THE TIMES WE LIVED IN:'ONE MAN AND his screen went to mow a meadow . . ." In the spring of 1999, the approaching millennium had us all recklessly predicting what the brave new post-2000 world might have in store. Were we worried about what was coming down the line? Yes, we were. Were we right? Well, not entirely. The strange, quixotic mood of the time is encapsulated in this shot of the erstwhile Carlow County Secretary of the Irish Farmers' Association, Aidan Byrne, hard at work on his computer. In the middle of a field.
It’s an image that could have come right out of the madder regions of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Remember the naked organist who used to pop up every so often, so to speak, in bizarre locations? Happily Mr Byrne remains fully – even sensibly – clothed as photographer Pat Langan captures him on his home turf of Clonegal against the backdrop of the softly rolling Blackstairs Mountains.
The article, entitled “Farmer finds harvest on the internet” focuses on two farmers who have abandoned careers on the land. One is Paddy Berridge, who has recently founded Carrigbyrne Farmhouse Cheeses. The other is Mr Byrne – who explains that, though he studied agriculture to the highest levels and acquired a diploma in farm management as well as completing a six-month stint on a scholarship in New Zealand, he can’t make enough money on his 35-acre farm to support his wife and two children.
He has, therefore, turned to electronic publishing with his company Internet Publishing Services, creating and designing websites and . . . well, that sort of thing. To the rest of us, for whom – in 1999 – the internet was still a pretty obscure entity, he might as well have been stepping off the edge of the known world. From the vantage point of now, on the other hand, his computer has the look of a digital dinosaur.
As it turned out, there were some spectacularly successful years to come for people in the IT business. As for the cheesemakers of Ireland they, too, were fruitful and multiplied. Is there a moral in the story? Maybe it’s just that wise old line, “And now for something completely different . . .”
Arminta Wallace
Published on February 24th 1999 Photograph by Pat Langan irishtimes.com/archive
