falling apart on the road. Using dangerous chemicals without ppe. DDT the miracle substance. Fcuk all that.

The old people were very hard on animals too. Anything that moved was flaked with sticks, including dogs and children.

Yes i heard they were on 1k a week back then....massive money... i doubt there is any of it left either!...they enjoyed it in the moment

But tractors are very different, for a start there were no "luxury" models in the 70's just a small selection of HP options.

Tractor development through the 60's, 70's to the mid 80's consisted of new tinwork paint colours and adding indicators / brake lights and improved cabs plus a few new higher HP models. From the mid 80's they very much split into ranges with features never seen before alongside the more basic models. By the 2000's the most basic models were dropped in this part of the world by the main brands even though they still make them in other parts of the world, MF for example still build 200 and 300 series tractors or at least commission them to be built by smaller manufactures such as Tafe. Several new budget brands now exist in the Irish market selling 90HP tractors under 50K with specs which on paper at least seem to compare to 90's tractors with 4WD 12X12 manual shuttle gearboxes but will have a lot to prove to build brand confidence.

In the 70's farms bought tractors spec'd to the minimum HP to meet the work requirements of the farm and were more likely to work them hard, today many tend to over spec them and still contract all of the field work out.

The starter or dynamo were probably shagged as well.😯

We used to park the fiat on de hill with a hammer holding up the handbrake!. Biggest change I saw was the movement from vans and Peugeot to Jeeps. 3 or 4 of us pushing cars was a regular occurrence also, u don't see it anymore

When i worked for a neighbour early 1990s.

The Paasat started the 135.

The 135 pulled the crystal to get it going after easy start.

The crystal then hooked up to the 1600l slurry tank.

My job was to spread the slurry.

I could barely reach the pedals.

It stalled a lot.

More smoke came out of the farmer that year than out of the crystal.

Dosing cattle with bottles.

I remember a lad here got a new box type lwb trooper in 1990ish. Was a real head Turner at the time.

Bringing new born calves in from the field with a wheelbarrow and sometimes a cross cow to watch as well. Same for lambs.

Baler twine fixed everything.

I know how your daughter feels. . Its not a nice thing is imagine to have that conversation with your parents but they are lucky they had someone like you to turn to.

in my own case i worked my stones off during the recession in England and ended up buying a bit of land (7 acres) back home. Planning in kildare is so prohibitive and costly that we couldn't take the risk on paying for plans etc to be turned down so purchased a house further out from Dublin where housing is affordable but the commute Is longer.

Dont want to be stung with a massive mortgage and not able to pay it if there was another crash so I'm living in lovely leitrim now. I love the area down here and people are lovely but the 4 hrs a day in the car is a killer if I'm in Dublin for work (usually 3 days per week). Not complaining too much though. Others are in far worse situations than me