The trade area at the National Ploughing Championships is like a gold-mining town in the old west, albeit with better streets. Frank McNally reports from Ballinabrackey.
Here in the middle of nowhere - no offence to Ballinabrackey - a teeming metropolis has sprung up overnight, its thoroughfares crowded with makeshift saloons, huxter shops, hardware stores and even an undertaker's business.
As is always the case with wild west towns, the streets are thronged with newly-arrived ethnic minorities, many of them treated like cattle by the authorities.
This is acceptable enough at the ploughing championships, however, where the ethnic minorities are in fact cattle.
All bovine life is here - huddled masses coralled into canvassed ghettoes, with their badges of ethnic identity displayed outside; "Charolais", "Blonde d'Aquitaine", "Simmental", "Belgian Blue".
Of course, far from being impoverished, these are the aristocrats of their breeds.
Not only do they all have names, the names are usually double-barrelled. But some of them, like the Aberdeen Angus, have a slightly sullen look, as if to ask: "Is it because I'm black?"
And any resentment on the part of the Angus community is understandable given the location right outside their stall of a hot food stand advertising "Aberdeen Angus roast beef roll".
This is typical of the ploughing championships, which combine conviviality and hardnosed business in roughly equal proportions.
The mixture even features in announcements from the PA. "We're still looking for that mobile phone that a young lad from Ennis lost," said the cheerful female voice at one point:
"There's a number stored in it that he needs for a job he is supposed to be starting in Limerick at the weekend. So if you don't want to hand in the phone, we'd appreciate it if you'd at least give us the SIM card."
A few minutes later: "We've a little boy here called Joe who is lost. Oh no he isn't - he's got a phone number written on him. Well done, Mum! We encourage everybody with children to write your phone number on their hands. We'll ring little Joe's parents now."
The streets of Ploughtown are paved, not with gold, but with five miles of steel tracking, as used in the recent Robbie Williams concert in Dublin's Phoenix Park. It was well-worn yesterday by an estimated 50,000 crowd, and by a strange coincidence the three-day total is expected to match the 130,000 that attended Robbie.
Like Dustin the Turkey, the championships had never been to Meath until this year. To cater for the Meath generation, there is even an exhibition stand on the host county.
But the ploughing franchise is the same here as everywhere else, and it's not just the competitors in the plough competitions who know the drill. For politicians, the event is second only to the general election as an opportunity to meet the people, and all the main parties have stands.
The PDs were handing out free ploughman's lunches, described as "ploughman's dinners" so they could incorporate the party initials. Fine Gael settled for tea and coffee, but in the spirit of ploughing competition they won the Digging Up History (Over 80) Class by putting a picture of Michael Collins outside the tent.
Enda Kenny's mountaineering commitments mean he will miss this year's event, which is a pity given his promise to "electrify the party". A number of stands here promote the latest in electric fence technology, and he might have picked up ideas.
The Taoiseach is also an absentee due to his US tour. This political vacuum may explain why a member of Macra na Feirme will attempt to create a new world handshaking record today on the site. Bertie Ahern's general election performance apparently went unrecognised by the Guinness Book of Records because there is no official mark to beat. But Tipperary man Brendan Morrissey is hoping to establish one in aid of the Alzheimer's Society.