RURAL LIFE:The recession has seen an unexpected surge in membership of one of Ireland's oldest rural organisations, Macra na Feirme, where members gather together to sing, dance and, if they're lucky, meet their future partners, writes ÁINE KERR
IN COMMUNITY HALLS, school staff rooms and pub corners, 300 close-knit Macra na Feirme clubs meet to plot, plan, debate and perform each week. The organisation may have fizzled during the boom years but it is thriving in the bust, with the number of clubs multiplying and membership rising by 16 per cent in the last year alone. At times of great change, Macra remains ever constant. Weekly sports games, quizzes, plays, dinner dances and debates around the country offer a “back to basics” but communal environment where 18- to 35-year-olds with similar interests are getting excitedly mobilised into small active bands.
They are forever planning for annual national events such as Mr Personality, Ms Blue Jeans, Midsummer Ball and the imminent Valentine’s Take Me Out night and Kilkenny City Black-tie Ball.
There is a long and proud legacy that goes with such events, which are enshrined in the yearly social calendar. Since 1944 more than 250,000 young people have passed through the organisation’s ranks and partaken in its activities, some with the extra bonus of having found love within the Macra family.
Bryan Daniels is from a fifth generation of Daniels in Kilmoganny, Co Kilkenny. With that came an innate longing to be a farmer, from age five.
His wife, Gail Daniels, had a more colourful journey to finding her career as a full-time dairy farmer, having been born in Hong Kong to Wicklow parents, attended boarding school in Waterford and college in Southampton, before returning to Wicklow where she worked in a jewellery shop and later joined Macra na Feirme in Wexford. The pair were the star leaders in their respective clubs, culminating in their winning “gold awards” in 2007, which meant selection for a European youth rally in Germany and their first encounter.
Gail says she “sort of knew” on planning for the German trip that Bryan was the one, but given his work at upgrading the farm, research with Teagasc, being Young Farmer of the Year and fulfilling his “poster boy” job for a national bank, all notions of romance were sidelined post-Germany. Occasional meet-ups at national debates, rallies and events followed. Two years later – by which time Gail had branched into organic farming – a Macra rally in Bantry finally brought the pair together. One year later, Bryan proposed.
“It was the morning of county officer training in Meath. It was 7am,” says Gail. “6.30am,” says Bryan chiming in. “Anyway, we were meant to get the cows in before going away as Bryan’s brother was milking. We thought we would give him a hand so out we went into this incredible mist, out on top of the hill. It was really misty and foggy, so he went down one end of the field and I went down the other. You couldn’t even see the cows,” recalls Gail. “We met up in the middle then, and suddenly Bryan got down on one knee . . . he says he slipped.” A token engagement ring had been carved by Bryan himself. Hours later, they were celebrating with 200 members of Macra at their training session in Meath.
Many major events in their lives appear to take place around agriculture-themed events, with the engagement ring bought while attending a dairy fair in Birmingham. Since getting married last July, they now work side by side on the dairy farm, with Gail in charge of the calving stock. “We’ve got very similar interests. We both like country life and the social end of things . . .”
“These nights, we could have calving at 2am, 3am, 4am or 6am,” Bryan says of their shared routine. Aside from full-time work on the farm, Gail is honorary national secretary of Macra na Feirme. With that comes an exhaustive network of contacts countrywide, which becomes acutely clear when dramas like a flat tyre or the likes arise, according to Gail. “My closest friends are from Donegal and Navan. If I hadn’t joined Macra, I’d be going out on a Saturday night with the same group of people. I’d be there for the last 10 years, with the same arguments and talk,” says Gail.
Martin and Helen Heaney met at a Valentine’s matchmaking Macra event 23 years ago this February. Tara Heaney (17), who joined the North Meath club last July, just laughs when her parents remind her of how they first met, as she’s leaving for one of the events. The UCD horticulture student is focused solely on the craic factor and making the most of the expansive social diary, declaring herself to be a “fully fledged Macra baby”.
Tara’s father was once the national county representative for Meath and won numerous competitions, while her mother won the national title in group singing. The Macra life is infectious, and Tara grew up listening to stories about their travails. “They always talked about the fun they had. There was nothing they weren’t afraid to do in Macra,” says Tara. “I joined as soon as I could last year . . . Every two weeks we meet and often head out to the chipper afterwards.” Six months later, Tara is PRO of the local club and says she has newfound confidence and isn’t “near as shy as I was”.
GARVAN HICKEY JOINED Ashford Macra in County Wicklow six years ago to pursue his interests in community and rural development, and the level of activity among the six local clubs is surging. Last weekend’s Caper Show required him to take part in “musical madness” and a “wedding themed show” before a crowd of 230 people. “It’s all a bit of craic. The great thing is that there is an opportunity to do everything, it’s a supportive enjoyment. There’s a really strong emphasis on personal development,” Garvan says of the week-to-week activities. The rivalry between clubs, he insists, is channelled so that Wicklow competes with other counties (and not each other) when it comes to winning some bragging rights. Club loyalty among the Macra goers is unfaltering.
Teresa McDonnell from Nenagh in Tipperary is fast approaching a major life-altering decision: whether or not to change Macra club. On getting married and moving to Laois in November, the primary-school teacher is geographically removed from her Macra base in Nenagh, Co Tipperary. It’s a considerable distance back and forth to the Clodagh Macra club (which takes its name from a river flowing through two parishes so as not to favour one part of the local neighbourhood over the other).
Since meeting Colm in a marquee at the Blue Jeans festival in June 2008, life has slowly gravitated towards Colm’s farm in Shanahoe, Co Laois. They marked their first anniversary together by returning to the festival in 2009, but silage has clashed with the weekend each year since.
“I wasn’t actually planning on going to Blue Jeans that weekend. I don’t know, I just wasn’t bothered. I’d milking to do that evening and it had been a busy day . . . but I just said to Dad to do the milking,” says Colm. Since building their house and getting married, they’re now active again within their respective Macra clubs, in the knowledge they have only a few years left before the 35-year milestone when they can no longer participate in Macra competitions. In the meantime, Teresa can either join Colm in his Macra club or continue to navigate the roads to Tipperary. Colm insists the tensions, terms and conditions that surround GAA transfers don’t apply to moves within Macra.
“Teresa will be slow to move. She’s Macra mad. Anything Macra related, she’s at the thick of it. She’s unreal at organising . . . it’s a case of opposites attracting,” he says.
THOMAS HONNER FROM Dunlavin, Co Waterford, met his wife Shirley when both were vice-presidents of the national organisation in the late 1990s. Thomas, whose parents also met in Macra, was voted in by the Leinster region, and Shirley from the Munster region. “She didn’t like me then. She likes me now,” jokes Thomas of their first encounters in their respective senior positions. After 20 years in Macra, and working full-time on the farm with his wife, Thomas is philosophical about its benefits. As one of its senior past members, he is still required to judge Macra competitions nationwide.
“Farming during the Celtic Tiger years wasn’t cool . . . a lot regret getting out of it now but the hardcore stayed at it.
For many people rural life wasn’t cool,” he says. “There’s a new appreciation now of farming, of the untapped potential, of how underestimated it was.” Through the years, the couple has attended many weddings that carried the “made in Macra” tag.
“It’s not by accident that when you get people of a certain age who are single with similar interests that will meet someone good,” says Thomas. To this day, his Macra married Macra friends still visit. “Macra is always relevant to the people in it at a particular time. What people get from it today is exactly what people got from it right back at the start. It’s about self-esteem, education and the ability to organise and make things happen in the community.”
