Country Living with Francis Farragher

Maybe, I’m a bit old-fashioned, but back the years we were always given the standard family advice of the time – ‘Not to be cheeky, to show respect for older people, and to do whatever a Guard would tell you’.

Those little life mantras didn’t seem to do us any harm as we grew up in a rural setting which was almost completely crime free.

Our local guard was based in the nearby village of Barnaderg – a man by the name of Martin Lyster RIP – who was the quintessential rural Garda: he knew everything that was going on and if at all possible he would advise rather than prosecute.

There was a sense of alarm one summer’s day when he called to my father about what we all thought must have a very serious issue.

The purpose of his advisory visit was to gently remind my father that one of his fields near the road had a few thistles too many per square yard while a couple of other intruders had ‘moved in’ also, such as ragworts and docks.

It was a very serious but friendly conversation and as I kept an ‘ear out’ for what was going on, I could hear the guard mentioning the Noxious Weeds Act, and the need for us to comply with the law.

Sure enough, that evening the scythes were lined up – one or two of them borrowed from the neighbours – so father and sons spent the best part of the following few days mowing down the noxious weeds.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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