My Own (Mike Callery's) Personal Recollections

From the age of about eight, 1940 onwards, I spent a good deal of my summer school holidays with my grandparents - sharing the vacations between the Callerys  in Lisdonish, (also spelt Listonish) near Ballyjamesduff, County Cavan and my maternal grandparents, Garveys, in Buncom, near Castlebar County Mayo.  The notion of a seaside beach holiday was not an option until much later.
     My Cavan grandparents Michael (Mick) Callery and Mary Anne (nee Mc Cabe) were small farmers, their modest thatched house and farmland in the Townland of Lisdonish (now spelt Listonish) in the Parish of Crosserlough.  They also owned  a few acres in the bordering townland of Killytogher, (more recently spelt Killatoher) where at least two previous generations of Callerys farmed.  Another neighbouring townland was Rassan, where the local primary school, (which I occasionally attended) was situated.
      These school holidays were most enjoyable but in part working holidays - the demands of the hay making, the harvest, winning the turf and tending animals and fowl were ever present.  Quite apart from economic considerations farms were of necessity small - in my grandfathers case about 12 acres - the size was to a large extent controlled by the ability of the farmer and his family to carry out a variety of essential operations by hand - mechanisation was still some way in the future.  A single horse, usually a strongly built pony, was all that could be afforded by the average farmer - it was in turn harnessed to the plough, the hay cutting machine, the cart to the bog and the creamery, and on a Sunday the trap used for travelling to mass.  My father, the eldest son, left home to join the newly formed Garda Siothana, the police force established following Irish Independence in 1922.  His two brothers John and Tim (Thomas) went to England to join the British forces in preparation for World War 2.
My Uncle Harry, the only son to remain at home, assumed the burden of running the farm. Harry supplemented the family income by providing a daily transport service to the Kilnaleck Creamery - with his hard worked pony he collected the churns of fresh milk from a number of other farms en route  - the 'skim' milk being returned in the churns following removal of the cream - a round trip of about ten miles every day, except Sunday.
During Uncle Harry's absence on his creamery trip, my granddad, Mick, and I had to attend to the pressing demands of the farm.  These included the cutting of the oats by hand - granddad wielding the scythe - my role was to pick up behind him and make sheaves, each tied with a strand of straw and then formed into stooks.  My abiding memory is of having my wrists chafed to a raw and painful condition by the newly exposed stubble ends of the straw.  This was because I was not yet 'toughened up' for the job.  The only respite was when my grandfather needed to have recourse to his beloved pipe.  That became a problem as World War 11 progressed - tobacco became increasingly hard to get and a serious source of tension between my grandparents was when Mick was driven to desperation to raiding granny's tea caddy - smoking the equally scarce and precious tea was a last resort, but it was a case of any ship in a storm.
The grain harvesting was preceded by haymaking, which was also in full swing during my summer breaks.  Making the hay entailed a series of weather dependant operations from the initial cutting to turning the newly mown hay with pitchforks and when suitably dry and mature forming cocks ready for transporting home to the hayrick in the farmyard.  All hands, including granny's and mine were required to assist with the haymaking operation.  In the days before silage making was even heard of the saving of the hay for winter fodder was a vital necessity.  Riding on top of the loaded hay cart on the rickety track from Killytogher to Lisdonish was a journey I fondly remember - it combined the sweet smell of the hay, the welcome relief from the hard physical effort of forking the hay and the gratification of delivering the saved end product; the essential feedstuff for cattle and pony over the winter months.  Equally the threshing of the oats was a big event - the steam driven threshing machine, hired for the day, was the only concession to external artificial power.  All the able bodied neighbouring men assembled to assist in pitching the sheaves from the rick to the threshing machine - the individual sheaves were fed by hand into the greedy maw of the thresher - the oats emerging into hessian sacks and the threshed straw was collected to compile the straw rick, the latter providing the bedding required for cows, pigs, pony, and hens and ducks.  Granny's role was to prepare the midday meal for the group of seven or eight men and boys and this was one of the occasions when bottles of Guinness were produced to slake the dust induced thirst.
Winning the turf from the bog was another essential and demanding requirement - the turf provided the source of fuel for cooking and for heating the house on cold winter evenings.  In Cavan, unlike Mayo, where the turf was a coarse 'sphagnum' variety, known as 'slane turf' - capable of being cut into sods from its original state, the Cavan turf by contrast was a fine grained 'mud turf'. The process of producing the sods began by digging a rectangular hole in the bog, making a slurry out of the muddy peat by adding water, shovelling the slurry onto the adjoining banks - rather like forming a concrete floor slab for a new house -  and leaving the 'slab' to drain and partly dry.