It wasn’t so much a mass protest, as a Massey protest – I refer, in my uniquely witty way, to that display of farmer power on the streets of the capital last week. ‘Tractor Terror’ was how one of the city’s more excitable radio stations broadcast the news, but this was surely overstating things a tad. Or, perhaps I missed those legendary gore fests, The Texas Tractor Massacre, Night Of The Living Tractor and, er, Green Acres.

No, farmers may be many things – whinging, moaning, smelly and thick, chief among them – but the last thing they are is terrifying. A man can have a body like a mountain, hands as big as shovels and a face the size of a small cliff, but put him in a pair of wellies, douse him in silage and lace him with a sprinkling of hay, and he simply becomes hysterical.

Private Parts

This is what the farming community don’t get when they land on us urbane city folks. Frankly, we don’t give a fuck that that they foul up the traffic because we’ve already done that ourselves. And as for the sudden appearance of odour of hog farm in Merrion Square, well that almost comes as a welcome relief from the stench of corruption which normally permeates that part of the city.

No, the reason that the rural assault on the citadel is bound to fail, is that those of us who live here just happen to find farming, farmers and indeed anything to do with the whole farm thing, intrinsically funny. I mean, how can a job which involves yanking on a cow’s private parts, on a daily basis, be anything else? (En passant, one is reminded of my old buddy Billy Connolly’s remark – the very first guy to milk a cow, what the fuck did he actually think he was doing?).

Indeed, the more you think about it, the more you realise that farming is about as heroic an occupation as accountancy – and, let’s face it, even the cops would crack up if a bunch of accountants attempted to march on city hall. To the best of my knowledge, no statue has ever been erected to a farmer, no farmer has ever appeared on a stamp and a sentence you rarely if ever hear spoken over a steaming latte in one of our boulevard cafes is, ‘wouldn’t it be great to be forking silage right now?’.

Yet, farmers themselves continue to behave as though they are a chosen people, a revered and special breed of humanoid with life support requirements above and beyond those of lesser mortals. Hence, the constant pleading for more and more handouts from Europe, the endless whinging about the weather and, then when nobody responds instantly to their latest tantrum, the putative big ‘spectacular’ in the city.

Back Passage

To the rest of us, the truth is rather different: the farmers is special only in the sense he gets up very early and spends most of his time walking around in shite, pausing now and again to roll up a sleeve and insert an arm up the back passage of some unsuspecting beast of burden. And not necessarily his own wife either.

In fact, in the whole history of agriculture, there was only one farmer you could ever say was remotely hip and that was my old buddy Max Yasgur, on whose rolling pastures the tribes of Aquarius gathered for the Woodstock bliss-out of 1969. Max, bless ‘em, took to the stage that day. “I’m a farmer,” he anounced and the tribes rose to him as one.

Famously, he went on to wish the multitudes “three days of fun and music and nothing but fun and music” and was promptly yanked off so that everyone could get on with bitching about fees, having bad trips on brown acid, and being bored to tears by Richie Haven’s 17 hour-long version of ‘Motherless Child’.

Which only goes to prove that even when a farmer is right, he’s wrong.

Your ever lovin’ Samuel J. Snort