Preparing for the ploughing championships, from left, Keith Doheny, Phil Glennon and Arthur Harvey. Photograph: Frank Miller
Ploughing is a minority sport, by any standard. It is, none the less, serious business. The people who plough competitively are committed, the judges are very critical and often the winners become European and world champions.
And minority interest though it is, the National Ploughing Championships is by far the largest agricultural show in Ireland, and one of the biggest outdoor agricultural events in Europe.
This year's championships run for three days from tomorrow at Ballacolla in Co Laois, where some 150,000 visitors are expected and 660 exhibition stands, 10 per cent of which are from Northern Ireland and Britain. One exhibitor is from the US while Italy has two representatives - selling farm machinery and Italian wines. There will also be a huge volume of heavy farm machinery on display.
The championships are the farming community's annual ardfheis with all the politicking, competitiveness, business, craic, drinking and back-slapping of its political equivalent. In this case, ploughing replaces grandstand speeches.
Everyone will be there. The local bishops, Dr Laurence Forristal and Dr John Neill, will bless the grounds, while the President, Mrs McAleese, will officially open the event tomorrow. The Taoiseach arrives on Wednesday. "It's very important for Bertie as a Drumcondra man to be seen in his wellies in a muddy field in the country, especially in what could be an election year," said a political observer.
The Tanaiste, Ms Harney, will also attend. She will launch the Farm Woman of the Year competition at the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) stand. The IFA will also launch a new membership pack and an interactive website, www.IFA.ie, which a spokesman described as "pretty dynamic".
The organisation has some 85,000 members, and it will be the first big meeting of farmers since their blockade of meat factories earlier this year.
Government departments and State companies will also have stands to exhibit their schemes and services. The Central Statistics Office, the Equality Authority, the Euro Changeover Board, the agricultural charity Self-Help Development International and even the Incorporated Law Society will take a stand.
For fair-weather ploughing fans, there are plenty of distractions. There will be a mobile computer classroom, offering tutorials on the Internet while farm-related programs will also be shown. A number of British agricultural colleges will be there, as will UCD. The livestock section will have some 50 stands with all the beef breeds from Ireland and Britain and a "full display of exotic French breeds".
There will be twice daily fashion shows and a competition for the "most appropriately dressed lady" and "gent". Seven shopping and business marquees will operate, including a food and wine pavilion with free samples. The Irish Countrywomen's Association and the British Rural Crafts Association will spotlight rural crafts with various demonstrations.
Then there are the 300 ploughmen and women taking part in some 20 competitions. This year's host farmers are Heather and David Lalor, with neighbouring farmers Pamela Talbot and her son Robin. The Lalors, according to the organisers, will provide 300 of their 450 acres for the championships, while the Talbots have provided 140 acres for ploughing and car-parking from their 600. As for all that ploughed land - the Lalors hope to sow winter barley in some of it. The rest will be completely reploughed for spring crops.
When the flare goes up at the start of the championships, the competitors will immediately slice their ploughs into the ground and make the opening split. The split is where the "first two sods are ploughed away from each other, making sure that the plough gets right to the centre of the plot", according to the organisers, the National Ploughing Association (NPA). So what do judges look for in ploughing? According to Jimmy McCarthy a judge from Carrigtwohill, Co Cork, they "assess the split for straight, clean well-cut sods. They should be neatly turned and they should catch the eye as tasty work."
Minority sports have their controversies and in ploughing it is the evolution in competition of reversible ploughing (four furrows) where two-furrow ploughing had been the norm. Ms Anna Marie McHugh of the NPA, said: "It is a new rule of World Ploughing that by 2005 we must have one member of the Irish team in world contests working with a reversible plough so we have to raise its profile in the national event in the meantime." So a special competition will offer a top prize of an £18,000 three-furrow reversible plough with all the extras.