Good riddance at last to one cold and angry Winter

Country Living with Francis Farragher

Shortly after I had watched Roscommon winning the Division 2 League title against Cavan in Croke Park on Easter Sunday, there was a chill in my bones that told me this had been one long hard Winter and Spring period too.

The press box located at the front on the top deck of the Hogan Stand does offer the most stunning over-view of the pitch, but as for shelter, you are at the mercy of the winds and most of us agreed that it had been one of the coldest days we had ever experienced at Headquarters.

It wasn’t as if we hadn’t come prepared with boots, thermal socks, vests, jumpers, caps, coats and scarves all on display, but there was a cut in the wind that day that penetrated all protective layers.

Many years ago, while trying to earn a few bob during the Summer/Autumn period on the buildings to pay my way through a somewhat mis-spent youth in the then UCG, I would chance ‘working on’ a few extra weeks into October.

Often the weather would change for the worst during those closing weeks of my seasonal employment when a wicked wind would arrive from the East, heralding the end of the good weather days on the site.

A man by the name of Christy Fahy would often look out over a cup of hot tea during the 10 o clock morning break and sum up the viciousness of the conditions: “That’s one sharp wind — t’would cut a cake of bread in two.”

Over the course of the last two months and especially during the height of the visit of ‘The Beast from the East’ at various times through February and March, Christy’s description of the east wind always comes back to me.

It can often be a dry affair, but with its conception occurring in darkest Siberia –vand at times even closer to the North Pole – it really does paint the bleakest of pictures across our normally green landscape.

We got it before in March, 2013 — the last time we endured a horrible fodder crisis on Irish farms — and this year, the real damage was done in the bitingly cold months of February and March.

The Met Éireann temperature figures at their station in Athenry for those two months tell their own story. This February, the average temperature came in at 3.6° Celsius, a full 2° below the average for our second month.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.